Network Upfront Preview - ABC: Small Steps in the Right Direction

The Goldbergs was an unlikely hit for ABC. Its fate is a big question.

Network upfronts – where the networks all come together to announce their fall schedules and pitch their new shows to advertisers – are here, which means the 2014-15 television season is quickly coming to a close.  I’ll probably have a season wrap-up post at the end of May, but I wanted to take a quick look at each network and its shows before upfronts hit.  Next up is the only network to not dip significantly: ABC.

“Flat is the new up,” NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt told critics at Press Tour two summers ago and, if that’s true, ABC must surely be celebrating this week as it currently sits within one percent of last year’s final rating while its competitors are all looking at 15-25% year-to-year declines.  What’s most impressive is actually how ABC has managed to maintain its numbers. 

More than any other network, ABC has embraced the mantra that repeats are dead and it appears they may have a point.  While many people mocked the network’s renewals of low-rated winter and spring filler in Galavant, American Crime, and Agent Carter, one need only look at the numbers for drama repeats to see the value in (hopefully) inexpensive midseason programming.  Even shows that are hits otherwise are incapable of pulling in decent ratings in repeats.  ABC’s big new hit How to Get Away with Murder averaged a 0.58 rating in repeats.  Fox's Gotham pulled a .6, NBC's Chicago Fire a .8.  Only CBS is capable of getting decent ratings with repeats at this point and even theirs are falling rapidly, The Big Bang Theory excepted.

ABC has figured out, then, how to make many small improvements on the margins to boost their overall average.  Throw in a couple of new hits and a lack of flat-out bombs and you have the makings for real growth.  Maybe it’s cheating, given that they’re having to spend more money for new episodes of low-rated fare, but they’re not the only ones with the same idea.  All four networks have been looking for ways to combat repeat programming, whether it’s sports, specials, or “bridge programming.”  But ABC has been the most aggressive, cutting its repeat programming hours from more than 300 150 hours just two years ago* to barely more than 100 this season.  It’s paid off.

* Bah, my math was bad.  300 hours of repeat programming would be crazy.  It was just over 150 hours.  Still a decline of almost one-third, but not crazy numbers.

The Questions

Last year, I asked if ABC could finally find a show they could successfully pair with Modern Family.  The answer to that question was a resounding “Yes,” as black-ish managed to hold much of the veteran’s audience throughout the season.  The question this year is almost the opposite: What is ABC going to do with all of its returning comedies.  The network has renewed six comedies including the entire Wednesday night lineup.  If ABC wants to stay at four sitcom hours in the fall it’s probably going to mean moving an established, reasonably successful show to Friday nights, debuting another new comedy there with Last Man Standing (which has already failed twice), or pushing something to the spring.

The other big question is how to handle Shondaland on Thursday nights.  Running Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder all together had massive benefits, especially in the fall when NBC and Fox were foundering against Thursday Night Football.  ABC’s recent history would seem to favor keeping them together, but they could make a big splash by moving one of the three.

The Numbers

ABC’s Live+Same Day season average currently sits at 1.62 and is probably going to end up around 1.60, a roughly two percent drop from last year, much better than the 15-25% drops that other networks are seeing.  The network is also threatening to sneak into second place in the Live+7 ratings, sitting just .1 behind CBS.  A big reason for the bump is likely due to the decrease in repeat airings, so ABC is probably going to need to increase its new program ratings to make further progress from here, something not easy to do in today’s television climate.

Monday –

7:00pm – Dancing With the Stars (2.10) – The Bachelor (2.30) – Dancing With the Stars (2.10)

9:00pm – Castle (1.57)

A big theme running through ABC’s schedule right now is how few legitimate trouble spots there are.  While I’m sure ABC would like more out of Castle, its pairing with Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelor has worked for seven years now.  It’s possible that a new show will find its way here, but a more likely scenario, I think, is to pair Castle with a bridge show to cover the winter months.  Castle doesn’t repeat especially poorly, but the ratings certainly aren’t good.  And bringing in, say, the second season of female-skewing Secrets and Lies to air after The Bachelor is the kind of marginal change that the network has made work a lot this year.

Tuesday –

7:00pm – Selfie (1.07)/Manhattan Love Story (1.00) – Fresh Off the Boat (1.72)/Repeat After Me (1.13)

8:00pm – Agents of SHIELD (1.61)/Agent Carter (1.50)/Agents of SHIELD (1.61)

9:00pm – Forever (1.12)

Tuesday was the only real troublesome night for ABC this year and Fresh Off the Boat managed to fix some of that trouble in the spring.  The Marvel hour is doing…something…for the Disney corporation even if the ratings aren’t necessarily what they expected.  It’s easy to think that this night will look much the same in the fall (comedies into Marvel into a new drama), but this is also the night with the most problems and could probably use some shakeups.  If ABC does decide to move a Shonda show off of Thursday, this is where it could turn up.

Wednesday –

7:00pm – The Middle (2.00)/The Goldbergs (2.19)

8:00pm – Modern Family (3.25)/black-ish (2.33)

9:00pm – Nashville (1.35)

Perhaps the most surprising ratings note of ABC’s season was how The Goldbergs blossomed after moving to Wednesday nights.  Its ratings weren’t terrible on Tuesdays last year, but they certainly weren’t good.  And they ended up drawing a better average rating than even lead-in The Middle.  It wouldn’t at all be surprising to see The Middle (which is not an ABC-produced show) sent off to Tuesday or Friday and The Goldbergs pushed up to the top slot.  As for the rest of the night, ABC would be crazy to move black-ish now that it’s found some success and, at this point, Nashville just seems to be playing out the syndication string.  They probably have one more season on Wednesday nights before being canceled.

Thursday –

7:00pm – Grey’s Anatomy (2.39) – The Taste (0.83) – Grey’s Anatomy (2.39)

8:00pm – Scandal (2.90)

9:00pm – How to Get Away with Murder (2.96) – American Crime (1.18)

The Shonda Rhimes trio was a smash hit for ABC this year.  It successfully counter-programmed the NFL on CBS and put the second-, third-, and fifth-best drama ratings on all of network television.  It’s not a perfect year-long lineup, as none of the shows repeats particularly well and midseason filler The Taste and spring series American Crime both underperformed.  It’s possible that the network will make some changes to this lineup, but I doubt it.  Don’t fix what’s not broken.

Friday –

7:00pm – Last Man Standing (1.27)/Cristela (1.00)

8:00pm – Shark Tank (1.92)

9:00pm – 20/20 (1.62)

ABC has developed a Shark Tank spinoff, Beyond the Tank, which will debut this summer.  It’s already been renewed for a second season, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it end up on Fridays during the season, either paired with, or as a bridge for Shark Tank during the winter.  The reality show has been a Friday hit for a few years now and is the only show capable of pulling decent ratings on Fridays anymore, so it’s not surprising that ABC would try to build on that.  What it means for the Friday comedy block and Last Man Standing, I don’t know.

Sunday –

7:00pm – Once Upon a Time (2.22) – Galavant (1.33) – Once Upon a Time (2.22)

8:00pm – Resurrection (1.25) – Secrets and Lies (1.49)

9:00pm – Revenge (1.16)

When I try to convince people that Once Upon a Time is a hit, they occasionally give me weird looks, but putting up a 2.22 average in the current Sunday night ratings climate is very impressive.  In fact, the 1.7 rating the show drew for its finale Sunday night was 25% better than anything else that aired.  The only real question is what will air alongside it next year.  ABC may have spoiled today that freshman series Oil (formerly known as Boom) will be getting the 8:00pm slot so we might see two new shows on this night, unless Secrets and Lies moves to 9:00 or a veteran drama switches nights. 

ABC made a lot of smart moves this past year and seems to be moving all-in on its “fewer repeats” strategy.  It’s paid off so far, at least in the Same Day ratings but there are only so many repeat hours to cut, so they’ll need to keep hitting on their new shows if they want to avoid losing ground next season.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Network Upfront Preview: Fox - From First to Worst

"Empire" is Fox's new smash hit and they desperately need to build on that.

Network upfronts – where the networks all come together to announce their fall schedules and pitch their new shows to advertisers – are here, which means the 2014-15 television season is quickly coming to a close.  I’ll probably have a season wrap-up post at the end of May, but I wanted to take a quick look at each network and its shows before upfronts hit.  Next up is this season’s almost certain last place finisher: NBC.

It didn’t happen in one season or even two, as did NBC’s ascension from last place to the top, but in a span of three short years Fox has gone from a decade of ratings dominance to last place of the four major networks.  And, frankly, it wasn’t even close.  At the beginning of the season I posited that Fox and ABC would be in a head-to-head race for third place, but Fox is going to end up almost ten percent behind in nearly all measures. 

And the sad thing is, there’s a lot to love about the state of Fox programming right now.  The NFL gives the network a nice Sunday boost during the fall.  Empire is a runaway hit and is putting up the best relative numbers of any show in a decade.  Even American Idol, while not the mega-hit it once was, has been capable of keeping its average rating above 2.0, something few scripted shows can do anymore.  But now former executive Kevin Reilly’s plan to abandon pilot season in favor of upfront orders seems to have backfired massively.  The problem Fox found itself with this season was that most of its new shows tanked completely and there was nothing in the bullpen to replace them. 

And so it happened that Red Band Society, Weird Loners, Mulaney, Glee, Backstrom, Gracepoint, and Utopia combined to air 53 hours of sub-1.0 rated programming in 2014-15, roughly one-third of the total of all four major networks combined.  That doesn’t even count The Following, New Girl, The Mindy Project, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Bob’s Burgers, all returning series which, at some point this season, dipped below the Mulaney Line.

Questions

So what does Fox do?  How do they come back from what can only be described as a disaster of a season?  Clearly the first question is “What will Empire do in the fall”?  The show made ratings history this year, debuting to big numbers and only going up from there, literally.  Every single episode of Empire that aired drew more same day viewers than the episode before it.  Only once did the demo rating go down and only once did it stay the same from week to week.  I don’t think it will come back to the ridiculous 6.9 rating it put up in the finale, but Fox has a once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime megahit on its hands and as goes Empire, so goes Fox with it.

The other big question is how will Fox build hits in the fall?  Sunday nights are likely to stay the same and Fridays have turned into something of a dead zone for the network.  That leaves four nights needing four lead-ins, but Fox really only has two: the aforementioned Empire and Gotham.  Sleepy Hollow dropped off tremendously this season, as did Bones and neither seems able to support new programming.  Both actually seem like they’d be a good fit for Friday night.  It’s likely that the network will need at least two self-starters this fall.  Unfortunately, they tried the same thing last year, only to see Utopia crater.

The Numbers

NBC’s Live+Same Day average currently sits at 1.47.  Given current trends, I expect it to end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.45, representing a 25% fall from last season and, I’m fairly sure, representing the worst annual average in the history of the four major networks.  Even the spring, usually a high point for Fox thanks to the return of American Idol, was incredibly unkind this year with the network currently on pace for a 1.0 average during May sweeps.  Outside of Empire, Gotham, and kind of The Last Man on Earth, there is no painting over just how dreadful Fox’s year was.  The good news, at least, is that they have a lot of room to grow, if they can find the right shows.

The Schedule (Titles in BOLD have already been renewed for next season; titles in strikethrough have already been canceled)

Monday –

7:00pm – Gotham (2.17 average rating)

8:00pm – Sleepy Hollow (1.54) – The Following (1.18)

Gotham did perfectly fine leading off Monday nights in its rookie season.  Sure, it would have been nice to see it hold its fall ratings into the spring, instead of falling about 40%, but given all of Fox’s other problems, it’s tough to complain about a show that can pull decent ratings for a full 22-episode season.  I fully expect to see Gotham right back here this fall.  The bigger question is what will get the lead-out.  After a stellar first season, both critically and in terms of audience, Sleepy Hollow backtracked quite a ways in both in its sophomore campaign.  And The Following, after debuting as the number one drama on broadcast two years ago, has been shown the door, continuing Fox’s now decade-long run producing only one drama that aired more than 50 episodes: Fringe.  Fox really doesn’t have a lot of options, so they’re probably just going to slot in one of their two best drama prospects.

Tuesday –

7:00pm – Utopia (0.80) – MasterChef Jr. (1.66) – Hell’s Kitchen (1.28)

8:00pm – New Girl (1.30)/The Mindy Project (1.05) – New Girl (1.30)/Weird Loners (0.62)

Tuesday and Thursday were complete dead zones for Fox this year so really anything is possible.  Current rumors have New Girl being held for midseason, which could indicate an intent to abandon comedy entirely in the fall.  I’m not sure of the production schedule for Gordon Ramsey’s shows, but with Hell’s Kitchen airing this summer, MasterChef Jr. seems like an obvious choice here as the one show that did halfway decently on Tuesdays last year.  Then again, this seems like the night Fox is most likely to abandon so, again, anything goes.

Wednesday –

7:00pm – Hell’s Kitchen (1.28) – American Idol (2.08)

8:00pm – Red Band Society (0.83) – Empire (5.09) – American Idol (2.08)

The big story here is Empire and its absolutely ridiculous 5.09 average rating.  Presumably it will be coming back to Wednesday nights in the fall, the only real question is whether Fox keeps it at the less-family friendly 8:00 hour or puts it at 7:00 in an attempt to create a lead-in for a new drama.  Clearly NBC is banking on the latter, renewing The Mysteries of Laura only to keep it at 7:00 as fodder for the Empire beast.  Either way, this looks to be Fox’s strongest night of the week next fall.

As for the spring, rumors have American Idol coming back for an announced final season.  The only question there will be if it airs two-hour episodes on Wednesdays again with Empire ending its season early, or if it moves to another night.  Don’t be surprised to see Idol move its two-hour shows to Thursday to accommodate the network’s new hit.

Thursday –

7:00pm – Bones (1.28) – American Idol (2.32) – Bones (1.28)

8:00pm – Gracepoint (0.84) – Backstrom (1.01)

As I mentioned above, Thursday was another black hole for Fox.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bones return here as it did okay in the fall but, again, anything’s possible on this night.

Friday –

7:00pm – Utopia (0.64) – World’s Funniest Fails (0.87)

8:00pm – Glee (0.66)

Fox has basically abandoned Friday nights in recent years.  There’s a chance that it could be revived at least a bit with the right combination of veteran dramas (I’m thinking Bones and Sleepy Hollow), much the way they did with Fringe for a few years.  But it’s just as likely that they’ll fill the night with reality and repeats and focus on fixing the more important holes elsewhere on the schedule.

Sunday –

7:00pm – The Simpsons (2.24)/Brooklyn Nine-Nine (1.74)

8:00pm – Family Guy (2.18)/Mulaney (0.75) – Family Guy (2.18)/Bob’s Burgers (1.26) – Family Guy (2.18)/The Last Man on Earth (1.64)

The spring schedule of The Simpsons, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Family Guy, and The Last Man on Earth actually did surprisingly well for Fox, given all of their other struggles this year.  I expect it to be back in its entirety.

So that’s the Fox network in a nutshell.  Unlike in past years I don’t really have a recipe for improvement for the last place network.  At least ABC last year had several hits to build its schedule around, but Fox really only has Empire and Gotham.  They’ll need to choose their new programming carefully to make sure they don’t waste their prime timeslots.

Tyler Williams is a professional library and amateur television critic.  You can reach him at tytalkstv AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Network Upfront Preview - NBC: The Fading Champion

The biggest news this week was Undateable's renewal for an all-live season

Network upfronts – where the networks all come together to announce their fall schedules and pitch their new shows to advertisers – are here, which means the 2014-15 television season is quickly coming to a close.  I’ll probably have a season wrap-up post at the end of May, but I wanted to take a quick look at each network and its shows before upfronts hit.  First up is this season’s almost certain repeat champion: NBC.

Let’s start with the positives.  For the second consecutive year, NBC will walk away with the season Live+Same Day and Live+7 ratings crowns.  They currently lead CBS by a quarter of a point in the Same Day ratings and by .2 in the L+7 numbers.  They have the highest-rated program on network television in Sunday Night Football and a big two-night performer in The Voice. 

But look past the surface and the network’s numbers get very ugly very quickly.  Another year has gone by without developing a sitcom hit or a hit at all.  In fact, NBC is likely going to cancel every single new show it debuted during the 2014-15 season.*  That is ridiculous.  The last time that happened was more than forty years ago during the 1973-74 season when, again, NBC canceled all of its freshman series.  At least then the network had the excuse of devoting more than a third of its schedule to primetime movies and it had one of the finest nightly lineups in television history with All in the Family, M*A*SH*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.  Even last year’s big hit, The Blacklist, has cratered in the last few weeks after getting the post-Super Bowl timeslot and initially surviving a midseason move to Thursdays. 

* I guess that’s what I get for writing this piece in the middle of renewal and cancellation week.  NBC somewhat surprisingly renewed The Mysteries of Laura late last night, guaranteeing that at least one of their freshman shows will get a second season.

For those wondering just how dire the straits are, consider this: NBC aired only three scripted hours this season that beat the non-sports average for the five broadcast networks.  By comparison, that’s fewer than half the above-average hours of CBS and ABC and fewer even than the four above-average hours of last place Fox, which also shows seven fewer hours of primetime programming than the peacock network.

The Questions

The biggest question, then, is how long can NBC stay on top?  Frankly, the answer is probably “about three weeks.”  The truth is, sans Super Bowl, NBC would currently be in a neck-and-neck race with CBS for the ratings titles.  Considering that CBS gets the Super Bowl next year, it’s not out of line to predict that, barring stunning ratings reversals, CBS is the favorite to lead the pack in 2015-16. 

In the micro sense, NBC really needs to figure out its comedy plan.  Only summer transplant Undateable, which hasn’t officially been renewed yet, seems likely to return and, in fact, the dearly departed Parks and Recreation is going to wind up as NBC’s second highest-rated comedy of the year.  The network abandoned Thursday night comedies, on which it made its name in the 90s and seems to have really lost any kind of brand identity in the genre.  Given that they’ve only ordered four new comedy series to date, it wouldn’t be surprising if the closest thing to comedy on NBC’s fall schedule is Best Time Ever, the new variety show from Neil Patrick Harris.

The Numbers

NBC’s Live+Same Day average currently sits at 2.00.  Given their recent trends, I estimate that they’ll finish somewhere around 1.95, representing about a fifteen percent decrease from last year and down even from the network's 2012-13 average, when it finished in second place behind CBS.  Sports and The Voice continue to drive NBC’s ratings, though, and their scripted series ratings continue to struggle.  For the second straight year, the network will finish with the worst comedy average of the four major networks.  I said last year that there are building blocks on the NBC schedule, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true, as The Voice again fails to create any momentum, The Blacklist dies when it moves off of Monday, and the network's highest-rated series all seem to end up in the 9:00 timeslot.

The Schedule (Titles in BOLD have already been renewed for next season; titles in strikethrough have already been canceled)

Monday –

7:00pm – The Voice (3.28 average rating) – Celebrity Apprentice (2.04)

9:00pm – The Blacklist (2.44) – State of Affairs (1.28) – The Night Shift (1.31)

NBC made a big move this year by moving its hit show, The Blacklist out of the prime The Voice leadout and pitting it head-to-head against last year’s highest-rated drama, Scandal, on Thursday nights.  At first, the plan didn’t seem so bad for the James Spader-helmed series.  Sure, there was a bit of drop-off from fall to spring, but it still gave the network a strong showing on a valuable night that had recently been generating little in terms of ratings.  Recently, however, the move seems to have not been playing out so well.  The Katherine Heigl drama State of Affairs bombed post-The Voice and summer carryover The Night Shift only did slightly better.  Meanwhile, The Blacklist has cratered on Thursday nights, drawing a sub-1.5 average over the last six weeks and fairly regularly finishing third in its timeslot.  Add in the fact that the network was unable to draw even acceptable ratings out of the two spring dramas paired with The Blacklist (The Slap and Allegiance), and NBC spent pretty much the entire season just praying for Sunday once Thursday came.  I don’t expect a great deal of change here when NBC announces its schedule tomorrow.  The Voice will likely retain the 7:00pm timeslot with the most promising new drama placed behind it.

Tuesday –

7:00pm – The Voice (2.91) – Parks and Recreation (1.33) – The Voice (2.91)

8:00pm – Marry Me (1.19)/About a  Boy (1.04) – Undateable (1.44)/One Big Happy (1.17)

9:00pm – Chicago Fire (1.83)

The Dick Wolf Chicago series continues to provide steady, if unspectacular ratings for NBC in the ever more difficult 9:00 hour.  The big question on Tuesdays is what NBC will decide to slot in-between The Voice and Chicago Fire.  Sitcoms have mostly struggled in that hour for the past year-and-a-half, though Undateable has done reasonably well and was just announced to be airing all live episodes next season, so NBC has a few options.  It wouldn’t be surprising to see Neil Patrick Harris’s variety show end up here as a slightly more compatible leadout than yet another drama.  On the other hand, Fire has generally been the best overall post-Voice performer, so maybe the network should be less concerned about finding the right show and just make this a home for their most-promising series.

Wednesday –

7:00pm – The Mysteries of Laura (1.19)

8:00pm – Law & Order: SVU (1.63)

9:00pm – Chicago PD (1.59)

Prior to yesterday’s surprising late night renewal of The Mysteries of Laura, I had this pegged as the easiest night to predict.  A new drama fits in at 7:00 and SVU and PD stay put.  I still think that makes the most sense, since Laura, while it draws a fair number of viewers, has dreadful demo ratings and isn’t really bringing anything to the fall schedule.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see it held until midseason, perhaps to fill a slot on Sunday night once the NFL season ends. 

The only potential hiccup to that plan are the ratings from a couple of weeks ago when SVU and PD swapped timeslots for a night during a crossover event with Chicago Fire.  Both shows saw increases of 15-25% on the night with the bigger jump coming for SVU.  It’s likely this was mostly due to the special event nature of the episodes, but it’s possible that both series might be better off in different timeslots, should NBC decide to experiment.

Thursday –

7:00pm – The Biggest Loser (1.20) – The Slap (0.76)

8:00pm – Bad Judge (0.94)/A to Z (0.75) – The Blacklist (2.39)

9:00pm – Parenthood (1.29) – Allegiance (0.86) – The Slap (0.76) – Dateline (1.02)

What an utter disaster of a night Thursday was for NBC.  The network ended up airing 26 hours of sub-1.0 new programming on Thursday nights – a solid quarter of its total output for the night.  Sure, some blame can be put on the competition these shows faced, what with the NFL on CBS during the fall and ABC’s Shonda Rhimes dramas on ABC all year long.  But even that can’t account for how bad this turned out.  Even The Blacklist, which had been performing perfectly fine on Monday nights, sank heavily on Thursday nights, falling as low as a 1.2 rating in recent weeks. 

I don’t know the answer for NBC on Thursday nights in 2015-16.  Presumably they’re going to put in a couple of new dramas (and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chicago Med earn the 9:00pm slot, which was held down for so long by another Chicago hospital show, ER) but I think it’s going to take a lot more than just nibbling around the edges to bring Must See TV back to NBC Thursdays.

Friday –

7:00pm – Dateline (1.19)

8:00pm – Grimm (1.16)

9:00pm – Constantine (0.92)

We’re running on four solid years now of Grimm and Dateline pulling perfectly acceptable ratings on Friday night while nothing else can.  There’s not much else really to say at this point until NBC decides to try something different.  Frankly, I think The Blacklist would actually make for a solid pairing with Grimm, but there’s no chance in hell that NBC sends its top drama and the show to which it gave the post-Super Bowl timeslot to Friday nights.  Odds are, we’ll see some variation of this same schedule next year, just with a new show in place of Constantine

Sunday –

7:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – Dateline (0.96)

8:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – A.D. The Bible Continues (1.48)

9:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – American Odyssey (0.68)

Once again, Sunday Night Football dominates in the fall while everything fails in the spring.  This marks the umpteenth-consecutive year that all scripted programming has failed on Sundays.  In fact, since NBC won the Sunday Night Football contract, no Sunday scripted series has been renewed.  There’s a chance that the network will order more Bible programming, since it’s quite uncommon for network execs to decide not to be in the Mark Burnett business, but clearly something has to change here.  The Apprentice has worked well in the past on Sunday nights, but NBC decided to use it to bridge The Voice this year.  I wish I had a better idea of what they should do, but the problem is the same it’s been for almost a decade: find spring programming that isn’t terrible.  If NBC hasn’t fixed it yet, I don’t know what will work.

NBC is still the two-time reigning ratings champion.  But that title is on very rocky foundation at the moment and they don't seem to have any real strategy beyond just plugging the many holes the schedule currently has.  NBC will walk into upfronts holding the title belt aloft, but don't be surprised if this time next year sees them pinned to the mat.

Tyler Williams is a professional library and amateur television critic.  You can reach him at tytalkstv AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.