John Kubicek, BuddyTV.com,  Oct 29, 2008

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Just as important as creating a compelling TV show that people want to watch is scheduling it at the right time on the right night so those people will actually tune in. All networks schedule differently, some better than others. The ratings success of CBS is in large part to brilliant scheduling. They put new shows like The Mentalist, Worst Week and Eleventh Hour on after highly-rated shows like NCIS, Two and a Half Men and CSI.

However, there are plenty of poor choices that result in low ratings and quick cancellations. This season, only FOX seems to have perfected its scheduling, combining similar dramas in the early part of the week and dumping all of its reality shows at the end. The other four networks, unfortunately, have made some serious missteps.

ABC – Wednesday Night Redux

Last year ABC tried something daring by putting three new hour-long shows on a single night. The critical love for the lineup of Pushing Daisies, Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money helped make it a success. The writers' strike brought an abrupt halt to that experiment, and foolishly, ABC kept its Wednesday night schedule the same this season, and the result has been incredibly low ratings.

The fact is that while these shows were shiny and new last year, they didn't last long enough to build reliable fan bases. Without a huge publicity push this year, the trio got lost in the shuffle and people who watched them last year either forgot to tune back in or didn't realize they'd returned. Good ideas last year aren't necessarily still good ideas now.

CBS – Friday Night Sandwich

While I praised CBS for putting many of its new shows on after established hits, the same praise does not transfer to the recently canceled The Ex List. The romantic comedy was given Moonlight's old timeslot Fridays at 9pm. In theory, being placed between Friday's two highest rated shows, Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs, is a good thing. But when those shows are procedural crime dramas and The Ex List is a light romantic comedy, the combination doesn't quite work.

However, it's hard to fault CBS when the sad truth is that there is no safe timeslot for a romantic comedy. By my count, two-thirds of the network's entire primetime schedule is devoted to crime procedurals, while the remainder are sitcoms and reality shows. The Ex List was a fish out of water on CBS, and regardless of scheduling, the key error CBS made was picking it up in the first place.

The CW - Taking the Night Off

I could easily hammer the CW's deal with Media Rights Capital to outsource scheduling of its Sunday nights, which resulted in the embarrassingly low ratings of Easy Money and Valentine, but an even more offensive mistake was what the CW did on Friday nights. With the absence of professional wrestling, the CW had a holden opportunity to redefine it's own Friday night block. Instead, it chose to use it as a dumping ground for shows the CW has to keep on the air.

Everybody Hates Chris and The Game are holdovers from UPN and the last truly African-American-centric shows on TV. Given the low ratings, the CW problem wants to cancel them, but since they are single-handedly quadrupling the diversity on the network, they're stuck. The offensive part is that they were sent to die on Friday nights, and on top of that, they were paired with a repeat of America's Next Top Model. The CW couldn't even afford to create an extra hour of programming, which is shameful since they'd already signed away Sundays.

NBC Random Wednesdays

Several months ago NBC announced its schedule, and I spent most of my summer scratching my head over its Wednesday night lineup: Knight Rider, Deal or No Deal and Lipstick Jungle. The concoction of an action drama, a reality game show and a female-centric drama was as random a mystery as ever, and the ratings were less than spectacular for the haphazard scheduling.

Luckily, NBC has seen the error of its ways and next week the new Wednesday will feature Knight Rider, Life and Law and Order. That's a solid, logical lineup of procedural action/crime shows, and while it's terrible news for Lipstick Jungle, which will be banished to Friday nights, but it's yet another sign that Life has nine lives on NBC.

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