‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ ‘The Muppets’ changing timeslots over at ABC

ABC apparently decided that one of their New Year’s resolutions was to be rather sneaky in their scheduling.

While we were looking at the schedule for “Shark Tank” and “Beyond the Tank” tomorrow, we noticed something odd with the comedy schedule for Tuesday night: “Fresh Off the Boat” and “The Muppets” had changed their timeslots. We’ve since gone on to ABC’s official site and checked around, and it appears that this is now a permanent thing. The Constance Wu comedy will now start things off at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, while you will have to wait until 8:30 to see “The Muppets” in action.

We don’t see this move as anything other than trouble for “The Muppets” following a first half of season that felt disappointing to many. While the pilot presentation was fantastic, the show for one reason or another lost some steam following that. Part of our feeling here is that it lacked a little bit of the charm we’re used to from the signature characters, and it also had a hard time nailing down the tone to appeal to either family audiences or the edgier crowd.

“The Muppets” did undergo a showrunner switch recently, so it will be interesting to see whether or not this is something that improves the show … but it’s going to be tough. Some viewers have their minds made up, and this switch will make it interesting to see whether or not there were some people out there who were sticking with the show mostly because it was airing before “Fresh Off the Boat” came on. We’ll keep track of the ratings as always, and we should have a better way of predicting the future come a little later this spring.