‘Sean Saves the World,’ ‘The Michael J. Fox Show’ to swap times for a night

Back when the schedules were announced for the fall TV season, we almost immediately had a strong reaction to “Sean Saves the World” coming on at 8:00 p.m. Eastern rather than “The Michael J. Fox Show”: Why? Sean Hayes is not the same sort of star as Michael J. Fox, and you want your leading man to be the one to get as big a lead-in as possible. While we’re not going to sit here and say that switching the two shows around would have saved them from horrendous ratings, maybe it would have helped somewhat.

Nonetheless, NBC is now desperate enough to try this out for a night and see what happens. According to The Futon Critic, the network is going to air Michael J. Fox at 9:00 this coming Thursday, and then Hayes’ show at 8:30. Could this cause some confusion for some fans? Sure, but the viewerships are so small that NBC has nothing to lose. At the moment, neither one of them is coming back for another season. They’re instead giving new life to “Parks and Recreation” and “Community,” two shows that have suffered mightily to pull in an audience over the years.

While we could sit here and mock NBC for giving Fox a 22-episode order without even seeing a pilot episode last season, didn’t you think that this show would fare better? Just look at “Spin City” or “Family Ties,” and how well the two of them each fared in the ratings. If nothing else, it was pretty easy to make the assumption that this was going to be a show that did well. Other networks were fighting for it, and this is what NBC had to do to get it. We personally think that their biggest mistake was making Fox’s character a little too nice, and then shifting away from the traditional sitcom format that Fox embraced for so long.

Do you think that this is going to matter at all, or is it more of an example of NBC rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship? Share below.