Why a ‘Major Crimes’ season 6 renewal is more important now than ever
Yesterday, TNT announced some very surprising news when it comes to their scheduling: “Major Crimes” is coming back in February, and it is going to be doing so Wednesday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Let’s start off by reiterating this: We’re thrilled to have the show coming back. It is a personal favorite among its genre, we appreciate the characters, and we do think that it takes risks beyond many in the “crime procedural” genre that are out there.
Now that we’ve said, at the same exact time we also have some frustrations with the network, who was once very faithful to this show, over its recent decision. When you are programming your schedule, competition almost always has to be a part of the criteria that you’re looking at, and we understand that for “Major Crimes” in particular it may have been hard to find it a good home. After all, Mondays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern have “Scorpion,” and Tuesday nights have “Bull,” “This Is Us,” “Chicago Fire,” and “NCIS: New Orleans” airing at various timeslots. Many of these shows appeal to the same audience as this one does.
Ultimately, though, we still think putting the show at this particular time is one of the worst moves that TNT could have made, starting out with just the fact that it’s being put up against “Criminal Minds” and “Law & Order: SVU,” two shows with very similar followings. From here, you’ve also got the #2 comedy on TV in “Modern Family” up against it, and then “Star” (a little bit of an unknown) before “Empire” returns. While we don’t think “Empire” has the same audience as “Major Crimes,” that is still the icing atop a big-ol’ cake of competition.
If we were the network, the thing that we would go ahead and do right now is renew the show for a sixth season, and do our part to keep some fans at ease. Even if you just make it a short order of ten or so episodes, that’s enough to put the worries at bay; if it doesn’t perform well in this timeslot, you can claim that it’s the final season coming up. If it holds its own, you can extend the ten episodes. Either way, give us more “Major Crimes,” and whenever you do end it, announce the final episodes in advance.
The one thing that we feel extremely confident about is that this is a show, and a franchise that began back with “The Closer,” that deserves a proper end — no matter how we get there.
If you want more news on the return of “Major Crimes,” be sure to head over to the link here. (Photo: TNT.)
Era Kosakowski
January 5, 2017 @ 7:18 pm
TNT has been trying to get the show canceled for a few seasons now. It’s awful because they have the viewership and loyalty, but with the new person in charge of programming, it isn’t getting the love. The new-ish (he’s been there a couple years now) President of the network explicitly said he didn’t like crime shows and wanted to change the programming of the network to be geared more toward reality programming. It’s going to keep changing time slots.
Naomi B.
December 25, 2016 @ 10:36 pm
I am still at the point where I don’t see this as a bad thing. I was more concerned with the football competition that came into play as it is something that had to be watched live and we saw very clear rating drops in the demo when football started.
I am more irked at the move back to 9/8 pm. While the good news is that we will get our repeat back in the 8/7 pm slot, the racer shows will be gone.
My firm belief is that the procedural TNT is bringing is MC:SOB and that they are using MC as the lead in, like was done with the closer/Major Crimes. TNT’S new programs are sucking in the ratings, even AK. Now we’re hearing potential loss of Tales from the Crypt-another one of their potential rockstars. They can’t afford to lose MC. I can’t see them risking it. TNT continues to drop in advertising revenue generation.
quinquin
December 21, 2016 @ 8:53 pm
“Major Crimes” will be back in February and I’m really thrilled about that. And yet – I still have a bad feeling about all this. As you said, it’s one of the most successful scripted original shows ever on TNT, still outperforming most of the cable network’s other originals. And it’s safe to say it’s easily the best thing they currently have. So why do they so desperately try to hide it, or worse, bury it? That’s beyond me. – As for me, I usually don’t watch any of the other shows airing at the same time. So no real problem there for me. But my worries about the future of Major Crimes, this exceptional gem on TV, would definitely be put at ease if the renewal would be announced (very) soon!
Borderbuddies
December 21, 2016 @ 12:21 pm
You are so right. I really don’t understand what the point is of moving Major Crimes to a different day. It really seems that TNT wants to force Major Crimes to fail.. For whatever reason. It would be sad if It went, as there is nothing which is equally good. I hope TNT comes to it’s senses… One can but hope.
Insurgent
December 21, 2016 @ 11:03 am
I am right with you, Matt. Since the survival of a show is mostly a numbers game, changing the time slot yet again is a pretty dangerous move. I am quite sure that the loyal fandom will follow, no matter what. It’s the occasional viewers I am worried about. In contrast to their new shows, TNT doesn’t take much effort in promoting Major Crimes although it is one of their most successful. Thus, most of the occasional viewers won’t even realize that it’s back, much less bother to get used to the new time-slot especially with the big networks airing strong competitors at the same time. I wonder if this decision was made explicitly to eradicate the show?