‘Major Crimes’ season 5 boss has same reaction as many to Wednesday timeslot
When we first learned that “Major Crimes” season 5 would be moving to Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern for the second half of the season, there was one reaction that was incredibly easy to have: Skepticism. While we’re always glad to get more of a show that we love, the primary concern here is that in airing an episode at this time, you are running a pretty extreme risk that you’re not going to have a chance to recruit many of your casual viewers for two different reasons.
1. You’re coming on during February sweeps, which is when the vast majority of the competition is airing new episodes.
2. You’re coming on specifically up against two shows in “Law & Order: SVU” and “Criminal Minds” that seemingly would have similar audiences to your own. That is quite a significant risk to take, given that the last thing you want to do is alienate viewers because they could opt to watch something that they’re already in the middle of as opposed to picking up something else. (There’s no concern about loyal viewers, but those only make up a certain percentage of the audience.)
As it turns out, the show’s own executive producer in James Duff feels the same way about the timeslot that many of us do. Here’s what he had to say on the subject to TVLine:
“This is not the night I would have picked, and this is not the time of year that I would have picked to come back on.”
In terms of the show’s immediate future, there is less of a reason to have concern given the sole fact that the show’s been renewed already for a season 6. The concern comes beyond that, given that you don’t want the timeslot to impede on the show’s chances of a season 7 in the event that the ratings suffer some sort of a drop. This is a marquee series for TNT in terms of viewers, and we’d like it to remain that way.
What do you think: Will the timeslot hurt the show’s ratings? Share in the comments, and head over here to get some further news regarding what’s coming up on the show! (Photo: TNT.)