Presidential Address to delay CBS’ FBI, NCIS: New Orleans; NCIS will air
CBS has confirmed now that they are planning to still air a new NCIS episode, but that the speech from Donald Trump (currently slated to last just eight minutes, plus a Democratic response) is going to cause them to push back new episodes of FBI and NCIS: New Orleans for a week. They will compensate for this scheduling change down the line, most likely by airing new episodes of these shows on a week in which there were originally going to be repeats. There are typically at least a few weeks during the season where CBS doesn’t have new programming on Tuesdays.
Why do this? Clearly, CBS does not want to air programming that doesn’t start and end at its expected time and they don’t want to damage their ratings for some of their shows. NCIS doesn’t have anything to worry about, mostly because it is airing before the Address airs. However, the same cannot be said for anything else on their schedule after the fact.
CBS and the majority of other major broadcast networks have all opted to air the speech, which has led to some backlash and divided reactions from viewers.
What is Fox doing?
We can confirm that Fox will still air new episodes of Lethal Weapon and The Gifted tonight as planned, with the latter show likely coming on at the conclusion of the speech. While this is good news for these shows in some ways (at least in that viewers do not have to wait), we think that they are doing this out of scheduling necessity more so than anything else. Fox has only so many weeks available on their schedule and they want to be able to cram in as much programming as possible. It’s a little harder when they only have two hours a night and NFL football had taken over one of your timeslots for a good chunk of the week.
One more thing to remember is that this is not the final time in which these networks are going to be facing some scheduling shifts because of a Presidential Address. The annual State of the Union should still happen at the end of the month and that will likely lead to more repeats across the board. Given that this speech is often far longer, we imagine that there will be even more repeats / hiatuses caused by it. At least more viewers will have a chance to know what’s happening a little bit further in advance.
What are you planning to watch on TV Tuesday night, and are you disappointed with this news from a vantage point of CBS? Be sure to share right now in the comments and stay tuned for more of the latest. (Photo: CBS.)