‘Up All Night’ season 2: A major change coming to traditional sitcom

It happens occasionally that you see major shifts in a show’s cast during its run; but with even that being said, it is still not often that we see something happen that is quite like this. “Up All Night” is about to become much more like “Two and a Half Men,” and a little less like “30 Rock.”

According to a new report from Deadline, the Christina Applegate and Will Arnett is something that both NBC and executive producer Lorne Michaels desperately want to work given the lop-level cast and the timeslot during their Thursday night lineup. With this in mind, they are going to be making the switched from a single-camera comedy to a traditional sitcom with a live studio audience for five episodes that will air next year. This will give season 2 a total of 16 episodes, and this move may actually be some sort of 11th-hour push to keep the show from getting canceled altogether due to some pretty woeful ratings this fall.

The one thing that we should point out here is that with this, “Community” may once again have a hard time finding a place to call home this season. The network has a new comedy in “1600 Penn” that they could plug in after “30 Rock” ends at 8:00 p.m. Thursday night, and there’s also the possibility of the Rainn Wilson series “The Farm” starting up if the reaction to the episode of “The Office” is favorable. (Only time will tell when it comes to this.) “Whitney” is just starting to debut on Wednesdays next month, and both “Go On” and “The New Normal” Tuesday each have a full season.

Do you think a move to a multi-camera comedy (which is still the more successful format ratings-wise) could help “Up All Night” at all, or are we really just looking at something that is doomed at this point?