NBC’s ‘Community’ season 4 … coming February 2013

We know that there is going to be an outcry over this, but we may as well be honest here in that the writing was on the wall here for some time: “Community” is not coming back until next year. In a post on Twitter, Yvette Nicole Brown (who plays Shirley) confirmed that the beloved NBC comedy would be back on Thursday, February 7 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Let’s start to analyze this as best we can given our knee-jerk reaction to the announcement. The good news? NBC feels good about the show that they are not airing it on a Friday, and they are starting it off during the February sweeps. It seemed unlikely that it would come to Wednesday nights given that it and “Guys with Kids” have nothing in common, which makes “Whitney” (starting up next month) a better fit there.

Now, the bad news: this is the same slot against “The Big Bang Theory” that is NBC’s equivalent of putting up a white flag and submitting defeat. They know that any new show would be clobbered there, so they may as well air a show that has a devoted following that will choose it above all else, even if the ratings are not exactly strong. “30 Rock” will be over on the network before February, but it doesn’t make any sense for them to launch “Community” during the holiday season or a time when ratings are less important to ad buyers.

So that’s really the perspective behind all this, and while we would have personally preferred them to put “Up All Night” on hiatus early to start its sitcom transition and allowed it to play next month, this is the best for the Greendale 7 that we’re going to get for the network. Let’s just be happy that it’s not airing on Fridays or in the summer.

What do you think about the date?