Magnum PI season 5 premiere date: The case for January start

We understand fully that it’s going to take patience to get to the Magnum PI season 5 premiere. A lot of patience, in fact. This is still better than the alternative a couple of months ago, when the show was canceled by CBS and its future was very much uncertain.

The truth here is that NBC has a good bit of time still to figure out what they want to do when it comes to the new season, and we don’t expect a date for another couple of months at least. We still do have a preference in mind, though, so let’s get into that like never before: The best time for season 5 to premiere is on Friday nights starting in early January.

Why does this make the most sense? For starters, this is where the show has built an audience over the past couple of years. Viewers are already used to it then. While Fridays may not always be great for a lot of other shows, they 100% work for Jay Hernandez and the rest of the cast. It’s an hour of breezy escapism that can feel like a mini-movie every single week. January also is a time when a lot of viewers tend to stay home; we’ve seen over the years that the live viewer ratings for Friday-night shows are higher at this point than the rest of the TV season.

Airing on Fridays at this point in the year would give Magnum PI a chance to shine throughout all of its ten-episode season 5 run; this would also give NBC enough data early on to determine if they want more episodes for season 6 or some other point down the road. The earlier they can see viewer metrics, the better — and we also think that potentially pairing it with another long-running show in The Blacklist makes sense. In some ways, the two shows could help each other, and you can still air Dateline after the fact.

Of course, this is just a scheduling pipe-dream on this end, as NBC could wait until March to premiere season 5, or put it in another spot including Sundays. They already have comedies on Fridays in the fall, and they may have to relocate those in order to make this happen. It just goes without saying that we want the best for Magnum PI and when it comes to the ratings, this is what we consider that and then some.

Do you want to see Magnum PI season 5 premiere in January?

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