CBS gives SWAT full season after big DVR ratings; 9JKL gets more episodes
While the live+same-day ratings for Thursday night’s new episode of the Shemar Moore series were not the best, the network was clearly liking what they were seeing enough to decide to give the show more episodes. This should help the show stay on the air and run until we get around to May (more than likely). Deadline reports that the order is for 20 episodes — while this is a couple of installments short of the standard 22-episode order that comes with most full seasons, this is a slightly different situation given that you’re talking about a show that premiered later in the fall because of CBS broadcasting the NFL on Thursdays for most of the season.
The timing of this move is also very important: It’s the network giving a big show of faith in the series before Thanksgiving, which is enormously important given that this holiday is more than likely going to hurt the show’s ratings. As we mentioned last night in previewing that episode, CBS likely just doesn’t want there to be a hiatus this early in the run of a show that they only recently got on the air.
As for some of the other programming that the network has, CBS is also giving three more episodes to the Mark Feuerstein comedy 9JKL. While far from a ratings sensation, we do think that it performed well enough within the first few weeks to justify getting a little more of a run. This, in turn, should help for it to establish more of its identity and what it wants to bring to the table as a series. One of the problems that we feel like it had in the early going is similar to what many comedies suffer from — not having the time to find a proper identity.
The future still remains unclear on CBS’ Wisdom of the Crowd, a series clouded in part by allegations made against series star Jeremy Piven dating back to his time on Entourage. There is an investigation ongoing into the actor.
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