‘The Blacklist’: Episode 11 will air in January, not following new ‘The Voice’ episode

NBC clearly likes what they see out of “The Blacklist,” at least enough that they feel like the show can continue to survive even without having the mighty lead-in of “The Voice.”

It was announced today that new episodes of the James Spader – Megan Boone drama, which has established itself pretty clearly as one of the best new offerings of the fall, are going to begin airing again following the Christmas holiday starting on Monday, January 13 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. This comes after the network plans to marathon a night of “Blacklist” repeats on January 6. There will be new episodes of the show on the 13th, the 20th, and the 27th of next month, and then NBC is going to take a little time to cover the 2014 Winter Games. Following that coverage, we will have an opportunity to see when the show comes back with “The Voice” around again as a lead-in.

Over the holiday weekend, we speculated that such a schedule move may be necessary for the show. The ratings for “Revolution” slipped last spring following a lengthy hiatus, and some chose to link the time off to viewers finding other programming. Also, it would have been hard for “The Blacklist” to fit in the remaining 12 episodes in before the May sweeps were over if the show chose to hold off airing new episodes until “The Voice” was back. “Revolution” rectified that problem by cutting back on their order and still ending in May, but “The Blacklist” clearly is operating with a different sort of mindset that includes getting at least 22 episodes on the air.

Will there be a challenge in keeping the ratings high for “The Blacklist” with a different lead-in that includes “American Ninja Warrior” and “Hollywood Game Night” in January? Sure, but the positive for this show is that its ratings the past few weeks have moved fairly independently of the singing competition. That bodes well for its performance in the future, and they also stayed strong last week even following a brief hiatus.

Photo: NBC