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NBC will make more changes to its Wednesday and Thursday lineups in the spring, when it will bring back cult favorite Community and introduce the remaining three unscheduled midseason series — comedies Bent and Best Friends Forever and the unscripted Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, which received solid sampling after the network’s Betty White birthday special last month. The addition of the three new series will result in a lot of time-slot sharing and no repeats, with NBC touting its spring schedule as featuring the highest percentage of original programs in the network’s history with only with only 13 total hours of repeat programming from Sunday to Friday through mid-May.
Community will return to its Thursday 8 PM slot March 15, ending the experiment with 30 Rock in the half-hour. 30 Rock will slide to the more-suitable 8:30-9 PM slot, bumping Parks And Recreation, which will take a break, returning to wrap its season April 19 in the post-Office 9:30 PM slot after Up All Night finishes its 24-episode original first-season run.
Single-camera romantic comedy Bent, starring Amanda Peet, is getting an unusual air pattern often reserved for burnoffs, running back-to-back episodes from 9-10 PM on Wednesdays and wrapping its freshman season in just three weeks: March 21, 28 and April 4. NBC’s other midseason comedy, BFF, will be paired with Off Their Rockers in the Wednesday 8 PM slot starting April 4, following the season finales of Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea. Rock Center With Brian Williams will move yet again, this time from 9 PM to 10 PM on Wednesday for five weeks before sliding back to 9 PM on April 11 to make room for the return of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which will finish its season with all-original episodes. “We are happy to have an unprecedented amount of original content on NBC this spring,” NBC’s Bob Greenblatt said. Bent, Best Friends Forever and Betty White’s Off Their Rockers are welcome additions to the Wednesday schedule, and we know that the loyal fans of Community will be pleased with its return to its home on Thursdays at 8 PM.”
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Community is just horrible but better than Chelsea and Whitney
Comunity is horrible? Good one.
Community is absolutely amazing! It’s so clever and funny. You’re the first person that i’ve seen say differently.
Community is a very average show. It’s not bad. It’s not exceptional. It’s just average. It’s like one of those live-action shows on Nickelodeon I used to watch as a kid. (e.g. “Salute Your Shorts” or “The Adventures of Pete and Pete.) Those shows hold a lot of nostalgic value, which is what I think Community tries to provide.
The only people I’ve heard call ‘Community’ horrible are the same people who think that ‘Two and a Half Men: Ashton Kutcher edition’ is the funniest show on TV.
EXACTLY! You are spot on. That literally happened to me at a Super Bowl party when I brought up the fact that I missed Community. It really says so much about a persons taste in comedy (or lack of) when they say they like Two & A Half Men.
Community is one of the top comedies on television- by far the best that NBC has on any of its nights. Unfortunately, it likely won’t get the credit its due until after it is canceled- just like Arrested Development.
I don;t understand why community gets the horrible 8pm time slot. I was a big fan of 30 rock- but the show is dead, its unfunny. Move community to a later time (away from big bang) so it can get an audience.
Community was on several critics Top 5 list last year. clearly, people who dislike the show have no taste for good tv.
that’s a lot of programming slot changes on NBC’s press release there, it is almost impossible to keep track.
A Lot of big changes!!! I was confused reading this!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SO HAPPY
You so happy, I so happy more. Seattle so happy town, We in Seattle more happy than you. I sure
David Smart III
I am pleased with Community returning but please don’t say the fans didn’t show up when it gets the same ratings it always has, Mr. Greenblatt. (as you had insulted the fans of Chuck at the unveiling of the mid-season schedule back in December) That is not a good time slot Bob!
If you want to guarantee my viewership, and the legions of Community fans, announce Season 4 prior to the March 15th return date.
What an idiotic thing to say. There’s no way in hell they would announce an S4 without seeing how the show does in its return. If you want it to continue, WATCH IT WHEN IT’S ON. Don’t leave it up to others.
I’m not one of the old farts that are granted Nielsen boxes. No matter how much I watch live, it won’t count in the ratings.
Yeah, exactly. Everyone blames fans for not watching, while no one considers that Nielsen’s sampling skews AWAY from the kinds of viewers who like intelligent shows, at least according to a friend who used to recruit viewers for them. Nielsen’s system pays viewers and requires a time commitment. Neither one is a lot, but if you’re a college-educated professional with more money than time, it’s not really worth it to participate, thus it’s hardly the general sampling they claim.
A better, more contemporary sampling would add in: DVRs, online viewing, and social network analytics.
Not to mention the fact that Nielsen requires you to be part of a “household”, something most college students are not. For whatever reason, the type of viewing that takes place at colleges is not appreciated by them when handing out the ratings boxes.
The networks and advertisers already over-pay for young viewers, basically writing off the older viewers who make up the core TV fanbase. I don’t see the point of demanding that the ratings start looking even more desperately for young people than they already do. Besides, social media attention is worthless as a measurement (it’s an absurdly small, skewed sample size) and even factoring in DVR and online, Community will never be Big Bang Theory.
There’s no shame in being a good and unpopular show. What’s weird is people demand statistics that prove their favorite shows are actually popular, as if popularity equals quality. NBC thought Community would be popular, and they were wrong, but as long as the show stays on the air, that’s not the fans’ problem anyway.
@Matt,
If you have DVR, record it and watch it with commercials. I’ve heard this is the best alternative and that neilson counts these.
Best,
Advice Guy
Huzzah for Community! Or to put it in Magnitude terms, “Pop POP!”
Reaction before reading: YAY COMMUNITY.
Reaction after reading: What?
Is anyone else getting dizzy reading all that switching around?
Community is a lot like Chuck – they both have small, rabid fanbases. Threaten to cancel it and suddenly it’s trending on Twitter and people are up in arms. But that doesn’t get the show above a 2.0
And yeah, 8 PM sucks, but at least now it has a better fit. Pairing with Whitney was horrible.
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. ‘Community’ has never had a lead-in and has always been stuck in the 8 PM slot competing against ratings behemoths like ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘The X-Factor.’ It was never paired with ‘Whitney.’
My mistake. I meant that tonally Whitney was wrong for Thursday night (and NBC in general) and that Community has struggled at 8 PM without a lead-in but also without a solid 8:30 slot leading to the 9 PM hour.
And good job college student – just keep up that ignorant ego and you’ll do fine in the real world.
Parks and Rec is by far their best comedy right now. Why would they take it off the air and leave those new shows (Whitney, Chelsea, Up All Night) on?
Parks and Rec only has 4 episodes left at that time and they’re avoiding airing reruns so it makes the most sense to let Up All Night finish their season (ouch at last week’s numbers) and put Parks on after.
Wonder if NBC will do more of this next season, their comedies have fallen so low that airing a rerun is out of the question. Might as well air a show for 10-12 weeks in a row and then have a different show takeover, Community could get another 13 episodes.
It’s called the “You only have 22 episodes to spread across 39 weeks” conundrum. Just wish the networks would finally bite the bullet and do what cable channels do – run the shows straight through and put something else on after those are done. Have two separate “seasons” each year (or three if you want to throw in summer) with completely different shows.
holy cats, what a hot mess.
put the same shows on at the same time every week, people
I mean, I don’t really care because I have a DVR, but christ, this just looks bad for the network
Finally! So happy to hear Community is coming back. Such a gem.
Does NBC have any clue to what they’re doing?
Theres no better way of putting it.
POP! POP!
You, good sir, have very poor taste.
Load them bullets up Mr. Burke, because it seems you have a lot of folks that need to be put before the firing squad. Can’t build a schedule with zero consistency. Awake is doomed.
“Community” is in the best NBC tradition of groundbreaking comedy. Somewhere in the heavens Brandon Tartikoff is smiling. Congrats to the whole “Community” gang, from the talented writers and producers to the terrific actors and actresses.
You guys were missed!
There’s only one man who can save NBC from epic doom and that man is VINCE MANZE.
Another win for Jim Rash!
Community and Chuck are shows geared towards a younger demographic, the one that WILL NOT sit at a certain time and a certain place just to watch a show, no matter how much they love it.
Community is a great show with great cast and great writing, but unfortunately the outdated Nielsen rating system can’t measure it’s overall audience.
POP! POP!
If it was just about mean old Nielson, why is it that both shows are still among the lowest rated even after factoring in DVR viewers, which all the Youngs are supposed to be using these days?
DVRs? How very 90s. When you can watch TV on your PHONE, it’s really time to update the sampling methods.
The need to stop playing musical chairs with Rock Center, and just move it to a permanent home on the “nothing but old people” Friday night time slot where it belongs.
What great news! What would be even better than the return of Community would be the demise of WHITNEY. My Gawd, that show is one stinking pile of poo poo. It amazes me (why, I don’t know) that people accept this show as anywhere near funny.
They should retitle “Bent” to “Burnt.”
Another superior show gets thrown aside for Tina Fey’s badly aged show. Stick 30 Rock on another night. Or drop THAT in after The Office once Up All Night is done. That’s it’s original time slot pre-whatever that show about an Indian call center was called, right?
No way community is horrible, have you ever watched the show?
This truly is…
The darkest timeline
Put Community out of its misery and DO NOT TOUCH Parks & Recreation. Thank you.