NBC makes changes to Tuesday, Thursday fall lineups

This Is Us remains on Tuesday; new Will & Grace avoids showdown with Big Bang Theory

The month of June hasn’t arrived yet, and we already have our first change in the 2017 fall schedule.

NBC announced Tuesday it was keeping This Is Us in its regular Tuesday slot after all, keeping it as a lead-out of The Voice. Meanwhile, the slot This Is Us was scheduled to take would now be occupied by the new Will & Grace revival and Great News. Also notable is the move of Chicago Fire to Thursdays in the last hour of prime-time.

The move was made for several reasons – NBC suddenly decided thought Us, a serialized drama, would not benefit from being interrupted mid-way through the fall as NBC would take over Thursday Night Football over from CBS in late November. Also, Us was doing well in its Tuesday night time slot and NBC decided to keep the Voice-Us combo in tact after all. As Masked Scheduler (a.k.a Preston Beckman, a former NBC and Fox scheduler) pointed out on Screener, the move to keep Us may have been because of two factors: studio Twentieth Television (who produces the show) may have put pressure on NBC to keep the show on Tuesday, and advertisers may have balked at the CPM price increase NBC was looking for.

Meanwhile, Will & Grace moving an hour later avoids going head-to-head with The Big Bang Theory, although the matchup would have been only for November sweeps. That distinction now back to SuperStore, which actually has held its own against the comedy powerhouse.

Here’s the revived Tuesdays and Thursday’s schedule as follows:

Tuesday: The Voice, This Is us, Law & Order: True Crime 

Thursdays: Superstore, The Good Place, Will & Grace, Great News, Chicago Fire (new night) 

When you think about it, the quick moves makes sense – these schedules, when announced are never set in stone. The most famous changes to be made after fall schedules were announced came in the 1990’s, when ABC decided to swap time slots and days for Roseanne and Home Improvement in 1994 when NBC moved Fraiser to Tuesdays opposite Roseanne as originally announced. The top-rated show during the 1993-94 season, Improvement stumbled opposite Fraiser when it shifted back to Tuesdays, but both did well.

Another famous late-minute change came in 1971 when CBS announced it was swapping time slots for newcomer All in the Family and the fading My Three Sons – the former to Saturday nights, the latter to Monday nights opposite Monday Night Football. And we all know how the move turned out for All in The Family.