8 Comments on “Second Chance is moving to Friday night!”
Thanks for the update! Do we know why they moved it? I think Friday will be harder. Blue Bloods is running at the same time which is a crime show with good ratings.
How you view this move depends on if you’re a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of person.
The more optimistic take-away is that struggling shows live a little longer on Friday nights, when fewer people watch television and ratings expectations are lower. Second Chance is being paired with the also struggling Sleepy Hollow, another paranormal-tinged drama which might draw a similar audience.
The truth is that Second Chance couldn’t maintain the very high ratings standards that come with the prime Wednesday time slot. Any show that follows American Idol is expected to hold a very high percentage of that audience, especially since the other occupier of that same time slot, Empire, is the highest rated scripted show in all of television. Fox doesn’t want to lose those numbers while Empire is on winter hiatus. Second Chance was losing over half of the Idol audience.
The Wednesday night competition is also a little tougher–Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, and Modern Family/Blackish is a triple threat, each of which garners consistently strong numbers for their respective networks (this week’s Modern Family was a repeat, yet still out-performed SC by a long shot). SC’s Friday night competition will be Shark Tank, Hawaii 5-0, and Dateline, all of which are currently pulling numbers higher than Second Chance but might be just a little softer, easier to break.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the move to Fridays is a good one, especially with the Sleepy Hollow pair-up, which makes more sense thematically than airing back-to-back with a musical competition show, and I wonder why Fox didn’t consider that the better option from the start.
It does make more sense to pair it up with Sleepy Hollow, though I think SH’s problem is that it wasn’t doing well, so it won’t be a strong lead-in.
I’m not super happy with the change to Fridays cause I usually go out on Fridays and not always back at 8pm…
But on the other hand, if that means having at least the entire season on air, then good. Though it doesn’t bode well for renewal.
The fact that Sleepy Hollow is struggling and is likely to be canceled is evidence of the more cynical view that Friday night is a TV graveyard, where low performing shows go to quietly and unobtrusively die. CBS has been the most consistent performer on Friday nights for several years with Blue Bloods, and with Numb3rs before that (I’m not sure how long Hawaii 5-0 has aired on Friday nights). ABC’s Dateline has hung around on Friday night for years with mediocre ratings. I think NBC changes its Friday line-up every fall, if not more often. Fox programming has never performed well on Friday nights, at least not that I can remember, so if SC can out-perform past Fox programming in the Friday timeslot, the network might keep it around. SC’s slim hopes of renewal probably depends mostly on how much programming Fox has in development that the network believes could perform better.
But, yeah–at this point, I just hope Fox airs all the episodes.
The Almost Human precedent worries me… That show was just starting to show its full potential by widening its horizon, and I was just starting to *really* enjoy it, and the pulled the plug…
Okay, thank you both for the explanation. I didn’t know that Wednesday is a prime spot.
I hope Second Chance’s ratings increase. Though, I’m not a complete fan of it I wish Tim success with his new show.
That’s worrying. I wish networks would give shows a decent chance to develop an audience. This show has so much potential, I would hate for it to disappear.
Sometimes they do, especially if the series in question has generated critical buzz (which SC has not). But this is a business, time is money, blah, blah, blah.
The indicators are not good–for all the rationalizing about the name changes and the shortened episode order, the time slot change to Friday could be strike 3. But who knows–if SC can hold its own for the next few weeks, maybe Fox will surprise us.
Thanks for the update! Do we know why they moved it? I think Friday will be harder. Blue Bloods is running at the same time which is a crime show with good ratings.
How you view this move depends on if you’re a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of person.
The more optimistic take-away is that struggling shows live a little longer on Friday nights, when fewer people watch television and ratings expectations are lower. Second Chance is being paired with the also struggling Sleepy Hollow, another paranormal-tinged drama which might draw a similar audience.
The truth is that Second Chance couldn’t maintain the very high ratings standards that come with the prime Wednesday time slot. Any show that follows American Idol is expected to hold a very high percentage of that audience, especially since the other occupier of that same time slot, Empire, is the highest rated scripted show in all of television. Fox doesn’t want to lose those numbers while Empire is on winter hiatus. Second Chance was losing over half of the Idol audience.
The Wednesday night competition is also a little tougher–Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, and Modern Family/Blackish is a triple threat, each of which garners consistently strong numbers for their respective networks (this week’s Modern Family was a repeat, yet still out-performed SC by a long shot). SC’s Friday night competition will be Shark Tank, Hawaii 5-0, and Dateline, all of which are currently pulling numbers higher than Second Chance but might be just a little softer, easier to break.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the move to Fridays is a good one, especially with the Sleepy Hollow pair-up, which makes more sense thematically than airing back-to-back with a musical competition show, and I wonder why Fox didn’t consider that the better option from the start.
It does make more sense to pair it up with Sleepy Hollow, though I think SH’s problem is that it wasn’t doing well, so it won’t be a strong lead-in.
I’m not super happy with the change to Fridays cause I usually go out on Fridays and not always back at 8pm…
But on the other hand, if that means having at least the entire season on air, then good. Though it doesn’t bode well for renewal.
The fact that Sleepy Hollow is struggling and is likely to be canceled is evidence of the more cynical view that Friday night is a TV graveyard, where low performing shows go to quietly and unobtrusively die. CBS has been the most consistent performer on Friday nights for several years with Blue Bloods, and with Numb3rs before that (I’m not sure how long Hawaii 5-0 has aired on Friday nights). ABC’s Dateline has hung around on Friday night for years with mediocre ratings. I think NBC changes its Friday line-up every fall, if not more often. Fox programming has never performed well on Friday nights, at least not that I can remember, so if SC can out-perform past Fox programming in the Friday timeslot, the network might keep it around. SC’s slim hopes of renewal probably depends mostly on how much programming Fox has in development that the network believes could perform better.
But, yeah–at this point, I just hope Fox airs all the episodes.
The Almost Human precedent worries me… That show was just starting to show its full potential by widening its horizon, and I was just starting to *really* enjoy it, and the pulled the plug…
Okay, thank you both for the explanation. I didn’t know that Wednesday is a prime spot.
I hope Second Chance’s ratings increase. Though, I’m not a complete fan of it I wish Tim success with his new show.
That’s worrying. I wish networks would give shows a decent chance to develop an audience. This show has so much potential, I would hate for it to disappear.
Sometimes they do, especially if the series in question has generated critical buzz (which SC has not). But this is a business, time is money, blah, blah, blah.
The indicators are not good–for all the rationalizing about the name changes and the shortened episode order, the time slot change to Friday could be strike 3. But who knows–if SC can hold its own for the next few weeks, maybe Fox will surprise us.