It sounds like CBS is realizing their fall schedule isn't going to work

While other networks decided to batten down the hatches and set autumn schedules that are immune from the ongoing writers strike, CBS operated with reckless optimism and sent forth a schedule stuffed with scripted series. As the Writers Guild of America continues to stand on the picket line, however, the network has to face reality. You need writers for those shows, and until the writers get a deal they find fair, they’re not coming back to work.

“We wanted to build our schedule for when the world goes back to normal,” CBS President and CEO George Cheeks said during the Banff World Media Festival (per Deadline). “Once we had done that, once we locked it in, we spent a lot of time focusing on what it’s going to look like.”

What it’s going to look like is not what they said it would look like, essentially. The way things are going, there’s not going to be any new Ghosts or Young Sheldon or S.W.A.T. or Kathy Bates as Matlock. Instead, it’ll be “reality-heavy,” Cheeks conceded, with traditionally summertime series like Big Brother shifting to the fall; Survivor and The Amazing Race will get “supersized”; The Price Is Right and Let’s Make A Deal will get primetime specials. The network has “four or five reality shows that we’re getting ready” and “we might do more,” Cheeks threatened.

The traditional broadcast networks get the shortest end of the stick in the writers strike, but it’s the streamers that have driven changes to the typical TV writer contract, and those changes are among the WGA’s most prominent complaints. But given the media landscape wherein a handful of companies own all the content outlets, the networks are inextricably bound up with the streaming services’ fortunes.

As such, CBS’ other autumn strategy will be to air Paramount+ originals that have already gone up on streaming, including one that “won’t surprise you because it may have been on CBS before.” (That indicates either Evil or SEAL Team, both of which got bumped from broadcast to streaming.)

“We’re spending a lot of time looking at research and figuring out which are the ones that A, have the best shot keeping our audience engaged but also that could really help drive awareness,” said Cheeks.

As one would make lemonade out of lemons, CBS will turn a historic strike into a streaming service marketing opportunity. Because sure, the network’s “creative partners” may be facing “serious challenges,” Cheeks acknowledged, but “media companies in general are facing significant challenges” too. Won’t anyone think of the poor companies at a time like this?