Fox announces new nights for American Idol, imminent plans to destroy your favorite show
Every year, Fox does whatever the hell it wants in the fall, putting fascinating shows on the air and then summarily canceling them before it's even October or filling entire hours with Rupert Murdoch wrestling a bear or what-have-you, confident in the knowledge that once January rolls around, American Idol will again launch the network to the top of the heap, as it does year after year after year. Idol has always been so big that the other networks mostly cower in fear of it, but last year, there were signs of life on other shores. NCIS stood up nicely to it, as did Modern Family. Without Simon Cowell, American Idol is also entering a rebuilding season, full of 100 percent more Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez and at least 25 percent more batshit insanity in the form of new "challenges" thrown at the singers by the producers.
On the other hand, Fox now has a big, spankin' hit of its own in Glee, which has been the No. 1 scripted series among 18-49-year-olds (the only people that broadcast networks care about anymore, for various reasons) in certain weeks this fall. Unfortunately, to bring back Idol in the timeslots it usually runs in would force Glee to move, something you don't do to a hit that's just starting to find out how big it can get (as the network learned the hard way, by first sending House to Mondays, then sending it to 8 p.m. a few years ago—a move the show's ratings never recovered from). Also, every time the network would offhandedly mention a potential move of Idol to Wednesdays and Thursdays in the past few years, the other networks would scream in terror. If it finally made the move this year, it could be blamed for any viewership numbers slipping.
So, of course, that is exactly what Fox is going to do, as detailed in its new schedule announced at the end of the day on the Friday before Thanksgiving, the TV equivalent of a news dump.
The network is doing this because it wants to kill your favorite show. No, really! Hear me out here!
For one thing, Fox is adding a half hour of Idol coverage to its roster for most weeks this spring, by ballooning the one-hour performance episodes out to an hour and a half (presumably to help with the overrun problems from last year). This newly expanded Idol will be followed by that new Christian Slater comedy that killed Running Wilde (which will air its series finale in December), but it will also face off directly with comedy favorite Modern Family, which weathered the Idol storm last year, but was only going up against the much less popular results show and will now be going up against the hugely popular performance show instead.
Meanwhile, over on Thursdays, if you're a fan of Community, The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries, or whatever the hell ABC scrapes off its floor to stick in the 8 p.m. hour, you may as well begin saying your prayers now, because the results show plops down directly against those other series (though the part where you find out who gets eliminated, i.e., the only reason worth watching a results show, will actually be going up against the less popular Perfect Couples on NBC and S#*! My Dad Says on CBS). And Fox moved Fringe to Fridays, which might be good news, since the show dearly wants the Blue Fairy to make it a real X-Files, and now it has The X-Files' old timeslot—but that's probably bad news, since everything Fox has put in that timeslot since The X-Files has hastily died. Granted, the show's low ratings will look impressive on a Friday night if it can hold steady, but will its audience really stay home to watch it instead of DVRing it for later?
"Benefiting" from the new schedule are Human Target and Bones, both of which will get a certain amount of exposure after Idol, something that might turn the marginally rated Target into a performer and may squeeze another few years of life out of the already dessicated Bones carcass. Fox is also prepping a handful of new series for midseason, including Breaking In, the aforementioned comedy where Christian Slater works at a security company because why the fuck not; The Chicago Code, a Shawn Ryan/Tim Minear produced series about cops doing cop-y things in some city or another (or maybe a show about how if you fuck with the Obama White House, they will have you killed because THAT'S CHICAGO-STYLE POLITICS); Mixed Signals, which is about three guys who are friends and are supposedly funny just like you and your friends; Bob's Burgers, a new animated show about a family-owned burger restaurant; and Million Dollar Money Drop, which is a game show that is really about how the last surviving American value is greed. Also, all of your other favorites will return, except for Lone Star.
Here's the schedule. All times are Eastern:
Mondays:
Jan. 10:
8 p.m.: Lie To Me (two-hour episode)
Jan. 17-Jan. 31:
8 p.m.: House
9 p.m.: Lie To Me
Feb. 7- end of season:
8 p.m.: House
9 p.m.: The Chicago Code
Tuesdays:
Jan. 4-Feb. 1:
8 p.m.: Glee repeats
9 p.m.: Million Dollar Money Drop
Feb. 8-end of season:
8 p.m.: Glee
9 p.m.: Raising Hope
9:30 p.m.: Mixed Signals
Wednesdays:
Jan. 5-Jan 12:
8 p.m.: Human Target (two-hour episodes)
Jan. 19:
8 p.m.: American Idol (two-hour premiere)
Jan. 26-Feb. 9:
8 p.m.: American Idol
9 p.m.: Human Target
Feb 16-March 30:
8 p.m.: American Idol (two-hour episodes)
Apr. 6-end of season:
8 p.m.: American Idol
9:30 p.m.: Breaking In
Thursdays:
Jan. 6-Jan. 13:
8 p.m.: Million Dollar Money Drop
9 p.m.: Bones
Jan. 20-end of season:
8 p.m.: American Idol
9 p.m.: Bones
Fridays:
Jan. 21:
8 p.m.: Kitchen Nightmares
9 p.m.: A repeat of the Kitchen Nightmares you just watched, for your enjoyment and edification
Jan. 28-end of season:
8 p.m.: Kitchen Nightmares
9 p.m.: Fringe
Saturdays:
8 p.m.: Cops
9 p.m.: America's Most Wanted
(Did you know this is the longest-running lineup in American television history? I'll bet you do now!)
Sundays:
Jan. 9-end of season:
7:30 p.m.: American Dad
8 p.m.: The Simpsons
8:30 p.m.: Bob's Burgers
9 p.m.: Family Guy
9:30 p.m.: The Cleveland Show