NBC’s fall lineup no longer objects to comedy on Thursdays

By Erik Adams | May 16, 2016 | 3:41pm

Aux Features TV

Today, May 16, marks the beginning of broadcast television upfront presentations, an annual ritual in which NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, The CW, and their associated corporate cousins unveil their new primetime lineups to prospective advertisers, giving those businesses the chance to get in on the ground floor of subsidizing programs that might not live through the winter. (The whole arrangement is explained quite succinctly here.) As the first network to present, NBC released its fall schedule to the press over the weekend, making sure survivors of the preceding days’ broadcast bloodbath wouldn’t go more than 48 hours without hearing phrases like “the No. 1 new show in 18 to 49.”

The show in question, Blindspot, will move to Wednesdays this fall, bestowing its spot in The Voice’s ratings-making wake to sci-fi freshman series Timeless. Due to the continued popularity of tattooed amnesiacs, spinning chairs, James Spader’s hat, Dick Wolf’s ever-expanding Chicago empire, and professional American football, the lineup projects an air of stability that just might make you forget that Superstore and The Good Place are sitting where Heroes Reborn went last year. But it’ll also make you think that NBC is once more open to the idea of peacocking comedy on Thursday nights, with the likes of the Tina Fey-and-Robert-Carlock-produced Great News and the DC-adjacent workplace sitcom Powerless on hold for midseason. Or earlier: As the old network tagline goes, “Depends on what fails.”