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FOX had announced last year that rather than air GLEE repeats in the space between its original February episodes and the new ones that will close out the season, it would instead air a 2-hour block of sit-coms. That’s still the plan, but today they shuffled just what those comedies will be and when they’ll air.Starting on March 6, Tuesdays will start with new episodes of RAISING HOPE (instead of New Girl reruns, as originally scheduled), facing off against Last Man Standing (as well as NCIS and Biggest Loser, which are less direct competition). Then I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER, which had been scheduled to air after 90-minute American Idol episodes on Wednesdays, will instead take the 8:30PM slot and compete with Cougar Town. NEW GIRL will of course keep its usual 9PM slot, and at 9:30PM BREAKING IN, the Christian Slater slow that was cancelled and then un-cancelled last Spring, will try to capitalize on its newly strong lead-in (it was originally supposed to have the 8:30PM slot).
At first glance, this is clearly good news for Breaking In, which gets an original New Girl rather than a repeat as its lead-in. It’s bad news for Raising Hope, which loses its sheltered 9:30 slot and has to open the evening against Tim Allen. Since Hope will be Teenage Daughter‘s lead-in rather than American Idol, it’s also bad for Teenage, and seemingly unnecessary in terms of Tuesday results, since original Teenage episodes probably won’t do a number much different than New Girl repeats would have. The one piece of this puzzle that FOX hasn’t yet announced is what will now be airing at 9:30PM on Wednesdays, and it’ll be interesting to see if Idol is extended for 2 hours on that night–if so, it may suggest that FOX needed this change to create some extra Idol advertising inventory, in order to make up for the shortfall in this season’s ratings and revenues.
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