NBC Brings Back ‘Community’, Schedules ‘Bent’, ‘BFF’ And ‘Off Their Rockers’, Shuffles Wednesday & Thursday
NBC will make more changes to its Wednesday and Thursday lineups in the spring, when it will bring back cult favorite Community and introduce the remaining three unscheduled midseason series — comedies Bent and Best Friends Forever and the unscripted Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, which received solid sampling after the network’s Betty White birthday special last month. The addition of the three new series will result in a lot of time-slot sharing and no repeats, with NBC touting its spring schedule as featuring the highest percentage of original programs in the network’s history with only with only 13 total hours of repeat programming from Sunday to Friday through mid-May.
Community will return to its Thursday 8 PM slot March 15, ending the experiment with 30 Rock in the half-hour. 30 Rock will slide to the more-suitable 8:30-9 PM slot, bumping Parks And Recreation, which will take a break, returning to wrap its season April 19 in the post-Office 9:30 PM slot after Up All Night finishes its 24-episode original first-season run.
Single-camera romantic comedy Bent, starring Amanda Peet, is getting an unusual air pattern often reserved for burnoffs, running back-to-back episodes from 9-10 PM on Wednesdays and wrapping its freshman season in just three weeks: March 21, 28 and April 4. NBC’s other midseason comedy, BFF, will be paired with Off Their Rockers in the Wednesday 8 PM slot starting April 4, following the season finales of Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea. Rock Center With Brian Williams will move yet again, this time from 9 PM to 10 PM on Wednesday for five weeks before sliding back to 9 PM on April 11 to make room for the return of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which will finish its season with all-original episodes. “We are happy to have an unprecedented amount of original content on NBC this spring,” NBC’s Bob Greenblatt said. Bent, Best Friends Forever and Betty White’s Off Their Rockers are welcome additions to the Wednesday schedule, and we know that the loyal fans of Community will be pleased with its return to its home on Thursdays at 8 PM.”
Finally! So happy to hear Community is coming back. Such a gem.
Does NBC have any clue to what they’re doing?
Theres no better way of putting it.
POP! POP!
You, good sir, have very poor taste.
Load them bullets up Mr. Burke, because it seems you have a lot of folks that need to be put before the firing squad. Can’t build a schedule with zero consistency. Awake is doomed.
“Community” is in the best NBC tradition of groundbreaking comedy. Somewhere in the heavens Brandon Tartikoff is smiling. Congrats to the whole “Community” gang, from the talented writers and producers to the terrific actors and actresses.
You guys were missed!
There’s only one man who can save NBC from epic doom and that man is VINCE MANZE.
Another win for Jim Rash!
Community and Chuck are shows geared towards a younger demographic, the one that WILL NOT sit at a certain time and a certain place just to watch a show, no matter how much they love it.
Community is a great show with great cast and great writing, but unfortunately the outdated Nielsen rating system can’t measure it’s overall audience.
POP! POP!
If it was just about mean old Nielson, why is it that both shows are still among the lowest rated even after factoring in DVR viewers, which all the Youngs are supposed to be using these days?
DVRs? How very 90s. When you can watch TV on your PHONE, it’s really time to update the sampling methods.
The need to stop playing musical chairs with Rock Center, and just move it to a permanent home on the “nothing but old people” Friday night time slot where it belongs.