ONTD

Good news, "Community" fans: your show may not have to air on Fridays, after all.

Bad news, "Community" fans: your show won't be returning 11 days from now.

NBC has decided to hold the October 19 premieres of both "Community" and "Whitney." I'm told the goal is to give both of them more proper support, but it's unclear if that means keeping them on Fridays but delaying them long enough to do a better marketing campaign, or if one or both of the shows will be sent in to replace a sitcom that's struggling earlier in the week (like, for instance, "Up All Night").

NBC has had successes with its Monday and Tuesday lineups, thanks to "The Voice" and the shows that immediately follow it, but the Wednesday and Thursday lineups have been a mess. "Community" or "Whitney" could be sent there, or NBC may just not have the resources to launch a fourth sitcom bloc right now, and the two will be paired together later in the season.

Sing it with me: Troy and Abed on hiaaaaaaatus!


So Community Isn't Moving to Fridays After All

Vulture readers won't be surprised by this news: As we predicted last month, NBC has decided to delay (and possibly reverse) its decision to move Community and Whitney to Fridays. Both shows had been set to move to the night on Oct. 19. But the network now confirms that won't happen. Officially, NBC isn't discussing the reason behind the move or announcing when either show will finally return. But insiders say it simply came down to marketing resources: The Peacock has been so busy hyping its other new shows (including successes such as Revolution and Go On), it hasn't had time to pump the Friday comedies. Debuting the shows on the night now would basically be giving up on them completely. Of course, there were many who thought that's exactly why NBC was shifting the shows to Fridays in the first place. But now that the fall season is underway, the Peacock's programmers have more intel and came to the conclusion that it made sense to wait. So what happens next?

We're just spitballing here, but it seems possible NBC might decide to see how Animal Practice and Up All Night do in the next few weeks. The former show has flatline on Wednesdays, and if that continues, NBC might be smart to replace it with Whitney, thus creating a multi-cam comedy block on Wednesdays. Likewise, though Up All Night has done OK (relative to the also-struggling 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, that is), NBC might choose to…yes, bring Community back to Thursday nights after all, where it might prove a better fit with either Parks or 30 Rock. Don't get too excited: This is just a theory, based partially in common sense and partially in...positive thinking. Because, let's face it, it's also possible that NBC just gives up and decides to keep the shows on Friday, but waits until later in the year when it can give them a tad more promotion. We don't know. But we're hoping that tonight's move might actually end up meaning good things for Community (and Whitney).


ETA: NBC's Statement: "Given the success we’ve had for the past four weeks -- including winning the first week of the season in A18-49 -- we’ve decided to continue to concentrate our promotional strength on our new NBC shows that are scheduled Monday through Wednesday and have therefore decided to hold Community and Whitney from their previously announced premieres of October 19th. Without having to launch these comedies on Friday at this time, we can keep our promotion focused on earlier in the week -- plus we will have both comedies in our back pocket if we need to make any schedule changes on those nights. When we have a better idea of viewing patterns in the next few weeks, we will announce new season premieres of Whitney and Community."

1 2 3


I can't help but take this as a bad sign!