CBS Has Glaring Hole in Its Primetime Schedule
CBS may have a full lineup at the ready this season, but ever since Survivor's season premiere in March, it's had a hole in the schedule. Wednesdays on the network belong to the long-running competition series as well as the freshman action series True Lies. However, with both shows only running for an hour each episode, that leaves an hour empty.
Instead of bringing on another new series or keeping Survivor at two hours, CBS has instead been airing repeats of FBI and only FBI in the 9 p.m. ET slot. Not only that, but it's usually just a random episode of the cop procedural and not even a repeat of that week's new episode. It doesn't seem like the network will be stopping this anytime soon, at least not until the summer lineup. There's no telling why they decided to rerun FBI when they could have switched some things on the schedule, but it can't hurt with ratings for the Dick Wolf series.
Since all three FBIs are renewed through next season, this brings up the question of why CBS wouldn't choose to rerun a show that maybe needs more support, like a freshman series, or even show the previous week's True Lies before the new episode. It's unclear what drew the network to do this, but so far, it doesn't seem to be doing all that bad.
With the future of True Lies unknown, pairing it with two successful series, even if one's a rerun, definitely helps with viewers. Plus, it is nice to see FBI airing on a different day that isn't on the same night as the other two FBI series. Perhaps CBS is also testing the waters to see how the series could do on its own, maybe to separate the three next seasons like the NCIS series. Either way, while it's weird that the empty hour between Survivor and True Lies is an FBI rerun, there are worse things that could be showing.
It should be interesting to see if this changes for the summer lineup or if another CBS series gets the FBI treatment. As of now, the network still has to make some announcements regarding renewals and cancellations, including some major series, and likely when that happens, they will also announce what the next few months will look like. Fingers crossed that they fill up their schedule more than it is now, and it won't have such a gaping hole.