TMC
04-09-2021, 05:30 AM
https://www.primetimer.com/barnhart/thursday-night-comedy-nbc
By the early 2000s, though, you could see NBC’s interest in sitcoms (https://www.tvinsider.com/gallery/nbc-thursday-night-comedies/) waning (https://www.tvovermind.com/fall-nbc-thursday-night-lineup/). Donald Trump was given the 9 p.m. hour on Thursdays in 2004. When The Apprentice signed off for the season, America’s Got Talent signed on. NBC was still developing comedy hits, but on a lower order of magnitude. The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs were single-camera comedies that were geared to what network sales people called “key demographics,” though you and I know them as young white people.
Quirky sitcoms defined NBC for the next decade: The Office, Community, Parks And Rec. Then in 2014 (https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/showbiz/nbc-thursday-comedy/index.html), NBC miscalculated with two new Thursday comedies that bombed, leaving Thursdays laugh-free (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/05/best-nbc-thursday-comedies) for a time. But the ship righted again in 2016 when The Good Place, from Parks And Rec’s Mike Schur, was paired with Superstore, which was moved from Mondays. Now both of those are gone, with memorable finales.
Starting this week NBC is plugging the Superstore gap with the third-season premiere of Manifest (https://deadline.com/2021/02/nbc-comedy-free-thursday-all-drama-lineup-manifest-must-see-tv-brooklyn-nine-nine-1234687478/), followed by SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime, an SVU spinoff that purports to crack a mob case every seven days (subject to COVID delays). And it feels like the passing of an era. Truth be told, “Thursdays is for comedy!” is a phrase that only made sense when the prime-time schedule was the go-to container for delivering TV shows to viewers. Then DVRs let us record a show on Thursday and watch it on on Sunday. Then came Hulu, and we could stream those shows years after the fact. Now, with NBC Universal rolling out its streaming service Peacock, the time is fast approaching when the company's shows are completely unmoored from nights of the week. Never say never, but March 25, 2021, might be the day NBC’s Thursday comedy tradition ended for good.
By the early 2000s, though, you could see NBC’s interest in sitcoms (https://www.tvinsider.com/gallery/nbc-thursday-night-comedies/) waning (https://www.tvovermind.com/fall-nbc-thursday-night-lineup/). Donald Trump was given the 9 p.m. hour on Thursdays in 2004. When The Apprentice signed off for the season, America’s Got Talent signed on. NBC was still developing comedy hits, but on a lower order of magnitude. The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs were single-camera comedies that were geared to what network sales people called “key demographics,” though you and I know them as young white people.
Quirky sitcoms defined NBC for the next decade: The Office, Community, Parks And Rec. Then in 2014 (https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/showbiz/nbc-thursday-comedy/index.html), NBC miscalculated with two new Thursday comedies that bombed, leaving Thursdays laugh-free (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/05/best-nbc-thursday-comedies) for a time. But the ship righted again in 2016 when The Good Place, from Parks And Rec’s Mike Schur, was paired with Superstore, which was moved from Mondays. Now both of those are gone, with memorable finales.
Starting this week NBC is plugging the Superstore gap with the third-season premiere of Manifest (https://deadline.com/2021/02/nbc-comedy-free-thursday-all-drama-lineup-manifest-must-see-tv-brooklyn-nine-nine-1234687478/), followed by SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime, an SVU spinoff that purports to crack a mob case every seven days (subject to COVID delays). And it feels like the passing of an era. Truth be told, “Thursdays is for comedy!” is a phrase that only made sense when the prime-time schedule was the go-to container for delivering TV shows to viewers. Then DVRs let us record a show on Thursday and watch it on on Sunday. Then came Hulu, and we could stream those shows years after the fact. Now, with NBC Universal rolling out its streaming service Peacock, the time is fast approaching when the company's shows are completely unmoored from nights of the week. Never say never, but March 25, 2021, might be the day NBC’s Thursday comedy tradition ended for good.