ABC moves GA to Thursdays 9PM

ABC Shakes Up Schedule With 'Anatomy' Move
While 'Desperate Housewives' stays in place, 'Grey's Anatomy' packs up for Thursday by Daniel Fienberg

Will Meredith go home with McDreamy or with Finn the Sensitive Vet? In order to find out the answer, fans will have to follow the popular medical melodrama to a new night.

In a move that had long been speculated on, but still caused quite a stir, ABC announced its schedule for next fall on Tuesday morning, a new lineup in which "Anatomy" was shifted from its cushy Sunday evening home behind "Desperate Housewives" to the battleground on Thursdays at 9 p.m. in a slot already occupied by a little procedural called "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

"The biggest thing coming into this year, probably as a consideration, was whether or not to move 'Grey's' and I think the decision to move 'Grey's' was really based on two things: One, being able to execute the strategy to build 'Grey's' into the hit that we did and two the strength of our development," says ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson. "The good thing was that it would open up a number of launching pads, the challenge of that was that you had to fill those launching pads."

It helped ABC's decision-making process that since landing the coveted post-Super Bowl airing, "Grey's Anatomy" has routinely topped "Desperate Housewives" in the network's coveted demographic of adults 18-49. McPherson figures that between critical acclaim and a devoted audience, "Anatomy" won't have any difficulties holding its own in the competitive berth, which now also includes NBC's heavily hyped new Aaron Sorkin drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

"I think that if anybody has seen the show lately, if you saw it last night, I think there's certainly not a better show on television," says McPherson (who acknowledged the possibility that other equally fine shows might exist). "We feel that it's a show that deserves a 9:00 time period and it deserves to be on a mantle of the greatest shows on television. We feel that Thursday night is a fantastic time for it. There's been a lot of history of big shows going up against each other and there's plenty of room for both."

Two new dramas will be the obvious beneficiaries. The J.J. Abrams-produced drama "Six Degrees" will air post-"Anatomy" on Thursdays ("It's a show about a new island with three million survivors and that's Manhattan," says McPherson).

"I don't feel it's going to alienate anybody," McPherson predicts. "I think those are different shows -- I developed 'CSI.' It's a great show. It's a very different show than 'Grey's.' I think the two-hour block of 'Grey's' and 'Six Degrees' also for us is incredibly strong and makes for a great night and with the comedies leading into it, it really establishes another strong place for it on the schedule."

And replacing "Anatomy" on Sundays will be the ensemble "Brothers & Sisters," featuring Calista Flockhart. McPherson says that the network never considered moving "Desperate Housewives" and he insists that despite some early complaints that the campy soap had lost some momentum in its second season, the show was still strong.

"I applaud those guys, because I think at the beginning of the year, they stumbled a little bit after the kind of huge, phenomenal first year and really got their bearings again and readjusted and the creative has never been better," raves McPherson.
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Dude. Thursdays?! I swear... ABC and me in a sword fight. They're going dowwwwwwnnnn... :angry: First... Life As We Know It... which could have gone far if it'd only been on some other stupid day... then, Alias. Grawr for the move. And now this? Seriously. -_- I'm very dissappointed in ABC, and this, this is reason that I like the channel NBC better than ABC... I <3 ABC's shows... but the company, I'm beyond hating it. Anywho, the move to Thursday hopefully won't do anything bad to the show... also, 'My Name is Earl' and 'The Office' are both now on Tuesdays, and 'Will & Grace' is over ( (n) ), and NBC will mainly have new shows on Thursday w/ the exception of ER. So maybeee (*crosses fingers*) GA won't be hurt too much by ratings. Even if though, ABC, if they're not as incredibly moronic still, they might realize that it's simply the day that's causing the ratings drop. And NOT the show. Hmph, I hate ABC. Anywho, yeah, that was a really long rant, and now I'm going back to lurking. :smiley:

_erikini
 
it's up against csi, which will be hard, but i think it has the power to pull through. i mean, i'm obviously still going to be watching it and i'm sure there are a bunch of other people who feel the same. and it's not like a "we don't know what to do with this dying show" move; it's a "this show rocks so let's kill on thursdays" move.

m-c
 
well, apparently The OC is being moved to Wednesdays, and I think that Thursdays may become too medical...Greys, ER which are obvious medical drama's, altho different types IMO, but CSI occsionally gets medical in a different way...
 
the thing with the move is that ABC believes in this show since its been doing so great ... the ratings have been much better than their lead-in "desperate housewives" ... roughly about 24 million viewers ... if ABC can keep about half those viewers with the move to thursdays, they will be happy ... ;)

last thursday ABC did a two hour episode of Grey's with the first two episodes and both shows were # 2 in their time-slot with about 7 million viewers ... which is about 3 times the viewers ABC has been having in the past months ... so, if you look at it ... the real competition to Grey's will be CSI ... nothing else ... and can you imagine if Grey's continues to be this huge hit and overpowers CSI ... ABC will go crazy ... 🐒
 

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