- AP
The most prominent addition to CBS’s primetime schedule this year isn’t a TV series or awards show. It’s NFL football.
The network will air seven NFL games on Thursday nights- plus one on Saturday – after a deal with the league that moves some contests over from NFL Network. That caused CBS to rearrange its Thursday lineup.
CEO Leslie Moonves told reporters at a breakfast Wednesday morning, ahead of the network’s upfront presentation for advertisers Wednesday afternoon, that adding football “made this the most interesting scheduling season in a long time,” requiring some longstanding shows to be moved around to make way.
For example, “The Big Bang Theory,” the No. 1 comedy on television, will move to Monday for the first part of the season to make room for football, and will later return to its normal Thursday slot.
CBS’s head of scheduling, Kelly Kahl, said football “is going to greatly enhance our programming lineup – but it isn’t going to define us.”
If it wasn’t clear already how important sports telecasts are to the major networks, witness CBS’s first quarter results: the absence of the Super Bowl and NCAA “Final Four” broadcasts — which CBS had last year — caused revenue to slide.
In part because of the lack of those sports events CBS’s viewership among adults 18 to 49 is set to fall 17% in the season ending this month. CBS said Wednesday it would have won the 18 to 49 race (which NBC won) if all sports telecasts were excluded, including NBC’s Olympics and Sunday Night Football.
CBS unveiled eight new series for the coming year, including “Scorpion,” a drama the network says is inspired by “the true story of an eccentric genius and his team of brilliant misfits working to protect the U.S. from high-tech threats.”
There is also a psychological thriller, “Stalker,” about detectives investigating stalking incidents. ”Stalking is on the rise, with the increase in social media,” said Nina Tassler, CBS’s head of entertainment.
In comedy, CBS has high hopes for “The McCarthys,” which focuses on a “sports-crazed Boston family” and will follow the last season of “Two and a Half Men” on Thursdays.”
CBS did not pick up “How I Met Your Dad,” a spinoff of the just-completed popular series “How I Met Your Mother.”
“There were elements of the pilot (first episode) that didn’t work out,” Ms. Tassler said.
Mr. Moonves said he welcomed stepped up competition in the TV industry as online video players come out with their own original programming. “Welcome to the game,” he said. “Not so easy, but welcome.” He said for every show like Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “there are some misses.”
Ms. Tassler, noting the company’s stepped-up investments in summer dramas “Under the Dome” and “Extant,” said CBS is retiring the phrase “mid season” as it moves with other networks like Fox to spread out high profile show launches all year. “We roll out our big shows all year long,” she said.
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