Schedules Plus, NBC Thursday

Schedules Plus is another innovative application of the historical ratings statistic A18-49+. I hope this will be the ultimate resource for comparing the evolution of shows, networks and timeslots over time, complete with ratings numbers that make a fair adjustment for the collective decline. Right now this only includes programs aired in the fall. Much more about the process that went into this at the bottom.

NBC Thursday is one of the uglier stories that Schedules Plus has to tell: an epic descent from literally top to bottom. This night was TV's strongest three-hour weeknight lineup in 2003-04 and its weakest in 2012-13 and 2013-14. NBC managed to stop the bleeding in a couple season (the final season of ER and the peak season of The Office), but the general trend is down and fast.

NBC Thursday

	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2001-02	Friends	Inside Schwartz	Will and Grace	Just Shoot Me	ER		248
	303	178	224	191	297
	240		207
2002-03	Friends	Scrubs	Will and Grace	Good Morning, Miami	ER		219
	261	183	222	153	247
	222		188
2003-04	Friends	Scrubs	Will and Grace	Coupling	ER		219
	300	166	192	154	250
	233		173
2004-05	Joey	Will and Grace	The Apprentice Fall		ER		169
	118	120	185		202
	119
2005-06	Joey	Will and Grace	The Apprentice Fall		ER		119
	75	94	120		152
	85
2006-07	My Name is Earl	The Office	Deal or No Deal		ER		110
	101	110	93		131
	106
2007-08	My Name is Earl	30 Rock	The Office	Scrubs	ER		103
	95	86	137	94	104
	90		115
2008-09	My Name is Earl	Kath and Kim	The Office	30 Rock	ER		106
	82	73	142	110	116
	77		126
2009-10	Community	Parks and Recreation	The Office	30 Rock	The Jay Leno Show		84
	78	74	141	99	56
	76		120
2010-11	Community	30 Rock	The Office	Outsourced	The Apprentice		87
	73	89	147	106	53
	81		126
2011-12	Community	Parks and Recreation	The Office	Whitney	Prime Suspect		77
	65	78	117	93	54
	71		105
2012-13	30 Rock	Up All Night	The Office	Parks and Recreation	Rock Center		66
	66	59	100	77	48
	62		88
2013-14	Parks and Recreation	Welcome to the Family	Sean Saves the World	The Michael J. Fox Show	Parenthood		60
	62	50	54	62	67
	56		58
2014-15	The Biggest Loser		Bad Judge	A to Z	Parenthood		67
	74		56	45	77
			50
Avg	114		125		132		124

2014-15 Update: The narrative at the 2014 upfront was that NBC was phoning it in on Thursday in the fall, and their real push would come when The Blacklist arrived in February. But in the end, the midseason lineup was actually no better than the fall one. Yes, even a disappointingly diminished The Blacklist (averaged a 100 for Thursday episodes) was a huge improvement, but it was surrounded by megabombs in The Slap (45) and Allegiance (51). NBC will take another stab at surrounding The Blacklist with dramas, hoping there is still some interest to be mined from late-aughts genre drama Heroes with a limited series revival at 8/7c. 

Notable midseason replacements:

• I went with NBC's very first 2003-04 lineup, but Coupling got pulled after four weeks. Immediately after that, the network moved Scrubs to 9:30 and aired Friends repeats and a bunch of brief tryouts at 8:30 over the rest of the fall. Then in the winter, Will & Grace went to 8:30 and NBC launched the breakthrough first season of The Apprentice (239) in the 9/8c hour, a show so big that it kept NBC from airing two Thursday comedy hours for the next three years.
• They returned to two-hour comedy in 2006-07, airing Scrubs (82) and 30 Rock (70) in the 9:00 hour starting in November.
• Technically, the strongest show NBC has aired at 10/9c since ER was 30 Rock, which averaged an 86 in a winter/spring run in the 10:00 hour during the 2010-11 season. At 10:30 was Outsourced (which dropped to a 63 in that slot).
• Parks and Recreation aired its short first season at the end of 2008-09 (79) and was held for midseason again in 2010-11, when it replaced Outsourced at 9:30 (95).

See here for more explanations/disclaimers about Schedules Plus.