For something like Chuck reruns over the summer could theoretically help but NBC in particular seems very keen to move into year round programming, which isn’t a bad thing at all but it cuts down on the available space for rerunning shows over the summer. Having said that through NBCU there’s a huge platform of channels open to NBC to air a lot of these shows.

I’d be interested to see how Life reruns would do on USA for example or Chuck repeats on Sci-Fi although Chuck probably isn’t possible given that it’s a WB show. But I think with the shows they own and like trying to find somewhere to rerun them and maybe find an audience isn’t a horrible idea but that’s primarily the fan (particularly of Life) within me speaking more than anything practical though.

Our analysis is always open to debate, we do our best to make sure that our facts are not.

They are not even remotely close.

And while “harshness” is in the eye of the beholder, KN’s numbers have been much worse, so it’s fair to characterize them as being much worse!

Its also worth mentioning that comparing the show to Chuck isn’t generally speaking a sign of strength. Chuck’s future is far from secure at this point.

Yes there most certainly is. Networks are not run on a rule of “fairness.”

With only 4 episodes left this year, you’re right that it’d be stupid to move it. For next year, though, I still say it has a better chance of picking up viewers on Wednesdays. It won’t beat whatever Fox puts there (whether it’s Lie to Me or House), but it can take out CBS’ comedies, since I doubt now CBS will break up the Monday 3 + whatever new one they have. I wouldn’t think ABC will move Dancing With the Injured…I mean, Stars at any point because there’s no reason to move when you’re on top. Not sure how it will, but it may even help Heroes pick up a few people, since you’d might have a small amount of crossover with people who will turn to Lost at 10PM. Next year, ABC has to reprogram the first two hours of the night.

The folks on Top Chef and Iron Chef are people with real talent. The trainwrecks on Hell’s Kitchen are all ego and barely there skills. The folks on Chopping Block were very boring and not that great of chef’s. None of them belonged in a real kitchen. And their conflicts weren’t trainwreck enough. None of the couples chosen on this show were primetime players.

If you’re going to cast a show like Chopping Block, I’d have couples that had run restaurants before that had received a little bit of buzz, but for odd reasons had failed. People who want this second chance at the ring. And they aren’t going to let another moron ruin their chance to get back in the game. But instead we get a bunch of newbies who don’t have what it takes to run a hotdog cart.

Chopping Block shows exactly what’s wrong with NBC – they copy the outer edge without figuring what the soul of a project it. Fire Zucker.

But, in case he doesn’t, here’s what I would do if I were NBC (you know, other than not put Leno on at 10.) I would plan several very cheap summer reality shows. At least five of them. Probably much more than five. This way they can be brought in to fill time. But they have to be even cheaper than Leno, otherwise they serve no purpose, since they almost definitely will not get better ratings than Leno.

In the unlikely event that Leno does such bad numbers that NBC opt to pull him then I’m not sure how NBC would plug the schedule. It seems unlikely that they’d be able to get away with that many repeats every week so they’d really only have a few options

1 – Bring forward the debut of midseason shows, which creates problems come midseason.

2 – Fill the five hours with repeats, which as I said I don’t think they can do.

3 – Develop something incredibly quickly to fill the hole or at least some of the holes. In theory they can sit on a couple of quick turn around reality concepts in the event Leno bombs.

4 – Slot some of the NBCU cable shows into the slot. Burn Notice, Monk, Pysch, In Plain Sight and Criminal Intent from USA could all slot easily into the 10PM slot (or earlier if NBC wants to play with the schedule). Or if they’re really desperate they could strip Battlestar Galactica repeats across the week for the rest of the season.

But as I said I think the chances of them pulling Leno are slim although I think its much more likely they’d reduce the number of days he was on. It seems likely that Leno will do well on Thursday nights with the comedy block lead-in and he’ll likely do comparatively well on Friday’s so what NBC might do is pull him Monday-Wednesday and keep him on the air Thursday and Friday, which leaves them with fewer hols to plug.

As for the “just run reruns”, unless Leno is a complete ratings catastrophy and gets below the 1.4 demo he averaged for the Tonight Show last fall, it’s unlikely that reruns are going to beat that average by much for M-F at 10pm. The two L&O reruns in 2009 did a 1.6 and a 1.7, but my guess is they couldn’t sustain those numbers going 5 nights a week.

One also wonders what took NBC so long to put Craig Plestis on the chopping block. Most of us figured out years ago that he couldn’t develop a reality show unless the other networks had already developed it first.

I think NBC was really set on trying this year to get the show to break out. I mean at least they gave it the Super Bowl promotion they did, and it did get good ratings for that episode. I think if the show can hold its own the rest of the season, NBC may (as Silverman seemed to indicate in that article, saying he knew the schedule changes hurt the show) be willing to give another season a shot.