Originally scheduled to start at 4:30pm Eastern, Fox has moved the start time for the baseball NLCS Game 6 telecast between the Giants & Cardinals to 7pm Eastern so that The Game will air entirely in Eastern/Central primetime (and compete against the Steelers/Bengals game, instead of primarily the Patriots/Jets game).
Because of that, the animated line up of The Cleveland Show, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy and American Dad will not be seen Sunday night.
Those episodes will presumably replace what was to be an all repeat animation Sunday later in the season with new episodes, but no word on what date that might be at this time.
I’m a little disappointed I wont be getting Bob’s Burgers this week
@Rich
Will this mean Fox will televise NFL in the late window?
Nope, NFL start times/coverage is the same. FOX is exempt from blackout rules tomorrow, though, so every market will get one of their early games.
@Samuel
First bumping X Factor for it
Right, because they wanted to do that…
There was a rain delay. They can’t play baseball in heavy rain.
Fox must be pretty delusional to think that this would do better than either of those.
The NLCS will probably draw better ratings than a night of animation repeats.
Does this mean that Fox got them to start the game later, or will the coverage of the game just be aired at a later time?
Obviously, the game is being aired live.
Also, it took no effort for FOX to get the game moved into primetime – the schedule had been set up that way for at least 8 months.
@Christina
with all of this shifting going on you’d think this was the first year the fox has ever aired mlb playoff games.
With all of the crazy fan reaction, you’d think this was the first year that FOX had ever aird MLB playoff games…
@Joe Wilson
So if it goes 7 games Fox does not show the debate?
Correct.
@alffan
Fox should consider moving the LCS to FX
FOX is moving their LCS (and newly acquired LDS) games to Speed next season (or in 2014?) and rebranding it as a general sports network.
The only MLB to remain on the FOX broadcast network is the World Series, the All-Star Game and Saturday games.
I’m also expecting them to use the new postseason alignment to get the World Series to run weekend-to-weekend again, which will limit interruptions to their normal lineup.
@Aaron
At this point, Fox should just lift its’ entire lineup and just say “We’re lifting the entire schedule so we can bring you more of our 80 billion hour Baseball coverage, see you in November” because that’s pretty much when we’re going to see the schedule return to normal.
Up until a few years ago (2007), that’s actually what FOX did. They would air ~20 primetime MLB games during October.
I think this was always part of the plan if the ACLS ended early. Otherwise, why did The Simpsons air its Halloween episode a couple of weeks ago instead of tonight?
Non-sports fans can enjoy The Amazing Race and The Good Wife on CBS tonight.
Bad move. The animated shows would have done better. Baseball is going to get buried by the NFL. It seems like way to much power for the network to decide what time the game starts.
Considering I’m probably the only person who religiously watches Family Guy/American Dad and Revenge, I’ll be fine.
Brilliant move by FOX. They have a high profile sports brand to protect, which by the way is very valuable towards promoting scripted shows. They can’t go sending the message to the public that cartoons are more important than live championship sporting events.
It 2003 and 2004 these LCS games were getting 20+ million nightly because the Cubs,Yankees,Red Sox were involved.
This is the problem with animation domination. They air 2 episodes and you have to wait a month
@Andy
It seems like way to much power for the network to decide what time the game starts.
FOX doesn’t get to decide when the game starts. When the schedule was made, they put the automatic bump into primetime if there is only one series going on (this was essentially a decision made by FOX, TBS and MLB a long time ago when the TV package was finalized).
The real power FOX has is their ability to steal the ALCS from TBS if the Yankees and BoSox are playing.
@Andy
Bad move. The animated shows would have done better.
Also, no. The NLCS will easily do better than Animation Domination repeats.
I think this will be good for ABC shows so very happy about this
The Steelers will crush the NLCS
Which means that Once upon a time will be in trouble.
Baseball provides a great demo for car and beer advertisers … of course when you schedule it against football … not so much.
Why couldn’t FOX have left the baseball game at 1:30 pm PT? It would’ve meant that although it probably would’ve delayed the start times of the cartoons, they still would’ve aired unless there was a rain delay. From now on, anytime FOX has an afternoon game, repeats should be scheduled for that night.
Any word on if GlobalTV in Canada is still going to air the episodes that were new tonight or will they just be airing repeats?
@Chris
From now on, anytime FOX has an afternoon game, repeats should be scheduled for that night.
But, what if a game gets rained out? Then they might need to bump the following night’s programming.
Maybe they should just cancel their primetime lineup to make sure that doesn’t happen!
@The Old Man
I think Fox knows that, they are probably trying to “steal” a few viewers. The game starts at 7:45pm, Fox is probably going to run the end of a Football game to try to sway viewers to stick around for baseball
I think this obviously a good move by FOX for ratings purposes, but it makes me wonder about the affiliates. It seems a little late in the week to be giving them three new hours to fill.
@K
FOX does not have a late NFL game this week. All the late afternoon games are part of the CBS doubleheader. I think the original idea was to get people to watch the NLCS after the early FOX game; now, FOX’ll promote it during and after every commercial break.