A few years ago, you’d never catch a network throwing away big names like Tom Selleck, Jimmy Smits and Dana Delany into a Friday night time slot. Friday nights, after all, is where TV shows go to die. Or is it?
For decades, Friday night was the home of the hits.
No. 1 shows like Dallas, Miami Vice and The X-Files all aired on Fridays, as did The Rockford Files, Sanford & Son and JAG. The CBC drama Street Legal thrived in its Friday night slot in the early ‘90s, and Air Farce provided end-of-the-week laughs for millions of during a long run on that night.
At some point over the last 10 years, however, the broadcast networks — with the possible exception of CBS — seemed to give up on Fridays, surrendering it to cable or just accepting that many viewers choose to go out or watch a rental movie at home on that night.
Broadcasters, after all, have spent the past two decades jamming most of their hits onto Thursday nights, where a wave of new release movie ads are designed to drive viewers away from their television sets the very next night.
NBC and ABC slid newsmagazines Dateline and 20/20 into end of the week slots, looking to pick up older viewers not heading to the movies. Networks also started tossing second looks at shows that aired earlier in the week as a cheap way to fill time slots on a slow night.
CBS, however, showed there was still reason to keep the lights on on Fridays by drawing 10 million or more viewers per hour to shows like Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Numb3rs and the Canadian-produced drama Flashpoint.
Flashpoint has consistently performed well on Friday nights in Canada, with the recent season finale drawing a strong 1.8 million viewers.
As PVRs grow in popularity — allowing viewers to go out to a Friday movie and watch a saved TV show later — networks on both sides of the border have started sneaking back into the Friday race.
This is true again at CBS, where Tom Selleck headlines the new big budget crime drama Blue Bloods (also premiering this weekend on CTV). Selleck plays Frank Reagan, the heroic head of the New York police department. He’s also head of a family full of law enforcers, including sons with badges Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) and Jamie (Will Estes) and DA daughter Erin (Bridget Moynahan).
Executive producer Robin Green told critics gathered in Los Angeles this past summer that she’s glad to be on Fridays and especially happy her show will be following CSI: New York on that night.
“I believe CSI started on that night, too, so I’m a great believer (in Fridays).”
CSI did launch its long run on Fridays, but that’s because CBS had very little faith in it. It was the last show they picked up for the 2000-01 season. When it became an instant smash, they quickly moved it to Thursday nights, where it could rake in more of that lucrative movie premiere ad revenue.
Selleck still feels it doesn’t really matter what night a show airs.
“If it’s good, they’ll probably watch,” he says.
He points out that when his long-running hit Magnum, P.I. began in 1980, “Thursday nights were one of the lowest-viewing nights of the week. So that’s a good lesson for me.”
Former New Kids on the Block singer Wahlberg, now 41, says “when I was a kid, Friday was the best night to watch TV.”
NBC is looking for a foothold on Fridays with their new drama Outlaw starring Jimmy Smits. The former L.A. Law star (another series that aired on a Friday) plays a U.S. Supreme Court justice who bolts the bench to become a crusading law avenger. The series also airs in Canada on Global. Conan O’Brien is credited as one of the executive producers.
ABC, too, has Friday ambitions. Their new series Body of Proof stars Dana Delany (Desperate Housewives) as a renowned neurosurgeon who injures her hand and becomes a crusading medical examiner.
“We’re excited to be there,” says executive producer Matthew Gross, who also points out that CSI started on that night.
More important, so did Ghost Whisperer, and with that show out of production, Gross hopes to pick up viewers looking for a female-driven drama.
Some critics with long memories are comparing Body of Proof to an earlier medical examiner drama, Quincy, M.E., which starred Jack Klugman. Maybe that’s a sign — Quincy spent part of its seven-year-run on Friday nights.
Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.