TV GUIDE: Ask Matt: Community, Mentalist, NFL Overruns, Cancellations and More
May 21, 2012
by Matt Roush
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... Question: Is CBS giving up on The Mentalist? I just read where they are putting it in the "death spot" of Sunday nights at 10 pm/ET. This is where Cold Case and most recently CSI: Miami met their ends. The problem, of course, is football, which constantly throws off the time of the show. Due to the [late] game, the show seldom starts at 10, and sometimes it gets so late that they don't even show it. I thought The Mentalist was a pretty big hit. Why are they doing this? — Larry
Matt Roush: No explanation will ever satisfy the fan of whatever show is unlucky enough to draw the last-show-on-Sunday card on CBS. But the network has two goals in a move like this: to strengthen Sundays by putting a still robust hit in this competitive time period — and CBS knows the pitfalls of the football overruns (in Eastern and Central time periods) and won't punish The Mentalist for it. The second and possibly more important goal is to continue to refresh the lucrative Thursday lineup so it doesn't grow stale. They did an excellent job this season by moving a revitalized CSI to Wednesdays, opening up Thursday's anchor slot to the distinctive and addictive Person of Interest. Now they're adding Elementary, an intriguing twist on the Sherlock Holmes franchise (though not exactly new to those hooked on PBS' Sherlock), in place of The Mentalist, hoping for increased buzz on a night that will likely be strengthened already by re-teaming The Big Bang Theory with Two and a Half Men. These aggressive moves make sense, at least strategically. As for The Mentalist, it's heading into its fifth season from a position of strength, and the network believes (probably rightly) that its audience will follow it anywhere, even if it means putting up with those aggravating delays. This is not an immediate death sentence for The Mentalist, which likely has another two or three seasons minimum before CBS begins weighing the cost and return factor (as it did with Cold Case, Without a Trace and most recently Miami) and deciding when to retire it. But not quite yet...
It breaks my heart to see 'The Mentalist' move to Sunday Night at 10 PM knowing it will be up against NBC's Sunday Night Football. True I will follow 'The Mentalist' anywhere but I fear that many on the east and central coast won't bother to stay up way past 10 PM to view the series. This will definitely hurt the prime 18-49 age group ratings and unfortunately they are the only viewers the advertisers care about. Sad day for the best drama series on television.
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