On Thursday nights, CBS used to air a couple of comedies followed by dramas in the 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET slots. This year, the network has expanded its Thursday schedule into a 2-hour comedy block in order to dominate the world and crush the hopes of NBC’s mostly new Thursday programming schedule. On Friday, CBS announced it has ordered the back 9 episodes for two Thursday night sitcoms, The Millers and The Crazy Ones as well as for Monday’s sitcom, Mom.
While Fox has jumped the gun and has gone ahead and ordered a second season of its new drama Sleepy Hollow, CBS is a little more conservative with its schedule and hasn’t given out any actual renewals, yet. However, earning a back nine order is promising, as it means a show is not on the cusp of immediate cancellation. In fact, CBS’ big press release concerning The Millers and The Crazy Ones is not particularly shocking, considering both of those shows have crushed in the ratings.
Thursday night’s episode of The Millers proved that the show is continuing to hold its premiere audience. Last night’s episode retained 97% of the audience that showed up for its premiere, bringing in 12.4 million total viewers. The Crazy Ones is doing even better. CBS notes that it is the best freshman comedy on television, pulling in 13.7 million total viewers. The show also scored a super high 3.6 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic.
Mom’s back full season order is a bit more of a surprise. The Chuck Lorre comedy hasn’t done as well as some of Lorre’s other CBS endeavors. The Monday night comedy airs up against popular programming ( like NBC’s The Voice) early in the week, and doesn’t crush when compared to CBS’ Thursday night outings, only bringing in 7.98 million total viewers. All in all, that’s still apparently solid enough to earn a slew of extra episodes. Maybe CBS is just trying to stay on Lorre’s sweet side.
Whatever the case, all three of these comedies are doing better than some of network TV’s other new comedy fodder. Earlier this month, CBS pulled another of its new comedies, We Are Men, from the schedule and ended up replacing the cut episodes with reruns of The Big Bang Theory, which have obviously done well in the slot. Today, NBC also dropped one of its comedies, cutting Welcome to the Family, although that network tried to brighten the bad news by announcing Community’s premiere date.
Fans of The Millers, The Crazy Ones, and Mom should be extremely happy that those sitcoms are doing well and have avoided the cancellation axe thus far. Now, we can just hope the ratings will remain high throughout the rest of the season so the programs will return to CBS for Season 2, as well.
