There’s good news for Kitchen Nightmares fans and bad news for Touch lovers. This morning, Fox announced it has plans to bump Touch from its October 26 premiere date to midseason, in order to make room for Gordon Ramsay’s popular show, which follows the man as he attempts to save a struggling business. It’s an interesting move for the network and one that will definitely help fans on one side of the coin and irritate fans on the other.
Fox actually put themselves in this impossible situation a couple of weeks ago. Towards the end of September, Kitchen Nightmares was knocked off of Fox’s schedule until some unknown and uncertain future date in an effort to push a few of The X Factor re-runs. At the time, the bump was annoying for Kitchen Nightmares fans who expected the premiere last month. As irritating as yet another schedule change is, this one probably makes the most sense.
Kitchen Nightmares will now premiere its fifth season on October 26 at 9 p.m. ET. To make this work, Season 2 of Touch will be bumped to a January timeslot. While I don’t necessarily think it is fair Kitchen Nightmares' audience is beating Touch’s audience in this equation, since Touch did get a midseason premiere last year, the show's midseason entrance into the schedule shouldn’t throw audiences off all that much. What may throw Season 2 off a little more is the show’s setting and location, which is moving from New York to sunny Los Angeles. On the flipside, as happy as I am that Kitchen Nightmares is getting back on track, Touch--by far--has the more intriguing season planned. We’ll keep you posted when the Kiefer Southerland starring series gets an official premiere date and time.
