UPFRONTS 2014: FOX's Official Fall Schedule

Here is FOX's plan!

Past Years: 2013   2012   2011

MONDAYS
8:00 GOTHAM
9:00 Sleepy Hollow (2nd Season)
Monday is becoming FOX's genre night after the success of Sleepy Hollow this past season. Sleepy Hollow was only on in the fall this year and it will return to its 9pm slot. Its lead-in won't be Bones though, it will be FOX's most anticipated new drama, Gotham. Dramas have been able to premiere well on Mondays on FOX for years (Terra Nova, Alcatraz, The Following, etc). Sometimes they can capture an audience and Gotham is the best bet at a self-starter for FOX. It can get promotion on Sundays during football and then be a good counter to comedies on CBS and talent competitions on NBC/FOX.

TUESDAYS 
8:00 UTOPIA
9:00 New Girl (4th Season)
9:30 The Mindy Project (3rd Season)

FOX's big gamble of the year is Utopia, a reality show that involves contestants basically building their own civilization. They needed a big gamble after the cancellation of The X Factor, but they aren't hitching their wagon to Utopia the way they did to Factor two years ago. They are giving it a good slot but Tuesdays are such a mess anyway right now, it's not going to be horrible for FOX if Utopia bombs. Even if it could get mid to upper 1s in the demo, that would be a major improvement. FOX is not messing with a new scripted show on Tuesday and instead keeping the New Girl/The Mindy Project pairing together for a third year. This pairing is a sinking ship but if Utopia surprises, perhaps it could help New Girl? This seems like a "what will cause the least damage elsewhere" situation with this hour.

WEDNESDAYS
8:00 Hell's Kitchen (13th Edition)
9:00 RED BAND SOCIETY

FOX had to revamp Wednesdays and they are doing so with Hell's Kitchen in the 8pm hour, a very safe but steady performer. It will be used as a lead-in into the ambitious new hospital drama Red Band Society. This could be a tough night for FOX though Hell's will help keep FOX from falling off the map. While I think Red Band Society seems interesting, I think it will have a tough go of finding an audience. American Idol is most likely to come back to this night at midseason.

THURSDAYS
8:00 Bones (10th Season)
9:00 GRACEPOINT
FOX's favorite whipping boy, Bones, is on the move again in its 10th season. It has aired every night Monday-Friday including multiple times on Thursday before. FOX maybe moved it once too much this season as it started to stumble when it came back to Mondays. Now it's heading to Thursdays where it will have to hold up against football on CBS. It is being paired with Gracepoint, one of FOX's several event series for next year. This is a 10 part series that promises answers by the end. If it's a hit, I'm sure FOX will find a new way to extend it, but this is the direction that some network dramas should be going so this has a chance if it is clearly planned and promoted with an end in mind.

FRIDAYS
8:00 Masterchef Junior (2nd Season)
9:00 UTOPIA
Friday nights are pretty safe: Masterchef Junior returns to the night for a second season and I wouldn't be surprised to see Kitchen Nightmares again at midseason as a rotating Gordon Ramsey hour. The second night of Utopia airs as well. If it bombs, FOX could always rerun episodes of Gotham or something like that.

SATURDAYS 
8:00 FOX Sports Saturday

SUNDAYS
7:00 NFL Overrun/The OT/Animated Encores
7:30 Bob's Burgers (5th Season)
8:00 The Simpsons (26th Season)
8:30 Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2nd Season)
9:00 Family Guy (12th Season)
9:30 MULANEY
One of the biggest moves of the whole FOX schedule is the dismantling of the animation block. The anchors are still there in The Simpsons and Family Guy, and Bob's Burgers will air in some 7pm hours depending on football but the wall-to-wall animation is over. FOX is instead giving two live action comedies a chance. Nestled between The Simpsons and Family Guy is Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I can see the rationale here because Brooklyn is male-centric and could grab some of the football audience. But it's also a little niche and that didn't work for Arrested Development years ago. It still feels like the best slot FOX could have given to Brooklyn to give it a chance so that shows that it's a priority for them. At 9:30pm is Mulaney, a new live action sitcom in the Seinfeld vein, The risk here is people just turning off the TV after Family Guy or switching to football, and that will definitely happen if Mulaney can't have a hard edge like Family Guy.

MIDSEASON: BACKSTROM, BORDERTOWN, EMPIRE, HIEROGLYPH, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, WAYWARD PINES, WEIRD LONERS, American Idol, The Following, Glee
FOX has a lot on deck for midseason, but it has not announced a midseason schedule like it usually does (and then strays from). Among the returning shows, American Idol will be trimmed probably to one day a week. The Following could return to Mondays but Sleepy Hollow now has 18 episodes ordered so who knows. Glee could get its order trimmed for its final season and I think it'll just get thrown somewhere unless things bottom out for FOX in the fall. The new shows could go multiple places but Empire is likely to be paired with early episodes of Idol when its still two days a week. Wayward Pines is another event series while Bordertown seems like it'll have to go somewhere in the Sunday block since it's animated. Keep in mind FOX could keep some of these shows for summer 2015.

CANCELLED/ENDED: Almost Human, American Dad! (moving to TBS), Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Dads, Enlisted, Raising Hope, Rake, Surviving Jack, The X Factor
Nothing we didn't already know here.

TO SUM UP:
FOX had to make lots of changes and be aggressive after a year that saw several cornerstones like The X Factor, American Idol, Glee, and The Following collapse. They are doing that, to an extent but they still seem to be playing defense a little bit (Tuesday night, Hell's Kitchen, etc). And why? They have nothing to lose by swinging big. That's why I like things like Gotham on Mondays and especially the shake up of the animated block. If FOX can get into the event series game in a big way, that could be their way to move on from a lineup that's always been dominated by American Idol.