Knope Knows

What’s going on here?

From The Futon Critic:

NBC is dropping its repeats of “Parks & Recreation” for the rest of the summer.

Scheduling updates released this morning indicate the Peacock will instead opt for additional repeats of “Community” in the Thursday, 9:30/8:30c half-hour on August 26 and September 2 – essentially tabling the Amy Poehler-led series until its planned midseason return.

Source

This post lists spoiler information for Parks and Recreation’s third season. To view season two spoilers, please click here.

UPDATED: August 10, 2010

Mike Schur talks all about season 3. It’s a lengthy, but informative and entertaining spoiler sesh. Click the jump!

(more…)

If you’ve been avidly watching Parks and Recreation this summer, you may have noticed that repeats of the show have yet to air during its traditional 8:30 p.m. time slot.

Instead, Parks and Rec has aired after The Office at 10:30 p.m. or, like last night, at 9:30 p.m.

According to The Futon Critic, NBC will continue airing Parks and Rec repeats at 9:30 p.m. through September 16.

Does this seem fishy to you?

I bring this up because the writers at Vulture made a compelling theory in May, stating that Parks and Rec was bumped to midseason so it could take over 30 Rock’s post-Office time slot.

Here’s a snippet:

Parks seemed to be the perfect candidate for that post-Office slot: It’s from the same team (Greg Daniels and Mike Schur) that made the latter show a hit, and it’s got major momentum, with Rob Lowe having just started an eight-episode arc, Aziz Ansari blossoming into a big-time star (he’s hosting next month’s MTV Movie Awards), and fans increasingly vocal about their adoration. But politically, directly replacing 30 Rock with another show that’s already on the NBC schedule would have been very, very tough.

That’s where Outsourced comes in. Does NBC really believe that the show can become a hit at 9:30 Thursday? Well, sure … in the same way every parent thinks their kid can grow up to hit a ball like A-Rod. But the odds are, Outsourced — with its indie-movie roots and Indian setting — will end up frittering away a big chunk of its Office lead-in, sorely disappointing NBC and forcing the network to make a change a few months into the season. And when that happens, guess who’ll be tanned, rested, and ready to jump back into Thursday nights? Yup: Ron Effing Swanson and the rest of the Parks gang.

Based on Parks and Rec’s repeat schedule this summer, Vulture’s theory is making sense. It’s as if NBC is using the summer to test how well Parks and Rec retains The Office’s audience.

Here, now, is how Parks and Rec has performed following The Office. The first number is the show’s rating in adults 18-49 and the second number is the show’s total viewers (in millions).

Thursday, July 15 | Source
The Office 1.2/2.972
Parks and Recreation 1.0/2.486

Adults 18-49 retention: 83.3%
Total viewers retention: 83.7%

Thursday, July 1 | Source
The Office 1.2/2.503
Parks and Recreation 0.8/1.939

Adults 18-49 retention: 66.6%
Total viewers retention: 77.5%

Thursday, June 24 | Source
The Office 1.0/2.248
Parks and Recreation 0.9/1.987

Adults 18-49 retention: 90%
Total viewers retention: 88.4%

Thursday, June 17 | Source
The Office 0.9/2.043
Parks and Recreation 0.7/1.798

Adults 18-49 retention: 77.7%
Total viewers retention: 88%

Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker released his list of the best TV shows from January-July 2010. Parks and Recreation was #7 on his list!

From EW.com:

We’re half-way through the year; time to stop and take stock of the TV year thus far. Here is my mid-year Top 10, selected from shows airing during the period between January and July 2010:

1. Breaking Bad
2. Fringe
3. Modern Family
4. Friday Night Lights
5. Justified
6. The Good Wife
7. Parks and Recreation: In its second season, P&R settled in as Thursday night’s least sarcastic or cynical sitcom. Taking Amy Poehler’s sunny comic persona and radiating it throughout the entire show, P&R suggested that there is both vulnerability (I’m looking at you, Aziz Ansari’s Tom Haverford) and zaniness (I’m looking at you and your moustache, Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson) within every character. And by extension, us.
8. Better Off Ted
9. Lost
10. Glee

Source

It’s not even fall yet, and already NBC is tinkering with its primetime lineup. Unfortunately, the shift doesn’t involve Parks and Recreation.

Instead, NBC is bumping its hourlong anthology series, Love Bites, to midseason. Meanwhile, a new edition of The Apprentice will occupy the 10 p.m. time slot.

It’s good the network is playing with its fall schedule, right?

From Ausiello Files:

Ruh-roh. NBC is already tinkering with its fall schedule, bumping the comedy Love Bites to midseason and replacing it in the Thursday-at-10 slot with a regular, noncelebrity edition of The Apprentice.

How come?

Bites has been dealt two big setbacks — one happy, the other not so much: Leading lady Becki Newton is pregnant with her first child (congrats!)…and showrunner Cindy Chupack has stepped down for personal reasons (drat).

“Launching an anthology series, which breaks the form in so many ways, is a huge undertaking, and I strongly feel that I can be most helpful not showrunning, but writing,” said Chupack in a statement. “It just became clear that for several reasons, some of them personal, this change (and a little more time) is what we need to launch this show properly.”

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