Still trying to dig out from last Wednesday’s rain-warped scheduling fiasco, FOX has extended next Tuesday’s primetime to include both “The X Factor” and three-fourths of its comedy block.
In case you missed the Wednesday chaos, a rain delay at the National League Championship Series caused FOX to air only an hour of the night’s “X Factor” episode, an hour aired sandwiched between a “Ben and Kate” repeat and half a “Mindy Project” repeat and accidentally simulcast on the west coast. FOX initially announced plans to preempt its comedy lineup on Tuesday, October 23 to reair “X Factor.”
On Friday (Oct. 19), though, FOX announced that “Raising Hope,” “Ben and Kate” and “New Girl” will all air as planned on Tuesday and that the network will snag an extra half-hour of primetime real estate for an hour-long “X Factor” episode that will run from 9:30-10:30.
The “X Factor” episode will contain a quick recap of Britney Spears and L.A. Reid’s Top 16 choices and then the second hour that didn’t air for most of the country. FOX is assuming that with recaps like HitFix’s already online, there’s no need to re-air the first hour, even if ratings suggest that a large number of viewers missed the episode due to confusion, especially if the alternative is messing with the flow of its already-fragile Tuesday comedy roster.