“Enlisted” just got a minor promotion, from a Friday at 9:30 timeslot to Fridays at 9.
Starting this week, the first-year military comedy (which I like a lot) will swap timeslots with “Raising Hope,” which gets bumped to 9:30.
The idea, it seems, is to see if “Enlisted” will do any better airing after “Bones” than “Raising Hope” has. Last week, for instance, “Bones” drew 6.81 million viewers and a 1.5 rating among adults 18-49. “Raising Hope” plunged from that to 2.51 million viewers and a 0.7 demo rating, which in turn led to “Enlisted” attracting only 2.03 million viewers and a 0.6 in the demo.
“Raising Hope” is a very funny show in its own right, but it’s been around a while; it’s not going to grow its audience at this point, especially on Fridays. While the odds are that the “Bones” audience is just going to tune to another channel at 9, at a minimum this gives the new show a much stronger lead-in to encourage sampling.
That FOX is trying anything at all with “Enlisted” is encouraging, since the numbers for the first couple of weeks were so poor the network’s execs could have easily thrown up their hands. Instead, they seem to realize they put a good show in a tough spot and are trying to improve the situation. Ideally, it would be on Tuesdays with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but with “Glee” moving there, Tuesday real estate is all but impossible to come by for the rest of the season.
This week’s “Enlisted” is called “Pete’s Airstream,” and it’s another good one, getting at some of what creator Kevin Biegel said he wanted to do emotionally with the Geoff Stults character.