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Is ‘NCIS’ On This Week? Why The Sudden Programming Change?

By Alexandria Ingham
Published on: 00:08 PST, Nov 2, 2016

Fans expecting a new episode of NCIS this week would have been heavily disappointed. CBS had spent the whole week promoting the new episode of Season 14, but just an hour before the scheduling things was dramatically changed.

So, no, there will not be a new episode of NCIS Season 14 this week. The reason was the same as all the other CBS shows that failed to air on Tuesday this week: blame it on sport.

CBS made the decision to pull the regular and planned programming for the MLB. The World Series had gone into the sixth game, which is never intentionally planned for. Maybe it should be considering it completely disrupts plans. Why not plan to air a rerun or a special in case the World Series doesn’t run into the sixth game?

Why change the planned NCIS episode anyway? According to Carter Matt, the decision was made by the higher-ups in the network. Nobody wanted to compete with such a major baseball event, which is understandable. Going up against one of America’s biggest sporting events really doesn’t make sense. For non-baseball fans, it’s like airing something at the same time as the Super Bowl, the soccer World Cup final, or the final of a major reality program, if any of those even exist anymore in the same way they did a decade ago.

CBS did slip up, though. As said, they could have chosen not to air a new episode of NCIS Season 14 at all this week. The bosses could have planned for the World Series to go to game six. If that didn’t happen, there are always other options available for TV. Reruns are popular, but there is another major event happening in the country that could have been focused on.

The Presidential Election voting will take place next week, so scheduling is different because of that. Surely reruns of the debates could have taken place this week. There could have even been other debates scheduled, although, who in their right mind would have gone up against a potential sixth game in the World Series? Would anyone really have paid politics any attention?

A rerun of a presidential debate could have at least been planned, though. Instead, NCIS and other show fans were all geared for a new episode of their favorite shows. In the last hour, plans were completely changed and fans tuned in disappointedly to find out that their show wasn’t going to air this week.

NCIS Season 14 wasn’t the only show fans were disappointed by not seeing. Bull, NCIS: New Orleans, and many others had their schedules suddenly changed. The bad news is that fans will have to wait two weeks for new episodes now. There won’t be any airing next week with the aforementioned Presidential Election.

Will this mean the midseason finale will air later this year? It’s unknown what CBS is going to do now. The midseason finale was initially planned for the middle of November 2016, but it is possible that it will be pushed a week to make sure all the episodes can air as planned.

CBS should think ahead next time. It’s not like this is a new network or the World Series is a new event. It would be easy to plan around the baseball event to make sure there are no last minute programming changes or risks of clashing. The best thing for CBS to do is to make sure there are no new episodes planned at all. If that means a two-week break, then so be it. There are plenty of quiet weeks during December and January to get new episodes up. Doing that could even strengthen the midseason programming.

Instead, NCIS Season 14 fans were disappointed with the last-minute change, and not all are fans of baseball.

[Featured Image by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]

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