The 4400 at 4am
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
This is one of the most puzzling scheduling moves so far this year.
TEN is returning new episodes of The 4400 to our screens -at 4am on a Saturday morning!
What the???
Now I know the show didn’t exactly set the world on fire. After a huge premiere with a 1.99m audience it quickly fell away. The network then pulled it before retrying it in new timeslots including late on Sunday nights.
But now it’s bringing it back in a ludicrous timeslot sandwiched between Home Shopping and the religious programme This Is Your Day with Benny Hinn.
TEN’s love / hate affair with sci-fi is very puzzling indeed. It’s stuck with Smallville and committed to two series of Torchwood. Then a noir series like Battlestar Galactica attracts great reviews and a surprised audience doesn’t really get it. So it got lumbered to 1am on Monday mornings.
I guess the Programmers would argue they are just responding to audience figures. However the audience responds to marketing and scheduling too.
The 4400 promised much, but delivered slowly. However I don’t think it deserves such an alien timeslot as 4am on a Saturday morning. Are we supposed to watch it when we come home from a big night out?
It returns 4am Saturday morning March 31.
For more shows abducted by programmers check Missing in Action.