‘This Is Us’ Moved To Thursday Nights On NBC, ‘Must See TV’ Returns

After an incredibly successful inaugural season, This Is Us will be moved from its previous Tuesday slot to the coveted Thursday night 9 p.m. slot on NBC. This Is Us has also been given the time slot directly after the 2018 Super Bowl, one of the most lucrative times a show can air. It is also possible that NBC orders a Christmas special of the show.

“We went back and forth about [moving This Is Us to Thursday],” Robert Greenblatt, the NBC Entertainment Chairman, said in a statement. “There is a case to be made for keeping the show where it was. While it’s a little risky, there’s a bigger case to be made about redoing Thursday night.”

The Thursday night re-do, as Greenblat referred to it, would mean a call back to the marketing ploy NBC used in the ’90s – ‘Must See TV.’ The original ‘Must See TV’ Thursday night included shows like Friends, Seinfeld and ER.

Starting this fall, the new “Must See TV” lineup will include a reboot of the wildly popular series Will & Grace – which was part of the old lineup – Great News, a new sitcom produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, This Is Us, and Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.

“Our hope is to create the return of ‘Must See TV’ on Thursday,” Greenblat said. “It’s not like we’re bringing back the entire old ‘Must See TV’ lineup. We’re using the label to refer to some extraordinary new things and Will & Grace. I’m not saying it’s going to be 100-foot letters on the Empire State Building but, yes, we’re going to use it.”

Based on the initial success of This Is Us, the return of successful NBC Thursday night producers Fey and Carlock (30 Rock), excitement over Will & Grace, and the proven success of true crime stories, Thursday nights may, in fact, truly be ‘Must See TV’ once again.