Scheduling

The ugly ratings for broadcast TV this season – you can tell they’re ugly because broadcast networks are making loud noises about trying to convince advertisers to pay for 7 days of DVR viewing, an acknowledgement that nobody’s watching live – are particularly ugly on Tuesday, except for The Voice and the NCIS franchise. There’s a specific problem on Tuesday that a lot of people predicted when the network schedules were announced: Fox, NBC and ABC all had very similar comedies going up against each other at 9 p.m., and they were almost certain to cannibalize each other’s ratings.