Smallville and Supernatural preempted this week… for nothing

CHCH-TV Hamilton

Viewers looking for Smallville and Supernatural on Friday were left disappointed. The CW Network, in the US, has pushed back the return of these shows by one week and the last-minute change applies to Canadian stations as well. CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal, which would normally simulcast those shows on Friday, were also forced to pull them. Meanwhile, even Space, which carries Smallville Sundays at 9 ET/6 PT and Supernatural Wednesdays at 10 ET, will have to wait an extra week.

So what exactly happened? What it boils down to is the CW was afraid that the return of Vampire Diaries and Nikita, this past Thursday, wouldn’t do so well given that Nikita was going up against Idol and that Vampire Diaries would be preempted in Chicago because of local coverage of the mayoralty candidates debate, among other reasons. (Yes, believe it or not, the programming decisions made by WGN Chicago can have an impact on CJNT Montreal.)

So the CW, in their limited wisdom, decided to rerun those shows again on Friday night, thereby preemepting the return of Smallville and Supernatural, while making the fans of the Friday shows feel less important than those of the Thursday night line-up.

The programming change has since been criticized as something that may end up backfiring for it has created a backlash among viewers. Plus, the CW’s Thursday night ratings proved to be not so bad after all. In other words, we went through all that trouble for nothing.