President Biden is giving a primetime address on Thursday night and the networks are shuffling their schedules accordingly.
The President will mark the one-year anniversary of the shutdowns linked to the Covid pandemic in the U.S., which has led to the death of over 525,000 Americans.
ABC, NBC and Fox have confirmed to Deadline that they are airing the address, which is set to start at 8pm ET, and is expected to last around between 15-30 minutes. CBS has yet to confirm but is likely to.
As a result, the networks are on the whole pushing back their originals to accommodate Biden’s first primetime address since his inauguration.
ABC, which had Station 19 at 8pm followed by Grey’s Anatomy and A Million Little Things, will start their Thursday night drama block as soon as the President is done. It may start programming at the regular time and resume afterwards, depending on whether Biden is on time but fans will get to see all three shows in their entirety on the night.
The programming interruption will not impact Mountain and Pacific Time Zones.
Over on NBC, the network is pushing a new episode of Superstore back from 8pm to 8:30pm.
NBC News will be airing the address via a special report anchored by Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie. After Superstore and a repeat of Law & Order: SVU, the network will be airing a Dateline special – Covid One Year Later at 10pm. A repeat of Young Rock has made way for the address.
Fox will be airing the address and will slide its originals with Hell’s Kitchen likely starting at 8:15pm followed by new episodes of Call Me Kat at 9:15pm and Last Man Standing at 9:45pm.
CBS currently has Young Sheldon on its schedule at 8pm, kicking off its Thursday comedy block featuring B Positive, Mom and The Unicorn with drama Clarice set at 10pm. It’s likely that it will also slide these shows until after Biden’s speech.
It comes as the late-night hosts are also set to mark the anniversary with Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert both marking the event with specials Coronavirus-related shows. The ABC show will air the special on Thursday, while the CBS show will air on Friday with Dr. Fauci as guest.