One Chicago franchise gets schedule shake-up this week; find out why

NBC is giving its One Chicago schedule a massive change this week. Find out what’s happening and what it means for Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med.

One Chicago fans aren’t going to be happy with NBC this Wednesday.

Fans may have noticed at the end of last week’s episodes the promos that indicated a change was happening on Feb. 19. Both Chicago Fire and Chicago PD will not be on this week—while Chicago Med is airing, but will be a repeat.

So what’s the reason for the preemptions? There’s nothing malicious afoot. Wednesday is also the date of the next Democratic Presidential debate, and NBC News will be broadcasting the debate in primetime at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

That means there’s no space for either Fire or PD, because the debate is scheduled to run for two hours.

More from One Chicago Center

While NBC would be able to air a new episode of Chicago Med before the debate starts at 8 p.m., presumably they’re choosing not to do so in order to keep the three shows together.

If Med was to be new this Wednesday, it would be an episode ahead of the other two series—and that has a ripple effect, because the show would run out of episodes a week early.

The only way to avoid that would be NBC preempting it on some other week, so it’s just much easier to treat all of the shows as a unit.

So we’ll get a repeat of the episode “Who Knows What Tomorrow Brings” which is the episode where Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) first met her boyfriend Ben, and Chicago Med had its psuedo-vampires before Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains) attempted to kiss April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta).

Watch One Chicago on fuboTV: Watch over 67 live sports and entertainment channels with a 7-day FREE trial!

Certainly One Chicago fans will be disappointed not to get new episodes this week. But this is not abnormal, and it’s part of being on a major TV network. NBC has responsibilities to cover the major happenings in the country and the world, whether it’s politics (like these debates or the State of the Union) or the Olympics. As popular as our favorite shows are, they’re still going to have to take a back seat to national and world affairs.

In the meanwhile, fans can stream limited episodes from this season on Hulu (with a subscription) if you’ve missed any of the episodes that have already aired.

Next. A new place to stream Chicago Fire. dark

All three One Chicago series are scheduled to return in two weeks, on Wednesday, Feb. 26 starting at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

Home/Chicago Fire