As fires continue to sweep across the Los Angeles area resulting in devastating destruction of homes and forcing thousands to evacuate the area, CBS has made the decision to change up its planned schedule for Friday night out of respect for those impacted by the fires.
Out of sensitivity to those impacted by the Southern California fires, CBS has announced that it will be pulling the planned Fire Country encore set to air on Friday, Jan. 10. Instead of airing a rerun of its Friday night firefighter drama, CBS will air a pair of NCIS: Sydney encores at both 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. with a SWAT rerun closing the night.
At this time, CBS has only adjusted its schedule for this Friday but there is always a chance that CBS could choose to remove additional reruns from the schedule. It’s important to stress there appear to be no plans to delay the show’s planned return which is scheduled for Jan. 31.
The scheduling move is not at all surprising as CBS has long been mindful of how the events of its shows could be triggering to audiences amid tragic events. In the past, the network has pulled episodes of some of its law shows amid real-life events that mirror the events that unfold within the shows. Perhaps the best example of this was when the network opted not to air the season 4 finale of FBI back in 2022 following a school shooting in Texas.
The decision to pull the Fire Country encore is one of many studios have made in the wake of the tragic fires with many studios closing production on shows. There have also been a handful of events canceled amid the fires including press events, the premiere of HBO’s The Pitt, the planned live announcement of the Screen Actor Guild Awards (the nominations were instead announced via a press release), and the delays of events including the Critics Choice Awards which have been pushed back two weeks from there original air date of Jan. 12.
It’s also of note that while NBC chose to air a new episode of Chicago Fire as planned on Jan. 8, the network seemingly opted not to promote the next episode of the show out of respect for those impacted by the fires. Instead of releasing a promo for the show, NBC followed the new episode with a promo for the episode of Chicago PD which aired directly after.
One Chicago Center will keep you updated on the latest impacts of the ongoing fires including whether there are any additional changes made to the schedule for new or encore episodes of firefighter series such as Fire Country, Chicago Fire, and the 911 franchise.