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Thursdays Next Season a ‘TiVo Dream Come True’

During its upfront schedule announcement yesterday, ABC confirmed that it is moving the hit drama Grey’s Anatomy to Thursday at 9 p.m., putting it up against CBS’s CSI and NBC’s new drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, writes Media Life. ABC’s addition of three new shows to Thursday and the Grey’s move marks the network’s most aggressive Thursday night lineup in years.

“There’s certainly not a better show on television [than Grey’s]. We feel that it’s a show that deserves a 9 o’clock time period. Thursday is such a classic time for it. There’s a lot of big shows going against each other, and we think there’s room for them all,” said Steve McPherson, ABC entertainment president.

ABC hopes to transfer Grey’s Anatomy’s success from its Sunday night slot to the Thursday schedule. The show’s two-hour season finale during a special Monday showing was the highest rated show in prime time in both the key 18-49 demo and households, writes Broadcasting & Cable. ABC won the night, as Grey’s climbed each half-hour, from an 8.6 rating/19 share in its first half-hour to a 10.7/25 during its last.

CSI, which is the No. 3 show in prime time after American Idol on Fox, has held its own over several rivals that have tried to topple it from its Thursday supremacy, writes the New York Post. Jason Kanefsky, a vice president at media-buying firm MPG, called the upcoming Thursday schedule a “TiVo dream come true,” and predicted that the real battle will be between Grey’s Anatomy and Studio 60, which are more likely to skew younger than CSI.

Grey’s is the fifth-ranked show in primetime.