CBS Television Network has made a major change to their spring schedule. The Amazing Race season 29 will premiere in a new time period Thursday, March 30 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT), replacing the previously announced date, April 21. Notably, The Amazing Race premiere has not only been moved up 3 weeks, but will air on Thursday instead of Friday.
TAR will replace the poorly performing freshman drama, Training Day, which will move to Saturday (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT), beginning April 8. All seven of the season’s remaining episodes will broadcast on consecutive weeks.
CBS’s Thursday primetime lineup is pre-empted on March 16 and March 23 for coverage of The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Training Day has a sad history. Right after it premiered, star Bill Paxton died of a stroke during surgery. That, coupled with the low ratings likely means the move to dead space on Saturday is as good as cancellation.
Ratings wise, The Amazing Race has been languishing on Fridays for a few cycles. It was left off the fall 2016 schedule. When CBS finally found a spot for the show, it was pushed to the tail end of mid-season. There has been much speculation around whether the network was burning off one last season.
It will be interesting to see how the schedule upgrade affects the show’s ratings.
