TVSquad

Hoo boy! You fans of the NBC historical drama Crusoe are not going to like this news. Not at all. It will be so distressful that you're going to get up, board a ship, purposefully get shipwrecked, and live your life on a deserted island. That, or you'll just toss out your TVs in disgust and begin, dare I say it, reading or talking to your loved ones.

Ready? Here it is...NBC is moving Crusoe to Saturdays. You read right; the show is moving to the Dead Zone of primetime television. Why, do you tearfully ask, are they moving this show to a night that hasn't featured original programming in years? Well, it's to move Lipstick Jungle up one hour on Friday night in order to shore the program up. And, man, does it need shoring up. Last Friday, the show managed to eek out a 2.2 rating in its current 10 PM slot.

In this day and age of dwindling original programming (thanks to the impenetrable deadlock of the Writers' Strike), the networks are fiddling around with their schedules to get the maximum out of what they have left to air. That means that shows you thought would be airing later will be premiering sooner, and vice versa.

For instance, NBC's Celebrity Apprentice, which was going to premiere on January 10th, has been moved up one week and will now premiere on Thursday, January 3rd, at 9:00 pm, between original episodes of Deal or No Deal and ER. The decision was made when it was learned that ABC was going to air its last original episode of Grey's Anatomy on the 10th. The schedule change may not matter in the ratings anyway since Apprentice will be up against FOX's broadcast of the Orange Bowl as well as coverage of the Iowa caucuses.

Over on ABC, the new comedy-drama Lipstick Jungle Sex and the City Cashmere Mafia is moving from January 3rd to Sunday, January 6th, where it will follow the last pre-strike episode of Desperate Housewives. Damn, I hope this strike gets resolved soon!