V Invading ABC In November

ABC announced that V will premiere Tuesday, November 3 at 8:00 PM/ET, taking over the time slot for Shark Tank. V was originally planned for midseason, but at Comic-Con producers noted the show had been moved up to November. That news was pretty buried in the Comic-Con madness, though, so many were taken by surprise at TCA when the panel announced such a close date.

Though serialized shows tend to do better in the spring when they can run straight through without interruption from the holidays, going in November could be the smarter play this season. With ABC’s Lost, NBC’s Day One and NBC’s Heroes airing in the spring, there’s a lot of serialized sci-fi heavy hitters coming after the first of the year, so launching a sci-fi show in the fall might work better (though there is also, of course, ABC’s other sci-fi show, Flashforward in the fall).