• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 2, 2024

The 2023 fall season is about to heat up the dead of winter with delayed network premieres filling up the prime-time hours this month and next.

ABC will be the fall-in-February champ with 11 returning shows, nine scripted and two unscripted. None are new shows.

“The Conners” (with Sara Gilbert and Ames McNamara, above photo), “Not Dead Yet,” a one-hour season-premiere episode of “Abbott Elementary” and “Judge Steve Harvey” return Wednesday, Feb. 7.

For “The Conners,” it will be the sixth season, demonstrating that the show, which was salvaged from the wreckage of ABC’s “Roseanne” revival in 2018, has had the staying power that some TV bloggers never would have predicted.

Later in the month will see the returns of “American Idol” for its 22nd season on Sunday, Feb. 18; and “Will Trent,” “The Rookie” and “The Good Doctor” (starting its seventh and final season) on Tuesday, Feb. 20.

On Thursday, March 14, ABC will premiere the new seasons of “9-1-1” (its first season on ABC after being canceled by Fox), “Grey’s Anatomy” (for its 20th season) and “Station 19.”

CBS has held off on its highest-profile fall premieres until after the Super Bowl, presumably so the network can use the big game as a promotional platform for its new shows.

One of the network’s new shows that was delayed due to the actors’ and writers’ strikes is “Tracker,” about a man who roams around helping people find things they have lost. The show will premiere right after the big game on Sunday, Feb. 11. 

The post-Super Bowl time period is sometimes an effective time slot for the shows that get to premiere with the game as a lead-in, and sometimes it makes no difference whatsoever.

The network’s other big new drama, “Elsbeth,” raises the profile of a breakout character from “The Good Wife” and then “The Good Fight.” “Elsbeth” premieres Thursday, Feb. 19.

A press release from CBS announcing the returns of three shows on Thursday, Feb. 15, contained a phrase that even shocked me, who has heard everything, or so I thought.

The evening will bring the returns of “Young Sheldon” (for its final season), “Ghosts” and the legal drama “So Help Me Todd,” the press release said.

But it was a sentence about the return of "Ghosts" that became a WTF moment: "Of particular note is the season premiere of ‘Ghosts'," the press release said, “which ended with a major cliffhanger last season -- ‘Who got sucked off?’ ” Huh? 

Over at Fox, the only scripted shows set to return following the strike delays are two dramas and a comedy.

The dramas, “The Cleaning Lady” and “Alert: Missing Persons Unit,” both return on Tuesday, March 5. The comedy, “Animal Control,” returns the following day, Wednesday, March 6.

NBC, meanwhile, got a jump on the competition with a number of its shows returning last month, including the three “Chicago” dramas on Wednesday, Jan. 17, and the three “Law & Order” shows the next night, Thursday, Jan. 18.