Is TKO: Total Knock Out airing tonight, Aug.1?

TKO: Total Knock Out featuring host Kevin Hart is moving to a new date and time and will not be airing tonight on CBS, replaced by SEAL Team.

TKO: Total Knock Out is moving to Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET following a second week of linear ratings decline. According to TVByTheNumbers, the new obstacle course competition series dropped to 2.71 million viewers after starting off with 3.99 million viewers for the show’s premiere. Despite its innovative fun approach of having four rivals take ‘battle stations’ and launch humorous projectiles to slow down/knock off their competition, viewers haven’t quite stabilized and dropped off. Wednesday prime time television slots are tough to keep and now TKO: Total Knock Out has been sent down to the proverbial Friday ‘grave yard’ time slot.

Does that spell doom for the series as a whole? Not yet but it doesn’t look good, three episodes into the show’s first season. According to Deadline, there’s a total of ten episodes ordered for season 1, meaning the show will have more time to reach viewers barring an extremely unlikely early cancellation. Kevin Hart is still attached to this project and a major name, so the series will be given due diligence to reflect on by network executives. There’s still an opportunity there to collect new viewers that simply haven’t heard of the show as of yet.

All that said, a move to Friday nights is typically the prelude to a show’s last legs to prove itself to be renewed. The sun has barely risen for the series and already it will have to carry the additional burden of climbing uphill. In many cases, the Friday time slot is the curtain call before a show’s inevitable cancellation as a linear ratings decline speeds up without the enhancement of a larger casual viewer base. A show on a Friday night slot will start off competing for a significantly reduced pool of viewers from the get-go. Meaning even a great night for TKO: Total Knock Out is unlikely to yield the same amount of viewers they had on their Wednesday prime-time slot.

Time will tell if TKO: Total Knock Out can weather the storm and make it to a second season. For tonight, viewers tuning into TKO’s regular Wednesday time slot will find it replaced by SEAL Team.