Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short in Only Murders in the Building.
Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu
ABC takes up temporary residence at Arconia.
The network will air the first season of Hulu’s critically acclaimed comedy Only Murders in the Building in January. The season will run in two-hour blocks on Tuesday evenings for three weeks starting January 2nd, with a one-hour slot for the season finale on January 23rd.
ABC will also postpone Celebrity Jeopardy! through Tuesday night for the final episodes of the season, beginning with a semifinal on Jan. 2. The game show airs at 8 p.m., followed by Only Murders at 9 p.m. The two-hour blocks airing on January 2nd, 9th and 16th will contain three episodes each.
The moves will help ABC fill its schedule ahead of the return of its homegrown scripted series in February. Will Trent, The Rookie and The Good Doctor are scheduled to air on Tuesdays starting February 20, but the network had not previously announced programming for the first few weeks of 2024. (Which will air in the three weeks following Celebrity Jeopardy! and the OMITB finish has yet to be determined.)
Production has resumed on dozens of scripted series after writers and actors’ strikes ended, but ABC’s first shows won’t return until early February. The network’s current Tuesday host, Dancing With the Stars, is ending its season next week and will be replaced by holiday programming and repeats for the remainder of December.
ABC’s loan of Only Murders is similar to what CBS did in the fall with Paramount Network’s Yellowstone and Paramount+’s SEAL Team to help fill out primetime lineups affected by the strikes. “Yellowstone,” in particular, performed solidly on Sundays for CBS, averaging just over 5 million viewers in the post-60 Minutes broadcast, including seven days of delayed airings.
Only Murders in the Building isn’t a Yellowstone-level hit — few are — but it’s one of Hulu’s most popular series. The film stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as three residents of a Manhattan apartment building who become friends while investigating the death of another resident and creating a podcast about it. The first season aired on Hulu in 2021 and earned three Emmy Awards, including a guest win for Nathan Lane.
The show comes from 20th Television; Martin and John Hoffman founded OMITB and produced alongside Dan Fogelman, Jess Rosenthal, Jamie Babbit, Short and Gomez. ABC, Hulu and 20th are all owned by Disney.