Photo: Smallz + Raskind/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Iain Armitage as Young Sheldon.
After great ratings for it series premiere, CBS’ Young Sheldon has been missing from the prime-time schedule. The series, which explores Sheldon Cooper’s life before the events in The Big Bang Theory, won’t be back for almost a month. The next episode of the series doesn’t air until Thursday, November 2, 2017.
The Young Sheldon pilot aired back on Monday, September 25 and earned such great ratings that it has already been picked up for a full season. The pilot drew 17.2 million viewers and a 3.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic, holding on to an astonishing 98 percent of The Big Bang Theory season premiere’s audience. CBS later boasted in a press release that Young Sheldon‘s viewer total climbed by 5.24 million viewers when viewings in the seven days after its original airing are counted.
But despite that strong start, the show has been missing from the schedule ever since. That’s because CBS has instead decided to slide the new sitcom 9KJL with Mark Feuerstein (Royal Pains) in the Monday 8:30 p.m. timelsot after Big Bang.
When Young Sheldon comes back, it will air on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET, after Big Bang. CBS is once again moving Big Bang to Thursdays after Thursday Night Football ends for the network. This will open up the Monday, 8:00 p.m. ET timeslot for another sitcom.
Young Sheldon stars Iain Armitage as a nine-year-old Sheldon Cooper, who is now going to the same high school as his older brother. Zoe Perry, whose mother Laurie Metcalf plays Sheldon’s mom on Big Bang, co-stars as a younger version of Mary Cooper.
Notably, Young Sheldon doesn’t have a laugh track, unlike Big Bang. Co-creator Chuck Lorre chose to shoot the show in the single-camera format, meaning the show is similar to NBC hits like 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation. Lorre’s other CBS shows, including Mom and Big Bang, are all filmed using multi-cam set-ups with an audience laugh track.