ABC Bets High Potential on a Super Bowl Launch

ABC is holding High Potential off the fall 2026 grid until early 2027. Kaitlin Olson’s cop comedy is the network’s No. 1 series, and season 3 is already shooting, yet it will not open the autumn.

Ari Goldman, ABC’s senior vice president of content strategy and scheduling, laid the wager out on May 12. Park the hit, skip football and holiday preemptions, then bring it back against New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, the College Football Playoff, the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Super Bowl.

ABC Holds High Potential for a Super Bowl Season

Over 35 days of viewing, High Potential averaged 16.0 million people in the 2025-26 season, third among broadcast entertainment series behind CBS’s Marshals (19.3 million) and Tracker (16.3 million). On ABC’s own seven-day Nielsen cut, it was No. 1 among adults 18-49 at a 2.27 rating, the second straight year it has held that crown.

ABC’S 2025-26 SNAPSHOT

• Total viewers: High Potential finished third on broadcast at 16.0 million over 35 days, with Dancing With the Stars at 9.11 million over seven days.
• The demo: The 2.27 rating in adults 18-49 beat Dancing With the Stars (2.09), The Rookie (1.92), and Scrubs (1.84).
• Sister cop shows: Will Trent drew 8.82 million over seven days and The Rookie 8.60 million, both also held for 2027.
• Season 2 close: The April 7 finale did 12.69 million over seven days, up from the 11.99 million season premiere.

Goldman said ABC does not take the sit-out lightly. He also said the show posted the largest season-1-to-season-2 gain for a network drama since Glee in 2010, which is the resilience he is counting on. “Rest assured, our audience will be well aware of the return of High Potential,” he said. “We will have that show all over ABC as we get close to the return.”

Why High Potential Season 3 Skipped Fall

Fall is a bad place to try to run 18 straight hours of a weekly drama. Season 1 was a short order. Season 2 had a Dancing With the Stars lead-in, then hit holiday programming, and the calendar got choppy. Goldman wants season 3 to start in the January window and run through the end of the season with as few breaks as the sports and awards calendar will allow.

What we’ve seen the last several years, and we’ve really proven this out with Will Trent and The Rookie back in midseason of 24 and 25, is we want to give viewers a chance to watch these shows with as little interruption as possible across the season. So I think when we get to the midseason plans, and you think about the opportunities that we have on the ABC schedule, going from New Year’s Rockin’ Eve to the College Football Playoff, the Grammys, the Oscars and obviously the Super Bowl. I think we have such amazing momentum at the start of 27 to bring the show back in a big way.

Ari Goldman, SVP of content strategy and scheduling, ABC

He added that streaming viewers have shown “the importance of week-over-week steadiness.” Season 2 ran 18 episodes from September 16, 2025, through April 7, 2026. He would not lock an episode count for season 3, only that ABC is “still looking at a really full season.”

The same midseason shift already moved The Rookie and Will Trent. After those shows sat out fall 2024 and came back in January 2025, The Rookie’s average viewership rose 13 percent and Will Trent’s rose 21 percent. Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich told TVLine at the time that the plan “worked like gangbusters,” and that Tuesday had started to feel like ABC’s old Thursday. When they returned again on January 6, 2026, The Rookie’s season 8 opener did 9.35 million over seven days, its most streamed premiere, and Will Trent’s season 4 premiere did 8.91 million.

A Fall Grid With No Top-10 Scripted Hits

On the Nielsen broadcast top 10 that closed 2025-26, ABC’s three entries were High Potential at No. 3, The Rookie at No. 6, and Will Trent tied at No. 7. All three wait until 2027. The fall 2026 grid that ABC posted on May 12 is sports, dancing, a revival, and the Thursday hospital block.

WHERE ABC’S HITS LAND IN 2026-27

Monday is ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Tuesday is Dancing With the Stars at 8 p.m., then R.J. Decker at 10. Wednesday opens with Scrubs and Abbott Elementary (a 22-episode order), then Celebrity Jeopardy! and Shark Tank. Thursday keeps 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Nashville, and Grey’s Anatomy. Friday is Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and 20/20. Saturday is college football. Sunday is America’s Funniest Home Videos and The Wonderful World of Disney, starting with the TV premiere of Inside Out 2.

Midseason also holds The Rookie: North, the Jay Ellis spinoff, plus The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise. Goldman said ABC has renewed every scripted series for the first time in network history, a line he dated to 1948. The price of that stability is an autumn with no series from that top 10 on the air.

Dancing With the Stars Gets the Tuesday Prize

The delay, Goldman said, is not a creative stall. Nora and Lilla Zuckerman were already in as showrunners. What ABC wanted was the post-Dancing With the Stars hour on Tuesday, which he called the rarest live lead-in in television, for Scott Speedman’s R.J. Decker.

High Potential “didn’t necessarily need the lead-in support,” Goldman said. “With High Potential and the really dominant success that it’s enjoyed, we have no real concern about the audience not making the journey over to midseason to follow the show.” He said Dancing With the Stars soared nearly 80% in the demo last season, and that R.J. Decker never dipped below 3 million viewers on ABC in linear ratings.

Scrubs is the other show ABC refused to leave idle. Goldman said its premiere was the highest-rated comedy telecast on any network all season, and the revival has a 10-episode season 2 order, which is why it returns September 30, 2026, instead of waiting. Shifting Gears, Tim Allen’s sitcom, slides to midseason to make room. Abbott Elementary, still the network’s top comedy even after a ratings dip, comes back October 7. 9-1-1’s tenth season, billed as its last, is set for October 15 and is slated to open on a volcanic eruption.

That is a coherent fall. It is also a fall in which the show that actually owns the demo is dark. A two-season hit does not have the locked-in habit of a five-year procedural, and weekly viewers will feel the swap first on Tuesday at 10, when R.J. Decker sits in High Potential’s old chair.

Super Bowl LXI on February 14

Disney will carry Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, on ESPN with an ABC simulcast. It is the first Super Bowl on ABC since 2006, a 21-year gap Goldman used as a selling point. He would not name the entertainment series that follows the game. “I don’t think we’re going to be announcing the specific selection at the upfront,” he said. “But I can tell you, we are very excited for the opportunity, and we are very clearly focused on an ABC Entertainment series that will air after Super Bowl.”

High Potential is the obvious candidate. It is not a confirmed one. The cleaner read is the whole winter stack, not a single lead-out.

THE 2027 EVENT STACK GOLDMAN IS SELLING

1. December 31, 2026: New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, the promotional on-ramp Erwich has cited in past midseason launches.
2. Early January 2027: College Football Playoff championship window, plus the January launch pattern ABC already used for The Rookie and Will Trent.
3. February 14, 2027: Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium, ABC’s first Super Bowl in 21 years, lead-out still unnamed.
4. March 2027: The Oscars, the last of the “start of 27” platforms Goldman listed with the Grammys.

Craig Erwich, in a statement with the schedule, put the same events in one breath: Super Bowl, College Football Playoff, Grammys, Oscars. If season 3 is on the air by then, those telecasts become in-season ads. If it is still on the bench, they become a very expensive reminder that the No. 1 show is missing.

Nora and Lilla Zuckerman Inherit the Cliffhanger

The writers’ room is new even if the delay is not about the room. Todd Harthan, who ran the first two seasons, stepped down in March 2026 to run Disney+’s Eragon. On May 6, Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, who ran the first season of Poker Face and hold an overall deal at 20th Television, took over as executive producers and showrunners. Drew Goddard remains on as creator. Olson is an executive producer.

“We’re looking forward to climbing into the brilliant, bustling mind of Morgan Gillory and crafting intricate mysteries worthy of her genius,” the Zuckermans said when the hire was announced.

WHAT CHANGES BEFORE SEASON 3 AIRS

• The chair: Harthan is gone to Eragon; the Zuckermans run season 3 under their 20th Television deal.
• The captain: Steve Howey, in on a one-year deal as Captain Nick Wagner, is not returning as a series regular after Wagner was attacked in the finale.
• The clock: Goldman wants an uninterrupted weekly run, not another fall split by dancing, holidays, and football.
• The set: By mid-September 2026, Olson had posted from production with Daniel Sunjata, and ABC had circulated an in-production teaser.

Howey could still appear to close Wagner’s story. The finale, titled Family Tree, left that thread open on April 7. A new showrunner pair walking into a bloody last scene is a lot of story to carry across a dark fall, which is why the Super Bowl window has to do more than look good on a sales slide.

The Wait From April to January

The last new hour was the Season 2 finale on April 7. The next one is not on the fall map. Goldman’s January pattern, if ABC repeats it, would put roughly nine months between those episodes. A post-Super Bowl launch would stretch that further. He has not chosen in public.

CBS will spend that autumn with Marshals and Tracker, the two series that beat High Potential in total viewers. NBC still has Chicago Fire. ABC is asking a young audience that already watches most of this show after the airdate, on Hulu and Disney+, to keep the appointment without a Tuesday episode to appoint.

The bet is specific. An uninterrupted 2027 run, sold through the Super Bowl and the Oscars, is supposed to beat a fall full of preemptions and a lead-in High Potential no longer needs. The footage is already in the can. The slot is not.