Looks like NBC isn’t the only network afraid of the Thursday at 9 p.m. match up in the fall season.

According to E! Online, the Fox network is ordering a mere 16 episodes of its teen soap “The O.C.” for the fall schedule.

In the past four seasons, the soap has normally had an average of 25 episodes per season. It is unknown whether Fox will air all of the episodes in a chunk, or spread them out over the eight month season.

The 9 p.m. timeslot began to heat up when ABC announced it would be moving “Grey?s Anatomy” to that night and time to compete against “CSI” on CBS. NBC had originally planned to schedule Matthew Perry’s new drama, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” in that timeslot as well, but soon reconsidered and moved the show to Mondays, and putting in “Deal or No Deal” in its place.






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