Greendale Community College was supposed to open its doors for a Dan Harmon-less fourth season next Friday, October 19. Today NBC released a statement saying the network is delaying the return of Community and its Friday night companion Whitney.

Given the success we’ve had for the past four weeks – including winning the first week of the season in A18-49 – we’ve decided to continue to concentrate our promotional strength on our new NBC shows that are scheduled Monday through Wednesday and have therefore decided to hold COMMUNITY and WHITNEY from their previously announced premieres of October 19th. Without having to launch these comedies on Friday at this time, we can keep our promotion focused on earlier in the week — plus we will have both comedies in our back pocket if we need to make any schedule changes on those nights.  When we have a better idea of viewing patterns in the next few weeks, we will announce new season premieres of WHITNEY and COMMUNITY.

Let’s extrapolate. First, NBC is prioritizing the promotion of its current fall comedies Go On, The New Normal, Animal Practice, and Guys with Kids. Second, they are acknowledging the possibility that some of their new comedies (namely Animal Practice and Guys with Kids) may not make it much longer. If one or both of these relatively low rated shows, Community and/or Whitney could ditch the Friday graveyard and call Wednesday night a comfortable home. Time will tell, fellow Human Beings.

[Via Deadline]