The return of ABC's Castle has been pushed back from its original Feb. 1 date.

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For reasons unknown, the second half of Castle's eighth season will begin airing on Monday, Feb. 8 instead of Feb. 1. This is courtesy of the official ABC website - you can see it for yourself here.

There has been some odd scheduling shifts going on with the return of Castle. Back in November, the ABC winter schedule stated that it was returning on Monday, Jan. 4, but this was then changed to Feb. 1 in the promo at the end of the midseason finale.

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Ratings for season 8 have stabilized around 6-7 million per episode, but this is a far cry from where the series once was. New Castle co-showrunner Alexi Hawley recently spoke on the ratings in an interview with TVLine.

"Here's the thing: We returned at a number that we have basically done every episode since. And once you factor in the DVR numbers, we're doing around 9 to ten million viewers a week, which is a really healthy number these days for network television," Hawley explained.

It's possible that Castle is simply part of a growing trend in television with DVRs, On Demand, online streaming, etc. Less people are watching their favorite shows live anymore. But Hawley isn't worried about it.

"I know we used to be 13 [million], I understand that. Even Quantico, which is a hit for ABC, is doing seven to eight million a week [with DVR playback]. Obviously the 18-to-49 demo number is not as strong as we'd like it to be, but all we can do is try to tell really good stories and hope that people want to watch them," Hawley said.

Tags: television ABC Castle