The first episode of the “American Ninja Warrior 4 Compilation” series to air on NBC on Saturday nights from 8-9 pm Eastern will be a recap of “some of the best scenes” from the Southwest region. I assume this means both the opening regional round as well as the regional finals. This is in line with my expectations that of the 8 one-hour episodes of this “season”, the first 6 will be one-hour treatments of each region, and then the last 2 one-hour episodes will cover the National Finals in Las Vegas.
The February 9th episode will cover the Northeast region.
The February 16th episode will cover the Southeast Region. I don’t have visibility for later episodes. If you learn the schedule per the regions beyond that, please let me know and I will re-post it!
Airing Schedule
Feb 2nd – Southwest Region
Feb 9th – Northeast Region
Feb 16th – Southeast Region
Feb 23rd – ?
March 2nd – ?
March 9th – ?
March 16th – National Finals in Las Vegas
March 23rd – National Finals in Las Vegas
I’ll also say more broadly that the fact NBC is doing this compilation season is a great signal about their commitment to the franchise. This will build a bigger audience for the show in advance of American Ninja Warrior 5 to air the summer of 2013, and most likely is secondarily being done to drum up more competitors to compete in American Ninja Warrior 5 that is likely to go down in late March and April this year.