Why is Lucky 13 not on TV tonight, August 1?

Gina Rodriguez, contestant Krista and Shaquille O'Neal on Lucky 13
(Image credit: Disney/Ronda Churchill)

ABC's game show summer is taking a night off, as Lucky 13 and Press Your Luck season 6 are being replaced on the network for something on Thursday, August 1 — NFL preseason football.

The two game shows are not airing at all on August 1 as the first the NFL's Hall of Fame game between the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans is airing on ABC starting at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. It is being simulcast on ABC and ESPN, which is going to be a semi-frequent occurrence during the fall TV calendar for Monday Night Football games.

If you're disappointed you won't be able to watch Lucky 13 and/or Press Your Luck tonight, you can take some solace in the fact that this appears to just be a one week thing, as both shows are expected to return to their normal times — 8 pm ET/PT for Press Your Luck, 9 pm ET/PT for Lucky 13 — on Thursday, August 8.

Lucky 13 is a brand new game show on ABC for the summer of 2024. It features Not Dead Yet star Gina Rodriguez and Hall of Fame basketball star Shaquille O'Neal as hosts and sees contestants give answers to 13 true or false questions. They then have to decide how confident they are in their answer. If they can correctly guess if they're original answers were right or wrong, they can win big.

Press Your Luck is hosted by Elizabeth Banks and is basically the same format of the game that became a hit in the 80s, testing contestants' trivia knowledge to earn spins on the big board for prizes as they tried to avoid the dreaded "whammy."

These are just two of ABC's roster of game shows that have helped fill out its summer primetime lineup. Others include Celebrity Family Feud season 10, a new season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Claim to Fame season 3. ABC has also been airing The Bachelorette season 21 and on select Sundays a classic family movie as part of The Wonderful World of Disney.

While absent from ABC this week, if you want to watch Lucky 13 or any of the other ABC game shows on-demand, they are available to stream on Hulu.

Michael Balderston

Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca, Moulin Rouge!, Silence of the Lambs, Children of Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars. On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd.