BLACK-ISH:  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC THE FACTS:  Anthony Anderson plays the head of an African-American family that lives a prosperous life in a mostly white neighborhood, and he tries to hold onto some part of his culture even though his assimilated kids, wife and father mostly couldn’t care less.  The series creator is […]

  FOREVER:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC THE FACTS:  Dr. Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd) is a brilliant New York medical examiner who can solve any murder.  Partly that’s because he has a lot of experience with death, since he himself has (temporarily) died many times–when he falls out a window, is poisoned or hit by a […]

  SCORPION:  Monday 9PM on CBS THE FACTS:  A group of nerdy genius goofballs works with the government to solve high-tech emergencies–based on a true story.  Elyes Gabel is Walter O’Brien, the leader of the nerd squad, Robert Patrick is their exasperated supervisor, and Katharine McPhee is the token normal girl, a waitress with a […]

We’ve reached the broadcast networks’ Upfront Week… which used to be a lot more central to our television lives than it is now.  Ratings everywhere are down, and there’s no reason to think they’ve hit bottom, which has caused seismic changes in the ways networks make scheduling decisions.  Among other things, with revenues from on-air […]

  The midseason part of the broadcast network schedule kicks off in a few hours, and we’ve spent the past few days taking a look at ABC, CBS and NBC.  Today it’s the turn of the most critical patient in the quartet. FOX Fall Primetime 18-49 Average (through December 28):  1.58, down 17.8% from Fall […]

  Other Nielsenwar Network Report Cards:  NBC One massive hit can make up for an awful lot of failure.  Have you met EMPIRE? Full Season To Date (thru May 3) 18-49 Rating Average:  1.53 (#4), down 26.2% from last season (Note:  FOX aired the Super Bowl in 2014-15; with that excluded, the year-to-year drop was […]

  Only those involved will likely ever know the details, but ABC and 20th Century Fox Television worked out whatever they needed to, and the result was a pick-up of LAST MAN STANDING and orders for 2 additional 20th sitcoms: CRISTELA has a  nice backstory:  ABC had originally made a script deal with comic Cristela […]

  CRISTELA:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC THE FACTS:  The Hollywood American Dream:  Cristela Alonzo is a Latina comic who wrote (with Kevin Hench) a family comedy pilot script loosely inspired by her own life, about a young woman living with her sister and brother-in-law as she tries to become a lawyer.  ABC passed on the […]