We’re continuing our survey of the fall primetime schedule (our merry band includes former head of NBC Scheduling Mitch Metcalf, former head of NBC Current Programming Ted Frank and myself) with Thursdays, when CBS will finally do what people have been expecting for the past several seasons and expand to a 4-sitcom night.  (Here […]

  We have a short clip from CW’s midseason series THE 100, about a group of teens returning to a post-apocalyptic Earth. Our heroine, it seems, is Octavia, the rebellious standout in the (as usual for CW, very pretty) group.  She also appears to be the only one with a living relative, her brother.  The […]

  Welcome to Upfronts week, when the broadcast networks (or what’s left of them) announce their Fall schedules and attempt to generate billions of dollars worth of excitement from advertisers.  It’s harder than ever to authoritatively analyze the thought process that goes into a broadcaster’s cancellation, renewal and pick-up decisions, because network ad revenues directly […]

  BACKSTROM:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  Rainn Wilson plays your basic difficult-but-brilliant homicide detective in a procedural based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, adapted for television by Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones.  Backstrom is grumpy and dismissive of his colleagues, and unhealthy in his eating, drinking and general living habits, […]

  FOX’s most highly-touted drama pilot the entire development season was RAKE, which is indeed on the air.  The price of scoring Greg Kinnear as a lead (much as it had been last year with Kevin Bacon) is that he would only commit to a limited number of episodes, so the show will air on […]

  MARRY ME:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC THE FACTS:  Happy Endings creator David Caspe reunites with Casey Wilson, one of that show’s stars, for a rom-com that pairs her with Ken Marino, as a longtime couple who finally get engaged. WHAT’S IT SAYING:  The NBC quirky single-camera rom-com brand is in good hands:  Happy Endings […]

Here is a summary of the Fall 2015 broadcast schedules, announced this week in New York to advertisers at the upfront presentations.  Start setting your DVRs now, or start making your picks for biggest hit or first cancellation of the season.

  The CBS featurette for its new Monday 8:30PM comedy WE ARE MEN is at great pains to suggest that the cast–Chris Smith, Tony Shalhoub, Jerry O’Connell and Kal Penn, as divorcees who live in the same residential hotel–has as much fun together behind the camera as in front of it.  The bigger question is […]