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 […]

    Here are the official Fall 2016 prime time schedules for The CW, CBS, ABC, FOX and NBC.  New shows in italics.  A separate midseason grid will follow at a later date. Look for ShowBuzzDaily instant analysis of The CW’s schedule later today.  Meantime, read about the CBS, ABC, FOX and NBC schedules.             […]

  (NOTE:  as of Thursday afternoon, CW had only released a 30-second teaser for its new JANE THE VIRGIN, and nothing at all for midseason shows iZOMBIE and THE MESSENGERS.  We’ll post reviews of the rest of the network’s trailers as soon as they’re available.) THE FLASH:  Tuesday 8PM on CW THE FACTS:  Viewers of […]

  THE WHISPERS:  Midseason TBD on ABC THE FACTS:  Something is taking possession of American children and making them do very bad things–like “kill your parents” bad things.  They may be on their way to launching an all-out attack, and Lily Rabe is the government agent tasked to stop them.  The series creator is Soo […]

  We’ve arrived at Friday in our tour of the fall primetime schedule, and former head of NBC Scheduling Mitch Metcalf, former head of NBC Current Programming Ted Frank and I have our predictions ready.  (Here are our predictions for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.)  Friday is the least-watched (other than barely-programmed Saturday) and least dramatic […]

  Currently TBD on the FOX schedule is US & THEM, an adaptation of the well-liked British comedy Gavin & Stacey.  It stars the also well-liked Jason Ritter and Alexis Bledel as co-workers from different branches of the same company who finally meet and have to overcome the challenge of their wildly eccentric parents and […]

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 […]

  NBC picked up a handful of shows yesterday, but that was just the first installment, as an additional trio of new shows have been announced so far today.  2 are dramas and the other a comedy, and interestingly, all hail from Warner Bros Television. DRAMAS MYSTERIES OF LAURA:  NBC wasn’t out of the Debra […]