Another sitcom for NBC’s new “we wouldn’t be edgy if you begged us” Thursday night comedy line-up, as Sean Hayes returns to what’s now “Might-Watch TV” with SEAN SAVES THE WORLD.  Well, let’s give Sean this much:  as gay family sitcoms go, it looks better than The New Normal.  And Hayes seems to have […]

  We’re continuing our look at NBC’s crop of trailers for its fall shows (apart from The Blacklist, the network doesn’t seem to be releasing pieces for its midseason series right now), and next up is the return of a TV icon (for those who were watching TV in 1967):  IRONSIDE. What becomes increasingly clear […]

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 […]

  1.3.  0.9.  1.4.  1.1.  0.7.  1.2.  1.3. 1.2. Those are, respectively, the most recent Live + Same Day ratings for Quantico, Grandfathered, Code Black (which actually had a bump for the week thanks to a higher than usual lead-in), The Mysteries of Laura, The Grinder, The Muppets, Limitless, and Rosewood–all of which have received […]

  The latest CBS drama pick-up for 2013-14 comes a bit out of left field:  RECKLESS, a legal soap about an illicit romance between a defense attorney (Cam Gigandet) and a prosecutor (Anna Wood) against the background of a police sex scandal.  This doesn’t just sound like an ABC show, it sounds like a specific […]

  In FOX’s new line-up, ALMOST HUMAN will take over the Monday 8PM slot from Bones post-baseball, then serve as lead-in to first Sleepy Hollow and then The Following.  It hails from Bad Robot, JJ Abrams’s mecca of genre TV and movies, and the Fringe connection is even stronger, because it’s written by J.H. Wyman, […]

  Just a day after NBC announced the end of its Thursday Must-See-TV block of comedies, FOX is breaking up its Animation Domination Sundays with a pair of live-action sitcoms.  There are plenty of changes to the FOX line-up on the way, and here’s a quick breakdown: MONDAY:  Matching the new Batman prequel GOTHAM with […]

  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 […]