Upfronts Preview Pt. 3e: If I Scheduled CBS for 2014-15

This is it! The last post in my very, very lengthy preview of Upfronts, that annual time of year in mid-May when television network executives converge on New York City to pitch their upcoming television season to advertisers. For television fans, it’s basically a deadline for knowing which of your favorite shows are cancelled or renewed (but really the deadline is a week or so before Upfronts, and, in some rare cases, after Upfronts) as well as check a small sneak peak of new shows coming in the fall.

The first part of the preview dealt with what shows have been cancelled/renewed on the 5 broadcast networks as well as prospects for the remaining shows, which is essentially negligible at this point since the fates of all scripted regular season shows on the broadcast networks have since been revealed since that post was published.

The second part looked at some of the pilots being considered for a series order, highlighting the ones I found most interesting or had the best chance for success on the network. Again, most pilots have since been passed over or picked up to series with maybe a handful left to be announced.

For this final part of the Upfronts Preview, I went network-by-network and played backseat executive, programming their 2014-15 television schedules as I see fit (except for Saturdays because who cares). I’ve done all the other major networks: the CW, FOX, NBC, and ABC and now, at long last, it’s time for the last network: CBS.

CBS shouldn’t be too difficult (probably why I saved it for last). It’s been consistently strong in the past couple of seasons, routinely being the #1 network in total viewers (though it’s the number of viewers aged 18-49 that really matter for a show’s renewal prospect), and also competitive in the more-important 18-49 ratings. As such, it renews far more of its schedule than the other networks; this season it renewed 17 of its 21 regular-season scripted shows. Amazingly, they still picked up quite a number of pilots. Which might be a good thing.
This season CBS tried to expand its Thursday night comedies to stretch over 2 hours. Which makes sense, The Big Bang Theory is so dominant, why not have it launch a whole night of comedies? This has had mixed results. The Crazy Ones never really took off (and was cancelled), and Two and Half Men suffered from following it. Once they switched the two and had 2½ Men follow the more compatible The Millers, it started doing decently in the ratings. However Monday was more troubled, efforts at having 2 Broke Girls lead off the 9/8 o’clock hour over-estimated the success of the show, which seems more like a show on a downward slide than a reliable lead-in. How I Met Your Mother had a very strong season, being CBS’s #2 comedy, too bad the show is over. While there’s a pilot for How I Met Your Dad, CBS hasn’t ordered it to series yet. At the risk of getting too much into ‘reading the tea leaves’ territory, that doesn’t inspire too much confidence. The only new comedy to get renewed at CBS was Chuck Lorre’s Mom, which was a very mediocre performer, though very much in line with CBS’s line-up of multi-camera laugh-track comedies. Meanwhile, CBS’s only new dramas, “limited series” Hostages and Intelligence both cratered in the Monday night 9 o’clock hour.

Sunday
The first 2 hours of CBS Sundays are constant enough I don’t see them changing, though I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they were. It’s the last 2 hours that need work. Aging shows The Good Wife and The Mentalist looks to be treading downward (ratings-wise anyways in the case of The Good Wife which has turned me into a regular viewer this season). This opens up opportunities for new shows on a night that has remained largely the same with diminishing returns. The Mentalist will have its final season, getting renewed long after CBS renewed the vast majority of its shows. Bench it for mid-season and take advantage of the big fall promo push (along with some level of a bump from afternoon NFL games boosting CBS’s early evening shows) to launch a new show. It will probably get a shortened final season (13 episodes?), use that it is the show’s last season to promote The Mentalist and have it follow new show Madame Secretary. I went back and forth on what show to put here after figuring out the schedule for all the other nights. Scorpion and Stalker were both viable candidates (and I still anticipate Scorpion making the fall schedule despite my not having it on my schedule), but Madame Secretary fits more with The Good Wife, which will return in Winter after The Mentalist wraps up and take its time slot.

Monday
Mondays and Thursdays will be tricky. For the first several weeks of the season (6 or 8 weeks, I forget which), CBS will air Thursday Night Football, benching all those comedies. CBS will take advantage of this by moving stalwart comedy The Big Bang Theory to help shore up its Monday night line-up. Use The Big Bang Theory to launch the night, follow it with a new comedy, The Odd Couple for Matthew Perry’s name recognition (even if his last 3 shows in which he starred all were cancelled after 1 season), then follow with Mike & Molly and Mom. CBS will be tempted to put a different show on at 8, maybe use 2 Broke Girls and follow it with a new comedy. Don’t keep Mike & Molly waiting in the wings to replace a different show that got cancelled. While its ratings are on par with most other CBS comedies, it stays relatively consistent and doesn’t dip as much as shows like Mom or 2 Broke Girls. People like Melissa McCarthy. They will tune in for her. Don’t use this show just to plug in holes at the last minute when other shows get cancelled. Start the season with it. Follow it with Mom, or a new show. When The Big Bang Theory gets moved back to Thursdays, put in 2 Broke Girls. Its proven itself as a non-reliable starter so bench/save it for 6-8 weeks while you try to get all your Monday shows in order.

And now for one of CBS’s biggest problem areas. Mondays at 10/9c. CBS tried more serialized story-telling at Monday this past season, and while it should be commended for that, the results were awful, awful ratings, by any standards and not just CBS’s inflated standards. And this is where you launch NCIS: New Orleans. Even if it doesn’t hit the lofty heights of the first 2 NCIS’s, it doesn’t have to in this shaky Monday hour. Modest success is good enough, and builds a baseline on which to improve, for this hour. They may want to put in Madame Secretary or Alex Kurtzman-Roberto Orci-executive produced Scorpion, but I’d go with NCIS: New Orleans.

Tuesday
A solid block of programming, CBS won’t tinker with it much. I could conceivably see them trying to launch a show after NCIS: Los Angeles and benching Person of Interest until mid-season, or maybe even after NCIS and shifting NCIS: LA an hour later or until mid-season, which would be smart, but Tuesdays is one of CBS’s most reliable and highest-rated nights. Granted it’s shown some weakness in recent weeks, but still routinely beating its non-Voice competition. FYI, can you believe NCIS will be going into its TWELFTH season?!?!

Wednesday
Another solidly reliable night. Survivor, Criminal Minds, CSI.

Thursday
So after the first 6-8 weeks of NFL football, what then? The Big Bang Theory comes back to launch the night, follow it with The Millers which has shown itself to be a fairly steady lead-out program, then what? Two and Half Men meshed well with The Millers, or do they want to repeat what they did this year, launch a new program after The Millers and have 2½ Men cap off the comedy line-up? Two and a Half Men is in its 12th season (!) and is getting increasingly expensive to make, if this is to be its last season, throw it into the 8:30 time, who cares. But if there’s a chance it might go on for a season(s) after this one, let it follow The Millers, the humor is similar and the audiences are probably too. After moving 2½ Men a half hour earlier, the show proved itself to be consistently strong relative to other CBS comedies. Although the McCarthys is another family comedy that sounds very compatible with The Millers. Shift 2½ Men to 7:30 and have Millers anchor the 8 o’clock hour leading into McCarthys? Launch McCarthys after The Big Bang Theory? Ay, this is where it gets tricky for executives, any number of scenarios that all seem to have viable outcomes. Stability is good, stability is what CBS wants with its comedy line-ups, so with that criteria lets keep Millers following Big Bang Theory, and while I seemed to be advocating 2½ Men following that at first, why give it that lead-in for a show that could very conceivably end at the end of the 2014-15 television season instead of give the time slot to a more (seemingly) compatible show that may be strong for 5-6 seasons down the road? Big Bang, Millers, McCarthys, 2½, Elementary

Friday
Undercover Boss, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods has proven itself to be steadfast performers on Friday nights.

CBS 2014-15 television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: 60 Minutes/The Amazing Race/Madame Secretary/The Mentalist
Monday: The Big Bang Theory/The Odd Couple/Mike & Molly/Mom/NCIS: New Orleans
(After football: 2 Broke Girls/” “/” “/” “/” “)
Tuesday: NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Person of Interest
Wednesday: Survivor/Criminal Minds/CSI
Thursday: Thursday Night Football
(After football: The Big Bang Theory/The Millers/The McCarthys/Two and a Half Men/Elementary)
Friday: Undercover Boss/Hawaii Five-0/Blue Bloods

CBS really has been a big question mark, and while I kept its current schedule largely in tact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if CBS threw us all (well, me at least) a curveball and had a radically different schedule, benching some of its biggest shows for mid-season, knowing it will draw viewers when it returns and attempt to launch new shows in their place. They have a lot of new shows for a network that renewed 80+% of its shows. They could hold them back for mid-season, but many of them seem like shows good enough to get big promotional pushes in the fall.

Well, that’s it for this year’s Upfronts preview! Several posts with 2000+ words, I’ll be sure to plan on spacing these out better next year, and will probably scramble madly at the last minute anyways. C’est la vie.

Upfronts Preview Pt. 3d: If I Scheduled ABC for 2014-15

Boy, these take awhile. I wish I’d had more time to devote to the last two but I’ll try to bang them out before ABC and CBS’s Upfronts presentation on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
Anywho, as you may have noticed, I’ve been previewing Upfronts over the past couple of posts. Upfronts is the annual ritual when network executives trek to New York City to pitch their upcoming television season to advertisers. It’s basically a deadline for knowing which of your favorite shows are cancelled or renewed (but really the deadline is a week or so before Upfronts, and, in some rare cases, after Upfronts) as well as what new shows to look forward to next season.

This is the third and final part of the preview (itself broken up into 5 parts focusing on each of the individual networks). The first part dealt with what shows have been cancelled/renewed on the 5 broadcast networks as well as prospects for the remaining shows, which is basically negligible at this point since the fates of all scripted regular season shows on the broadcast networks have since been revealed since that post was published.

The second part look at some of the pilots being considered for a series order, highlighting the ones I found most interesting or had the best chance for success on the network. Again, most pilots have since been passed over or picked up to series with maybe a handful left to be announced.

For this part of the Upfronts Preview, I will go network-by-network and play backseat executive, programming their television schedules as I see fit (except for Saturdays because who cares). I’ve already done the CW, FOX, and NBC.

Next up, ABC, which will be tricky since they’re headed for a 4th-place finish in the ratings. Despite having such ratings powerhouses such as Scandal and Modern Family, most of their other shows are aging and seemed to have long passed their ratings peak, while few of ABC’s new shows over the past few seasons have become a hit.

Sunday
The first 2 hours of ABC’s Sundays have been reliable enough, it’s the last 2 that need work. Revenge has been trending downwards in its ratings (and from what I’ve heard, its quality) ever since its strong first season. But thanks to lucrativeness of syndication, it is back to for a fourth season. Bench the show for mid-season, so the remaining fans will anticipate it more (and hopefully not forget about it). Meanwhile, American Crime is one of ABC’s more intriguing upcoming shows, a show with Felicity Huffman as one of its stars created by Oscar-winning writer of 12 Years a Slave John Ridley? Sounds very promising. Putting Felicity Huffman back into the timeslot where she occupied for 8 years on ABC in what is being sold as a gritty, racially-charged drama following a decent Once Upon a Time lead-in sounds like it has the potential to rejuvenate and kickstart ABC’s Sundays. So what do you do to follow it? Sundays are tough, broadcast networks have largely ceded it to cable networks. Between Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland, Walking Dead, amongst many others, the buzziest (and award-winningest) shows seem to be on cable. Revenge could benefit from a fresh lead-in, but let’s try and launch a new show in the very competitive 10/9c hour with Ryan Phillippe & Juliette Lewis-starring Secrets & Lies (logline: “…centers on a patriarch (Ryan Phillippe) who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young boy when he finds the body.” It could very well suck, but if ends up to be a dark, tantalizing, maybe even addictive drama along the lines of The Killing or Broadchurch, it could be bolster ABC Sundays.

Monday
At first, I waned to say, let’s not mess with Monday too much, ABC has bigger fish to fry. And let’s stick with Dancing with the Stars for the first 2 hours. But let’s try Galavant, a musical-comedy that’s a “…fairy-tale musical centering on handsome Prince Galavant and his quest for revenge against the king who stole his one true love.” It could very end up being closer to Smash than the early seasons of Glee, but its musical element might make it a suitable schedule-mate with Dancing with the Stars. It’s a risk launching a show against NBC’s The Blacklist, which has been dominating the timeslot, but CBS has put up very little competition in the hour this season so perhaps something new and lighter could both match with DwtS and differentiate itself from competition on other networks.

Tuesday
Tuesday has been a very shaky night for ABC. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiered to big numbers but quickly fell off, dragging down its following comedies (which made little sense following the comic book drama). And Tuesdays at 10/9c have been a troubling time slot for ABC for the past several seasons. This season alone saw 3 shows premiere and get cancelled while last season saw 2 veteran shows move to the time period to get cancelled shortly after. Follow Agents with a much more genre-compatible The Visitors (“The drama is a race against the clock to defeat an unseen alien enemy out to destroy the world using the Earth’s most precious resource: children” aka season 3 of Torchwood?) and then lead into Castle, which might be a risk and suffer the same fate as Body of Proof and Private Practice, especially since its ratings have dropped a smidge in its 6th season, but hopefully it’ll bring reliable-enough ratings and while it’ll be another procedural, hopefully it being a more playful, personality-driven procedural will differentiate itself from CBS’s Person of Interest and NBC’s Chicago P.D.

Wednesday
ABC has tried and mostly failed to launch shows after the reliable-if-unspectacular-in-the-ratings The Middle and powerhouse Modern Family. They had 2 perfect shows to launch after each one this season, The Goldbergs after The Middle and Trophy Wife (despite the awful name) after Modern Family and failed to capitalize on these very compatible shows.
Putting myself in their shoes, it sort of makes sense: they were banking on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. being a blockbuster hit, transferring Marvel’s big-screen prowess to the small screen, they were half-right. While it premiered to big numbers, it quickly tapered off to become a 3rd-place show, and with it, the fortunes of The Golbergs and, to a lesser extent, Trophy Wife, went down the drain. Fix that mistake this time around. Put in Goldbergs after The Middle, and instead of launching some hip/young/fresh show about 20-somethings out pAH-tying and hooking up (Mixology, Happy Endings, Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23), put another family comedy after Modern Family. Essentially, translate the TGIF family-focused comedies of the 90s, to Wednesdays. Black-ish sounds like good fit.
What to do with the last hour of Wednesday is a big question mark; Nashville has been trending ever lower in its 2nd season, so while moving it seems viable, with all the other potential moves on ABC’s schedule, having it stay put for now seems like a decent enough pick. If it collapses, maybe moving it to Monday if Galavant doesn’t succeed will match well with Dancing with the Stars.

Thursday
The other troubled timeslot for ABC is Thursday 7pm. Pretty much all scripted efforts they’ve launched going back to the 09-10 television season have been cancelled after a season (oftentimes not even a full season): Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Last Resort (WHICH THEY SHOULD’VE INVESTED MORE TIME AND EFFORT AND AND A BETTER TIMESLOT INTO), Zero Hour, My Generation, Charlie’s Angels, Missing, FlashForward, and The Deep End. Part of it is that it’s a competitive time slot (The Big Bang Theory, Thursday Night Football, American Idol/The X-Factor in seasons past) on a competitive night (Thursdays are lucrative nights as advertisers want to promote movies coming out on the Friday or weekend sales). ABC does not look like it has any self-starting new shows so they should slide back their Thursday night schedule an hour. This solves 2 problems: it fixes the ABC Thursday-at-7 death slot (unless it really is cursed and Grey’s Anatomy plunges in the ratings) and it opens up a choice spot after Scandal, currently ABC’s highest-rated drama with nothing following it save for the local news/Jimmy Kimmel (depending on where you live). This opens up a time slot for ABC to promote a new show in primetime. And what show should that be? How to Get Away with Murder. I’m very intrigued by this show, the premise sounds decent, but that double-Tony-winning, double-Oscar-nominee, legitimate-serious-movie-Actress Viola Davis is choosing this show for a starring role in a broadcast network show is interesting (she’s done a lot of prior TV work as guest stars and whatnot). And while she did not create it like she did with Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, Shonda Rhimes will have a hand in the behind-the-scenes action, executive producing it (which could mean a lot of involvement or not, but exec producing is still a step up from just producing). Hopefully the show ends up being worthy of the post-Scandal timeslot, but if it’s buzzy enough with lots of water cooler/light-up-the-tweets moments, it’ll do well anyways.

Friday
Friday has been fairly kind to ABC, Shark Tank is one of ABC’s strongest performers overall, and 20/20 is reliable enough. They won’t move Last Man Standing, but what should follow it? As FOX showed with Enlisted, it is a TERRIBLE idea to launch a new comedy on Friday. Double up on Last Man Standing.

2014-15 ABC television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: America’s Funniest Home Videos/Once Upon a Time/American Crime/Secrets & Lies
Monday: Dancing with the Stars/Galavant
Tuesday: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D/The Visitors/Castle
Wednesday: The Middle/The Goldbergs/Modern Family/Black-ish/Nashville
Thursday: Grey’s Anatomy/Scandal/How to Get Away with Murder
Friday: Last Man Standing/Shark Tank/20/20

Updated ABC released its schedule today and I actually managed to call some of the changes! I called the Wednesday night comedy line-up as well as the Thursday night line-up!
Sunday
7-8 p.m. — America’s Funniest Home Videos
8-9 p.m. — Once Upon a Time
9-9:30 p.m. — Resurrection
10-11 p.m. — Revenge
Monday
8-10 p.m. — Dancing With the Stars
10-11 p.m. — Castle
Tuesday
8-8:30 p.m. — Selfie
8:30-9 p.m. — Manhattan Love Story
9-10 p.m. — Agents of SHIELD
10-11 p.m. — Forever
Wednesday
8-8:30 p.m. — The Middle
8:30-9 p.m. — The Goldbergs
9-9:30 p.m. — Modern Family
9:30-10 p.m. — Black-ish
10-11 p.m. — Nashville
Thursday
8-9 p.m. — Grey’s Anatomy
9-10 p.m. — Scandal
10-11 p.m. — How to Get Away With Murder
Friday
8-8:30 p.m. — Last Man Standing
8:30-9 p.m. — Cristela
9-10 p.m. — Shark Tank
10-11 p.m. — 20/20

-Totally forgot about comedies, I didn’t schedule any new comedies outside of Wednesday
-They scheduled a new comedy for Friday after Last Man Standing. Will it make it a full season? Conceivable. More than that? I don’t see it.
-They scheduled a new meh-sounding show at 9 in its unlucky Tuesday night time slot, is it too soon to start taking bets on when it gets cancelled? Still, it gets an Agents of SHIELD lead-in, then again, it only got an Agents of SHIELD lead-in.
-Called the Thursday night shift, yeaahh
-Was assuming Resurrection was a spring show, didn’t think of scheduling it in the fall
-Revenge’s ratings will be miserable
-Finally, I think ABC has its strongest overall Wednesday night comedy line-up in some time. I’ve been so pissed at how much ABC’s been screwing shows more deserving of a post-Modern Family time slot then the shows they’ve been putting there.

Upfronts Preview Pt. 3c: If I Scheduled NBC for 2014-15

This is the last part of my preview of Upfronts, the yearly ritual when network executives trek to New York City to pitch their upcoming television season to advertisers. It’s basically a deadline for knowing which of your favorite shows are cancelled or renewed (but really the deadline is a week or so before Upfronts, and, in some rare cases, after Upfronts) as well as what new shows to look forward to next season.

The first part dealt with what shows have been cancelled/renewed on the 5 broadcast networks as well as prospects for the remaining shows (the fates of the vast majority of the shows have been revealed over the past 2-3 days).

The second part examined some of the pilots being considered to be picked up to series, listing the ones I find most interesting or best fits for the networks and ignoring those already picked up to series (many pilots have also been picked up over the past few days).

For the third and final installment of my preview of Upfronts, I’ll play backseat executive and take a stab at scheduling the fall schedules for each of the 5 broadcast networks (except for Saturdays, because who cares). I’ve already taken a look at the potential schedules of both the CW and FOX. Now it’s time for the big leagues: The Big 3, with 7 days of programming 3 hour prime times.

Contrary to popular belief, NBC is currently the #1 Network in the all-important 18-49 demographic (which is way, way, way more important to a show’s renewal/cancellation fate than total viewership). It’s been rebuilding over the past couple seasons and this year, behind the strength of Sunday Night Football in the fall, The Voice, and The Blacklist, NBC is #1 in the demo (though CBS is #1 in total viewership and may yet snag #1 in 18-49 away from NBC during the final stretches of May Sweeps).

So what can NBC do to solidify its #1 status? Its Mondays are solid. Its Sundays are solid in the fall. Its Tuesdays are decent. But it starts to fall off from there. Wednesdays are shaky, Thursdays are abysmal, and Friday is a mixed bag.

Sunday
Sundays will be taken up by NFL Sunday Night Football. Which is good because without it NBC’s Sunday in the Spring tend to be terrible, usually consisting of a Dateline-The Apprentice combination, or in this past season, Dateline and lackluster dramas Crisis and Believe and reality show American Dream Builders.

Monday
The question for Monday is, do they move The Blacklist, which has shown enduring popularity and its strong DVR numbers indicate it has built an audience of its own outside of its strong Voice lead-in. They tried to do that with Revolution, whose ratings crumpled leading off Wednesday and was recently cancelled. With a strong following independent of The Voice, The Blacklist would likely have fans follow it to a new night to help kickstart things. And you know what night needs the most help? Thursdays. I was going to say they should try and maintain stability on at least one night, but through this hypothetical I’ve managed to convinced myself. Move The Blacklist. Obviously keep The Voice to Anchor the night, and what should follow it? State of Affairs. It starts Katherine Heigl (groan). While her place is Hollywood has dropped quite a bit, there are still some who view her favorably and fondly for her days as Dr. Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy. And trumpeting her ‘return to television’ will get those people’s interests. On the other hand, Constantine is probably one of NBC’s buzziest shows so that Monday would also be a good place for it following The Voice.

Tuesday
NBC tried to launch 2 comedies last TV season (Go On, The New Normal) that didn’t work. They tried again this season and one of them stuck (About a Boy). It’s ratings have dropped to a pretty modest level, but its still the #1 comedy on NBC (thanks in large part to its Voice lead-in). A big problem with comedies on Tuesday is that 3 networks are airing comedies in the 8 o’clock hour (that’s 9 o’clock for everyone not living in Central Time). One (or more) of the networks should definitely retreat from this, but for NBC, between Thursday and Tuesdays, I’d say give up Thursdays and try something new on that night. As for Tuesday, let’s try to launch new comedies. Amongst the crop of comedy pilots picked up to series for NBC, there are a couple that would fit with female-skewing The Voice: Kate Walsh-starring Bad Judge, Tina Fey-created, Ellie Kemper-starring Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ellen DeGeneres executive produced, Elisha Cuthbert-starring One Big Happy, and romantic comedy Marry Me. I’d put give the prime lead out spot to Tina Fey’s show and follow that up with Bad Judge (logline: “Centers on a hard-living, sexually unapologetic woman (Kate Walsh) who plays with the law and whose life on the edge is constantly in balance, as she also happens to be a judge in the San Bernardino criminal court system”). Yes that description doesn’t make the show sound all that great, but Walsh has shown herself to be surprisingly quite funny from her appearances on Comedy Central roasts and @midnight. Maybe the program will be able to rise to her comedic strengths, maybe.

As for the 9 o’clock hour, I originally envisioned making a 2-hour comedy block with Parks and Recreation and something else, but remembered Chicago P.D. has been a reliable performer in the hour, so let’s not mess with that.

Wednesday
I’m realizing that with my original plan, there’s only going to be one hour of comedy for NBC, and you know what, let’s go with that. Save the comedy for later and let’s stick with dramas now. Law & Order: SVU and Chicago Fire are performing well enough in the last 2 hours of the night, so the issue with Wednesday is what to program to lead off the night? I’m trying to decide between Allegiance and Odyssey but I’ll give the edge to Odyssey.

Thursday
Alright, here’s the big rebuilding night. Thursday. With 3 of the 4 comedies from this past season getting axed, NBC should stop trying to replicate the era of Must See TV/Comedy Night Done Right and shake this night up. Move The Blacklist here to kick things off, follow it up with buzzy graphic novel drama Constantine, and end the night with the final season of Parenthood. Things can only improve from the abysmal ratings of the past season, by how much is the question and the ceiling seems like it could be pretty high.

Friday
Dateline, Grimm, Hannibal.

2014-15 NBC television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: NFL Sunday Night Football
Monday: The Voice/State of Affairs
Tuesday: The Voice/Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt/Bad Judge/Chicago P.D.
Wednesday: Odyssey/Law & Order: SVU/Chicago Fire
Thursday: The Blacklist/Constantine/Parenthood
Friday: Dateline/Grimm/Hannibal

Update I forgot NBC tends to release their schedule so before I got a chance to publish this NBC released its schedule, which was kind of similar to what I was thinking:
Sunday
7-8:20 p.m. — Football Night in America
8:20-11:30 p.m. — NBC Sunday Night Football
Monday
8-10 p.m. — The Voice
10-11 p.m. — The Blacklist / State of Affairs (beginning Nov. 17)
Tuesday
8-9 p.m. — The Voice
9-9:30 p.m. — Marry Me
9:30-10 p.m. — About a Boy
10-11 p.m. — Chicago Fire
Wednesday
8-9 p.m. — The Mysteries of Laura
9-10 p.m. — Law & Order: SVU
10-11 p.m. — Chicago P.D.
Thursday
8-9 p.m. — The Biggest Loser
9-9:30 p.m. — Bad Judge (The Blacklist beginning Feb. 5)
9:30-10 p.m. — A to Z
10-11 p.m. — Parenthood
Friday
8-9 p.m. — Dateline NBC
9-10 p.m. — Grimm
10-11 p.m. — Constantine

-So I got the Blacklist-to-Thursdays move semi-right, they’d move it, but not until mid-season. Not a bad strategy, but
a) Ratings for The Voice tend to slip towards the end of the season (a bit counter-intuitive since most season-long competition shows have higher ratings towards the end of their seasons as the field of competitors whittles down), which means that State of Affairs won’t have the best possible lead-off to launch it and presumably it will then play new episodes during the December-January doldrums without a Voice lead-in to help it
b) The Blacklist takes a length hiatus between its November finale, and doesn’t play a new episode until the Super Bowl before starting on Thursdays. They tried that with Revolution, taking it off the schedule for several months until The Voice came back in the spring. That helped people forget about it and it continued shedding viewers when it came back from its lengthy hiatus in its first season
c) What if comedies Bad Judge and A to Z, which The Blacklist will be displacing when it moves to Thursday in February, are hits? What then? Will they shuffle it around? Put it on hiatus?

-Also, they scheduled Constantine on Friday at 10pm (9 for central time). That has been the go-to time slot for genre shows like Hannibal and Dracula to pair with Grimm. I think Constantine can appeal to a broader audience then just a niche comic book audience, it shouldn’t be relegated to Friday nights. If it doesn’t do well on a different day, then shift it to Thursdays. But a movie based on the comics managed to make $230M worldwide, while I don’t think that’s profitable against a $100M budget (+marketing expenses and splitting revenues with theaters), it shows that this has enough of a mainstream appeal beyond Friday nights.

-They’re holding off on Tina Fey-created, Ellie Kemper-starring Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt until mid-season, interesting. I guess they can wait to see what sinks or swims come fall then throw in all their comedies (Parks and Rec is also being held for mid-season. Hell, they can pair the two up and put it on at Thursday to take over the slot Parenthood will vacate after its 13-episode final season).

-Debra Messing seems to be a constant at NBC from Will & Grace, Smash, and now The Mysteries of Laura. But this show will sink. I’m not actively rooting for it to fail, but from the clunky title to the meh-inducing premise, to the show seemingly over-relying on Messing to sell the show, I predict it will garner negligible ratings before a cancellation before the end of the year (I could conceivably see it chugging along with mid-to-low 1.0s, getting a full season order then getting the axe come May 2015).

Upfronts Preview Pt. 3b: If I Scheduled FOX for 2014-15

This is the last part of my preview of Upfronts, the yearly ritual when network executives trek to New York City to pitch their upcoming television season to advertisers. It’s basically a deadline for knowing which of your favorite shows are cancelled or renewed (but really the deadline is a week or so before Upfronts, and, in some rare cases, after Upfronts) as well as what new shows to look forward to next season.

The first part dealt with what shows have been cancelled/renewed on the 5 broadcast networks as well as prospects for the remaining shows (I am now finishing writing this at the end of the week after starting it on Sunday, since then the fates of basically all shows are now known save for Parenthood, which will likely get renewed for a shortened final season as the budget and salaries are figured out).

The second part examined some of the pilots being considered to be picked up for a series order, listing the ones I find most interesting or best fits for the networks and ignoring those already picked up to series (many pilots have also been picked up over the past few days).

Last week saw two articles about some of the pilots looking good in terms of getting picked up including this one from Variety and one from The Hollywood Reporter titled “10 TV Pilots Likely to Score Series Pickups.” Kevin Hart’s pilot (ABC), How to Get Away with Murder (ABC), Gotham (FOX), Tina Fey’s Cabot College (FOX), another CSI spinoff (CBS), The Flash and iZombie (both CW), and Mysteries of Laura (NBC) all get mentioned on both lists (How to Get Away with Murder, Gotham, CSI: Cyber, The Flash, iZombie, and Mysteries of Laura have since been picked up).

For the third and final installment of my preview of Upfronts, I’ll play backseat executive and take a stab at scheduling the fall schedules for each of the 5 broadcast networks (except for Saturdays, because who cares). I’ve already taken a look at the CW’s potential schedule and now it’s time to move on to a bit more of a challenge, still only 2 hours of primetime programming per day, but now with 6 days to account for (7 including Saturday, but we’re not including Saturday).

FOX has absolutely cratered this past season, it used to be able to reliably depend upon American Idol to boost its average season ratings come Winter/Spring (and even last year when there were multiple articles about its depressed ratings and Mariah-Minaj feud, it was still pulling in respectable ratings on a regular basis most other networks would envy).

Not so much this season. American Idol has regularly been hitting lows in both the all-important 18-49 rating (measure of those aged 18-49 watching the show) and total viewership and even placed 4th in its timeslot in its most recent Thursday show. Ouch.

Additionally, Simon Cowell’s The X-Factor got the plug pulled on it after 3 seasons of modest-to-low ratings. What this means is that there are now 3 hours of real estate on the FOX schedule to fill in fall, and maybe even Winter/Spring if they decide to pull the plug on American Idol (more unlikely than likely imo). (American Idol was picked up for another season)

But out of weakness comes innovation. ABC was in the doldrums before the potent Desperate Housewives-Lost-Grey’s Anatomy combo made them the network to beat in the 2004-05 television year (but that’s a long, long time ago, ABC and FOX are now facing off for the dubious distinction of being the lowest-rated non-CW network for 2013-14). FOX has some interesting drama and comedy pilots in the pipeline, some that sound ready to be the next Sleepy Hollow.

Speaking of which, Hollow was pretty much the only new show that FOX could call a hit. Compounding the woes of its veteran shows’ falling ratings (American Idol, The X-Factor, Glee, New Girl), its new shows were modest at best (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Cosmos, Dads, the now-cancelled Almost Human) or D.O.A. (Enlisted, Rake). The good news for fans of FOX’s shows, the bar for renewal has been lowered quite a bit (best exemplified by The Mindy Project’s renewal, which I thought for sure was gonna be cancelled).

Anywho, let’s break down how I would make the FOX schedule day-by-day.

Sunday
Really not much to say here, FOX will stick with its standard lineup of animated comedies (The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy) when it’s not airing NFL games in the fall. Though a wrinkle in this is that American Dad! will be shifting to TBS after this season, leaving a bit of hole. They could approach this in a number of ways, launch a new animated show, experiment with their Animation Domination HD and put in two 15-minute shows, try a live-action show (maybe rotate the shows they’ve ordered 6-10 episodes of), or throw in some repeats. Nevermind, FOX has ordered animated comedy Bordertown from Seth MacFarlane to plug the hole.
Also, while Cosmos premiered decently and dropped to a modest-but-not-terrible ratings average, I don’t see it as outside the realm of possibility to bring it back in the Winter/Spring for another 10-13 episodes, or maybe do a 10-13-episode season every couple of years.

Monday
Monday has been FOX’s more male-skewing day countering ABC’s femme-appealing reality shows and CBS’s comedy lineup with shows such as The Following, Bones, Sleepy Hollow, Terra Nova, Alcatraz, House and The Chicago Code occupying it over the past couple of seasons. The Bones-Sleepy Hollow combo worked quite well for FOX in the fall, and while they tried Bones on Friday for a bit, they quickly shifted it back to Mondays to lead into The Following in Winter/Spring. I expect the same come fall. Or perhaps they’ll save Bones for Winter, and push Sleepy Hollow an hour earlier to help launch a new show: Rainn Wilson-starring detective series Backstrom perhaps (already ordered to series), or hip-hop drama Empire. The already-ordered Hieroglyph seems to be a great match genre and content-wise: “The high-concept fantastical action-adventure show is set in ancient Egypt and centers on a notorious thief who is plucked from prison to serve the Pharaoh, navigating palace intrigue, seductive concubines, criminal underbellies and even a few divine sorcerers.” Or maybe even the very buzzy DC Comics Commissioner Gordan prequel Gotham, but I’d say save that for another night (more on that soon).

Tuesday
Tuesday has been one of FOX’s weaker days, they’ve been trying (desperately) to launch a 4-hour comedy block with too few hits to sustain it. Additionally, ABC and NBC has also scheduled comedies at 8pm which causes comedy cannibalization and depressed ratings across the board among the 3 networks. New Girl used to be the crown jewel in the comedy line-up, firmly anchoring the 8 o’clock time slot, but its ratings have fallen severely since the start of season 3, in its latest ratings, it even fell below The Mindy Project. Likewise, while Glee used to be a dominant cultural phenomenon, it has been averaging absolutely miserable ratings, usually struggling to break a 1.0 18-49 rating (for those not familiar with ratings, that’s really, really bad). Unfortunately for FOX, but luckily for Ryan Murphy and the remaining fans of Glee (all 3 of them), last year Glee was renewed for a 2-season deal, which FOX execs are probably kicking themselves over. Even more incredulously, it was for 2 full seasons, and since season 5 was cut short due to Cory Monteith’s death, two episodes will shift to season 6 for an incredible 24-episode season of a show that struggles heavily to hit a 1.0 rating. Wow. While Glee probably makes a bit of money in ancillary markets via MP3 sales etc, the days are long gone when 5-10 songs would hit the iTunes top-sellers list the day after a Glee episode. I can’t imagine what was going through the head of the FOX exec in charge of this when he made this deal at the end of Glee’s 4th season. While Glee was much stronger back then, they had to have seen the trajectory for the show’s ratings was only going downward at that point. Why oh WHY would they commit to two FULL seasons, they should’ve worked in wiggle-room for an unspecified number of episodes so they can give it a shortened 13-episode final season.

ANYWAYS, I’d be more surprised than not if FOX kept Glee on Tuesday, they should burn off the remaining sure-to-be-low-rated episodes on Friday as they’ve done with other low-rated shows they’ve already committed seasons to such as Fringe, Raising Hope, Touch, or Dollhouse. Raising Hope deserved to stay on the Tuesday schedule though.

So, if not Glee, then what should FOX put into Tuesdays? New Girl, The Mindy Project, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are all returning. Dads likely won’t be. Luckily for FOX, they have plenty of comedies in the pipeline, including some promising big-name ones (this is assuming they want to stick with a 4-comedy Tuesday, which for now, let’s assume they will). They have Tina Fey-created Cabot College, Jane Krakowski-starring Dead Boss (passed over unfortunately, I would’ve liked to see what it was like but it may’ve been really bad for FOX to pass it up). They also have Fatrick, No Place Like Home (both passed over), and Sober Companion. None are guarantees but look good for full-series pick-ups (especially the first two).

The question for Tuesday is, what show do they use to lead off the night? As I think more about it, Glee doesn’t seem like such as bad idea. It’s low rated, will probably stay in the low 1’s in the rating, but that’s more of a sure thing than the ratings for the comedies. So they COULD go with Glee leading into New Girl leading into Brooklyn Nine-Nine/Mindy Project. That sounds good, Glee leading into New Girl leading into Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Promote the fact that this is Glee’s final season and hope for the best, mid 1.0’s would be a success at this point, you can’t move New Girl because overall that’s been the best performing FOX Tuesday comedy, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine might gain fans over the summer hiatus through word-of-mouth after its double Golden Globes wins (and potentially some Emmy love). The ratings for Glee will probably crater so mid-season, push it off to Fridays and fill the hour with The Mindy Project and Will Forte starrer Last Man on Earth.

Wednesday
This is where things get interesting. For the past 3 seasons, it’s been occupied by The X-Factor and now it’s suddenly freed up. Before that it had Human Target-Hell’s Kitchen and before that Glee paired with So You Think You Can Dance or some comedies. This is new real estate opening up and FOX should make a statement here. It is early days yet in Upfronts but the big show, the silver bullet in FOX’s holster is Gotham. It is easily the show with the biggest buzz in the very earliest stages of settling next year’s schedule and it will draw eyeballs beyond just fanboys. If they want to launch a new Wednesday line-up with a bang, this is how to do it. Lay down the gauntlet with Gotham. It’s not like Wednesday is too competitive, ABC and CBS trade off being the #1 network on Wednesdays, CBS behind its potent Survivor-crime procedurals combo and ABC with its line-up of comedies. But, Survivor, Criminal Minds, and CSI are OLD shows, they’re showing their ages in their ratings, still plenty serviceable, but their age is something FOX can capitalize on with newer, fresher offerings. And while Modern Family dominates for ABC and The Middle has been chugging along, ABC has struggling to find a show to follow each of them and Nashville has been a major bubble show at 10/9c. NBC has struggled on Wednesdays, no scripted show launching or moving to lead off primetime for NBC has survived saved for Up All Night which was cancelled after an abbreviated 2nd season. Law & Order: SVU and Chicago PD have performed admirably but L&O: SVU swings wildly in the ratings. In short, FOX has a lot to gain on Wednesday if it can find programming that clicks.

So what follows Gotham? Find a show to take advantage of the lead-in is nearly as important as figuring out when to program Gotham. They have many contenders. Hieroglyph is an interesting show that could be this season’s Sleepy Hollow, if (and this is a big if), Backstrom is any good, using Gotham as a launching pad could be a good way to get people to watch a show starring Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) in dramatic show as a self-destructive detective). My pick comes down to two shows: Red Band Society starring recent Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (logline: “dark comedy focuses on the daily lives of a group of teenagers living in a hospital who become unlikely friends. The depth of the unexpected friendships allows them to survive the challenges of growing up under such intense circumstances.”). It sounds interesting, and it has Octavia Spencer which has been in small parts in a million and one shows before winning an Oscar for her role on The Help (which I really enjoyed, more than I thought I would). If they manage to successfully adapt it from the Spanish show it’s based on, give it the Gotham lead-out slot even though its genre and tone probably jars with Gotham’s.

The other contender for Gotham lead-out slot, is Empire (“A family drama set in the world of a hip-hop empire featuring original and current music”). It also stars several acclaimed movie stars (Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson, Gabourey Sidibe) and it feels like a better fit as a lead-out for Gotham.

Thursday
If FOX doesn’t want to sour relations with Ryan Murphy, instead of casting off Glee to the wasteland of Friday, they can move it here to lead off the night, because at least it will be better/even with what The X-Factor was doing in the Thursday lead-off hour. Or they can put Backstrom here. Or they can launch Red Band Society. Just don’t start a comedy in the 8/7c hour. Because The Big Bang Theory will slaughter everything in its timeslot, especially a competing comedy (as Community/30 Rock/Parks & Recreation can attest to). If they don’t schedule RBS after Gotham (which they probably won’t), Thursday is a nice night to launch it, with a sufficient (and effective) amount of promo, people will be willing to tune in. CBS will have NFL Thursday Night Football while NBC and ABC have offered weak competition in the timeslot, a good show with a recent Oscar-winner (even if far from a well-recognized movie star) can try to develop a football in the hour before The Big Bang Theory returns in November/late October.

But what to follow? This could be a night to launch all new shows. The Tina Fey-created Cabot College seems good to launch on a night that has featured Fey for the past 7 years. Mulaney, a show featuring several SNL alumni (John Mulaney, Martin Short, Nasim Pedrad), seems like a natural show to follow Fey’s show.

Friday
Gordan Ramsey typically has a show on Friday so kick off the night with MasterChef Junior then follow that up with Glee. Just don’t launch a show on Friday, seriously FOX. While I didn’t share the level of enthusiasm others had for it, Enlisted was better than premiering on Friday night. Or double up on Gordan Ramsey programs or follow it with drama repeats then push Glee into Friday mid-season.

2014-15 FOX television schedule:
new shows in italics

Sunday: animation reruns/The Simpsons/Bob’s Burgers/Family Guy/Bordertown
Monday: Sleepy Hollow/Hieroglyph
(Mid-season: Bones/Backstrom)
Tuesday: Glee/New Girl/Brooklyn Nine-Nine
(Mid-season: The Mindy Project/New Girl/Brooklyn Nine-Nine/Last Man on Earth)
Wednesday: Gotham/Empire
Thursday: Red Band Society/Cabot College/Mulaney
Friday: Masterchef Junior/Glee

Upfronts Preview Pt. 3a: If I Scheduled the CW for 2014-15

This is the last part of my preview of Upfronts, the yearly ritual when network executives trek to New York City to pitch their upcoming television season to ad buyers. It’s basically a deadline for knowing which of your favorite shows are cancelled or renewed (but really the deadline is a week or so before Upfronts) as well as what new shows to look forward to next season.

The first part dealt with what shows have been cancelled/renewed on the 5 broadcast networks as well as prospects for the remaining shows (FOX’s Almost Human has since been cancelled from when it was first posted).

The second part examined some of the pilots being considered to be picked up for a series order, listing the ones I find most interesting or best fits for the networks and ignoring those already picked up to series.

This past week saw two articles about some of the pilots looking good in terms of getting picked up including this one from Variety and one from The Hollywood Reporter titled “10 TV Pilots Likely to Score Series Pickups.” Kevin Hart’s pilot (ABC), How to Get Away with Murder (ABC), Gotham (FOX), Tina Fey’s Cabot College (FOX), another CSI spinoff (CBS), The Flash and iZombie (both CW), and Mysteries of Laura (NBC) all get mentioned on both lists.

For the third and final installment of my preview of Upfronts, I’ll play backseat executive and take a stab at scheduling the fall schedules for each of the 5 broadcast networks (except for Saturdays, because who cares). First up, I’ll start with a relatively easier network with only 5 days of programming 2 hours each: the CW.

The CW did decently this year, successfully launching Vampire Diaries spin-off the Originals which paired nicely with Supernatural to give their Tuesdays consistently solid ratings (by CW standards anyways). Arrow has dropped off a bit in recent weeks but is still solid, however, they’re still trying to take advantage of the post-Arrow slot. First scheduling The Tomorrow People before shipping it off to Mondays after its ratings fell from a decent start. Then came The 100 whose ratings have also fallen from a strong start. The Vampire Diaries remains potent kicking things off on Thursday but the CW has still struggled to find a show to take advantage of following the CW’s highest-rated show. Since debuting in 2009, The Vampire Diaries has had a different lead-out program every year (Supernatural, Nikita, The Secret Circle, Beauty & The Beast, and now Reign). While Supernatural has gone on to thrive on Tuesdays, the new shows launched after TVD haven’t had as notable a fate: Nikita was shifted to Fridays where it limped along to 4 seasons, Secret Circle was cancelled after 1 season, Beauty & The Beast made it to 2 seasons and isn’t likely to get a 3rd while Reign has been renewed for a second season with decent-if-unspectacular ratings. The question is whether to keep Reign there or trying to find a more compatible schedule-mate for TVD. Fridays have been a good spot for Whose Line is it Anyways along with America’s Next Top Model and a place to burn off 4th/last seasons of low-rated shows.

Monday
The biggest sore spot for CW is Mondays. NBC dominates it with The Voice, ABC pulls in female viewers with Dancing with the Stars/The Bachelor(ette), CBS’s comedy line-up has been very strong until showing some weakness this past season, and FOX’s The Following/Bones/Sleepy Hollow is acceptable/decent/strong in the ratings while skewing towards males. Ever since Monday staple Gossip Girl left the airwaves in 2012, Mondays became the place where CW shipped off low-rated series such as Hart of Dixie, Beauty & the Beast, and The Tomorrow People with the 2 new shows premiering on Monday (The Carrie Diaries and Star-Crossed) not faring so well. They can continue shifting low-rated shows over to Mondays (The 100/The Tomorrow People, whichever one survives into the new season), continue launching more femme-skewing shows (Carrie Diaries, Star-Crossed), OR, they can take a chance with one of their hotter prospects (iZombie, The Flash, Supernatural: Bloodlines) helping to push up their Monday average ratings. While doing the latter would probably not get iZ/TF/S:B as high of ratings launching it after The Vampire Diaries or Arrow, it could get them a toehold to build upon on Mondays. Personally, iZombie sounds great (from Veronica Mars/Party Down creator Rob Thomas it “centers on a medical student-turned-zombie who takes a job in the Coroner’s Office in order to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat so that she can maintain her humanity. However, with every brain she eats, she inherits the corpse’s memories.”) and I’d rather they not launch it on Monday and have it follow one of their bigger shows. It’d be natural to launch Supernatural: Bloodlines after Supernatural, but that might just be too much for some. I’d say, first episode, or first two episodes of S:B launch after Supernatural, then shift it to Mondays, followed with The 100/The Tomorrow People/Reign.

Tuesdays
The Originals-Supernatural combo has been good to the CW and they probably don’t want to tinker with it too much. Still, The Originals has shown itself to be a self-starter so I could see them moving it to bolster their Mondays and doing a double-shot of Supernatural (again, that’s probably a bit much, since it would make the CW’s Tuesdays totally alienate non-fans of Supernatural).

Wednesday
Wednesday has been the CW’s more male/action-skewing day for the past 2 years, with Arrow kicking off the night followed by Supernatural/The Tomorrow People/The 100. They’ve been trying to find something that clicks with Arrow and The Flash (which I’d say is pretty close to being a sure thing for a pick-up at the CW for a full series) will definitely click. So long as it matches the quality of Arrow (I gave up after half a season of awful, awful, awful dialogue but people seem to really like it) it looks like the best shot of retaining Arrow’s audience to give CW 2 consistently strongly-rated hours on Wednesday instead of just the 1.

Thursday
Could the CW do something dramatic and shift Vampire Diaries to a different night to help it? No, it won’t. Probably.
So the question is, what do they launch after The Vampire Diaries? They could keep Reign there, but why keep a modestly-rated show there when they could potentially do better with a more compatible show than a teenage period piece. iZombie seems to match TVD (in terms of genre at least). Vamps and Zoms. Sounds like a good fit. And if iZombie is as good as the past shows of creator Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Party Down), they’ll probably be keen to give it the best chance of survival.

Friday
Most likely it’ll be America’s Next Top Model followed by Hart of Dixie and then swap out ANTM for Whose Line is it Anyway come Winter/Spring, but they might switch it up and put in WLIIA a bit earlier.

So the 2014-2015 television schedule (according to me) looks like this:
new in italics

Monday: Supernatural: Bloodlines/Reign
Tuesday: The Originals/Supernatural (The Originals/Supernatural: Bloodlines or Supernatural/Supernatural: Bloodlines for first 1-2 weeks before shifting S:B to regular timeslot)
Wednesday: Arrow/The Flash
Thursday: The Vampire Diaries/iZombie
Friday: America’s Next Top Model/Hart of Dixie

Upfronts Preview Pt. 2: Shaping Up Television Pilot Season 2014

This is the second part of my preview of upfronts, the mid-May week when broadcast networks present their upcoming television schedules to advertisers in NYC, hoping to pique their interests with their new and returning shows so that they’ll buy airtime for commercials. This is when the fates of pretty much all your favorite shows will be revealed (renewed or canceled), which I went over here.

For the uninitiated, pilot season is the late-Winter-to-Spring scramble when broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, CW) sift through their pilots (first episode) to decide which ones to order to series. There’s usually a glut of pilots to go through, the vast majority of which never get seen by the general audience. Some will get retooled in later years for the same or different networks, but that is the rare exception.

Based on the descriptions, cast, and crew of the pilots under consideration, here’s the pilots that I think sound the best, or could fit or benefit their respective networks the most. OF COURSE just judging by the descriptions, cast, and crew without having seen the actual pilot is going into this process semi-blind. Who would’ve thought “a modern-day supernatural thriller based on the legend of Ichabod Crane and Sleepy Hollow” involving time travel and connecting the headless horseman to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse would’ve ended up so entertaining? Or that “a thriller about an ex-FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) leading the search to catch a diabolical serial killer, Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), who created a cult of serial killers” would end up such a fucking bollocky mess.

But, being the TV junkie that I am, here’s my thoughts on the pilots. I am not including any pilots already picked up to series such as Tina Fey’s Cabot College at FOX or Tina Fey’s Ellie Kemper-starring Tooken at NBC (don’t get your hopes up, Fey doesn’t appear in front of the camera in either series). You can view a (far) more extensive list here.

In the last part of my upfronts preview next week, I will opine about how the networks should schedule their 2014-15 television season to plug ratings gaps and strengthen their hands. Backseat-executive-ing all the way.

ABC
ABC heads into upfronts as the 4th-place network, sure they’ve got big hits on their hands with Modern Family, Scandal, Shark Tank, and a still-strong Grey’s Anatomy, but the rest of their schedule is in shambles, mediocre at best. None of their new shows in 2013-14 really broke out (they really weren’t bad at all though), so they’ll need to stock up on a lot of replacements.
•Comedy
Selfie
The modern take on My Fair Lady is inspired by the musical and tells the story of a self-obsessed 20-something woman (Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame) who is more concerned with “likes” than being liked. After suffering a public and humiliating breakup, she becomes the subject of a viral video and suddenly has more social media “followers” than she ever imagined — but for all the wrong reasons. She then enlists the help of a marketing expert at her company to help repair her tarnished image.
This one could really go either way, it could be a fun, clever comedy, or end up being all kinds of stupid. Gillan’s proven she can be decent/good at comedy with a stint on NTSF:SD:SUV::, I’m willing to try this out, even if I hate the character Amy Pond.

Strange Calls
Logline: Based on the Australian series, the U.S. version centers on a good-hearted but somewhat inept Boston cop who pulls night duty on Nantucket island, where he works from a creaky lighthouse. Strange, inexplicable phenomena start happening with frequency, so he teams with an eccentric lighthouse keeper — who is also the local paranormal authority — to deal with the strange calls that come into the lighthouse station.
I actually watched 3 episodes of this on hulu, and while it didn’t keep me entertained for its 30-minute runtimes, I found it charming and likeable enough and thought, hey, this could actually work as an American adaptation. Given that this doesn’t really have any big names behind it, and was rolled over from 2012’s pilot season, I’m not feeling optimistic. They have to handle the quirkiness of this show just right (Feels like a good fit for Rob Thomas’s (Veronica Mars, Party Down) sensibility), or else it’ll just be annoying and plodding.

Keep It Together
Logline: The semi-autobiographical comedy is based on Kevin Hart’s life and stand-up act and takes a candid look at the post-divorce life of a couple trying to forge a friendship for the sake of their kids, despite their differences.
I don’t really care about this, but Kevin Hart is a rising star with proven draw at the box office, banking on him to translate some of those fans to viewers is good gamble with few foreseeable downsides for ABC.

•Drama
Agatha
Logline: A character-driven procedural centering on a former convict-turned-big-city criminologist who is brought in to help local police crack a case involving a perplexing disappearance. The chief detective she’s been hired to help is her father — and they haven’t spoken in 15 years.
Could work

American Crime
Logline: Examines the personal lives of the players involved in a racially charged trial as their worlds are turned upside down.
Felicity Huffman is in this, I’m game

Clementine
Logline: Centers on a habitual criminal (Sarah Snook) who digs into the mystery of her origins after she becomes the target of a group of zealots who fear she possesses latent supernatural abilities that she will one day harness for either profound good or monstrous evil.
This actually sounds fun, then again, so did Park Avenue 666, it’s all in the execution (and script, I suppose).

Forever
Logline: The drama revolves around New York City’s best medical examiner Dr. Henry Morgan (Ringer’s Ioan Gruffudd), who studies the dead for a reason — he is immortal. With the help of Detective Jo Martinez, the layers will be peeled back on Henry’s colorful and long life through the cases.
Ehhhhhhh could work

How to Get Away With Murder
Logline: A sexy, suspense-driven legal thriller that centers on ambitious law students and their brilliant and mysterious criminal defense professor who become entangled in a murder plot that could rock their entire university and change the course of their lives.
Viola Davis is in this, I see her more as a serious dramatic movie actress, if she’s dipping her toe into television I want to see what caught her eye

Sea of Fire
Logline: Based on Dutch format Vuurzee, the drama centers on three teenage girls in a small town who star in a pornographic film and the effect it has on their families. It leads to a disappearance, a murder and host of other secrets boiling under the surface.
Cast: Jennifer Carpenter, Jack Davenport (Smash), Kier Gilchrist
I am intrigued, with a concept like that it could be a solid dramatic show, then again it’s on network television so the odds are against it

The Visitors
Logline: The drama is a race against the clock to defeat an unseen alien enemy out to destroy the world using the Earth’s most precious resource: children.
Keep trying with the sci-fi shows ABC, you’ll eventually find your next Lost, maybe

Warriors
Logline: Inspired by the state-of-the-art Walter Reed Military Medical Center, the drama follows the best and brightest of active duty military doctors and nurses as they practice trailblazing medicine on critically wounded warriors returning home from Afghanistan, on military families and veterans as well as administering to Washington’s government elite.
Could work as a serious quality drama show. Also Morena Baccarin is in it, and we all need to get our fix of Mrs. Brody now that she’s off Homeland

CBS
CBS has long been a dominant force in ratings, both in the all-important 18-49 demographic and especially so when it comes to total viewers. Shifting around some of its comedies and expanding Thursdays to 2-hours has resulted in mixed results, with Monday showing real weakness. CBS never really needs to pick up as many pilots as its competitors since they have so many hits on their hands, but with their #2 comedy (How I Met Your Mother) ending, and a handful of mediocrely-rated comedies to fill 4 comedy hours, they may need to stock up a bit more than in years past.
•Comedy
How I Met Your Dad
Logline: In the spirit of How I Met Your Mother, it tells the story from a female point of view. A brand-new story with new characters and a new voice at its center.
Honestly, CBS doesn’t have much to lose in at least trying this one out. It’ll get a number of viewers tuning in for curiosity’s sake, whether or not it’s good (and establishes itself as more than just a HIMYM carbon-copy knock-off) will determine how many more episodes those viewers stay on for. Then again the universally-reviled HIMYM series finale probably burned a lot of any goodwill from fans.

More Time With Family
Logline: Centers on a husband and father who is making a career change in order to spend more time with his family.
With Alyson Hannigan as a star and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as producers (for whatever reason…) this one oughtta get a series pick-up

•Drama
CSI spinoff/NCIS: New Orleans
It’s been about a season now with ONLY one CSI on air so I figure CBS would want to milk its most lucrative franchises just a bit more. One of the above spin-offs could possibly get a shot

Scorpion
Logline: Based on the life of William O’Brien, the drama revolves around an eccentric genius and his international network of super-geniuses who form the last line of defense against the complex threats of the modern age.
Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have had a hand in a ton of recent film and television hits: Star Trek, Transformers 3, Amazing Spider-Man 2 & 3, Sleepy Hollow, Fringe. I’d imagine CBS would want to start a relationship with the two

FOX
Fox axed X-Factor and with American Idol hitting lows in the rating, FOX has a lot more room on its schedule for new shows, which probably explains why Mindy Project got renewed, they really need shows to fill a lot of space.
•Comedy
Dead Boss
Logline: Based on the British series created by Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh, Dead Boss is a comedic mystery that finds overachiever Helen Stephens (30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski) wrongfully convicted of murdering her boss and forced to rely on her train wreck of a sister to prove her innocence.
JANE KRAKOWSKI BACK ON TV! SAY NO MORE! (The premise also seems like it could be a hoot, especially in the hands of Krakowski. Oh please don’t suck, please don’t suck please don’t suck.)

Fatrick
Logline: Centers on Patrick, a 30-something man who realizes that his life isn’t quite where it should be. The former fat kid is forced to face the damage caused by years of being “Fatrick” — a chubby little kid just trying to survive. The comedy will take place both in the past — showing “Fatrick” at school and at home — as well as in the present.
Could work, could suck

•Drama
Red Band Society
Logline: Based on the acclaimed Spanish series Polseres Vermelles, the dark comedy focuses on the daily lives of a group of teenagers living in a hospital who become unlikely friends. The depth of the unexpected friendships allows them to survive the challenges of growing up under such intense circumstances.
Could work. Stars Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer. It doesn’t sound very broad, more like something you’d see on Showtime or HBO, which intrigues me

NBC
Contrary to popular perception, NBC is #1 in the ratings right now, sure its Thursdays are miserable, but on the strength of The Voice, NFL Sundays from the fall, and the Blacklist, NBC is at the top of the pack right now. Still, Thursdays are a bloodbath for NBC and they’ve yet to figure out non-football Sunday programming.
•Comedy
Lifesaver
Logline: The comedy asks the question: How you get rid of the most maddening person in the world after he’s given you a kidney? It’s described as an odd couple comedy in which two polar opposites become inextricably linked.
Could work, maybe…..maybe. Possibly.

Mission Control
Logline: A workplace ensemble comedy in the tone of Anchorman that is set in 1962 and examines what happens when a strong woman (Krysten Ritter) butts heads with a macho astronaut (The Mindy Project’s Tommy Dewey) in the race to land on the moon.
Kind of interesting premise, could work. Also Tommy Dewey was solid in Mindy Project

•Drama
Constantine
Logline: Based on DC Comics’ Hellblazer graphic novels, the drama centers on master of the occult John Constantine (Matt Ryan), based on the “Hellblazer” graphic novels. Constantine is struggling with his faith as he is haunted by the sins of his past but is suddenly thrust into the role of defending humanity from the gathering forces of darkness.

Allegiance
Logline: Based on the Israeli format The Gordin Cell, the drama is a thriller that revolves around the O’Connor family and their son, Alex (Gavin Stenhouse), a decorated American war hero and CIA analyst who is a true patriot and loves his country and family. Unbeknown to him, both of his parents and sister are part of a dormant Russian sleeper cell that has just been reactivated.
Spy show? I’m game (at least for two episodes, more if it’s any good

Babylon Fields
Logline: The dead are rising in Babylon, N.Y., with lives regained, old wounds reopened and families are restored — for better or worse. The newly regenerated bodies are healing faster and growing stronger, prompting discussion that this might be the next step in human evolution.
Would be a lot more interested about this show except
a) it sounds like ABC’s recent Sunday show Resurrection, which sucked a bag of d’s
b) It was originally developed for CBS all the way back in 2007, which inspire much confidence in its quality that it was left on the shelf for that long

CW
They usually have one show per season I give a try, they’ve yet to have a show I stick with throughout the season however.
•Drama
iZombie
Logline: The supernatural crime procedural, based on the DC Comics title of the same name, centers on a medical student-turned-zombie who takes a job in the Coroner’s Office in order to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat so that she can maintain her humanity. However, with every brain she eats, she inherits the corpse’s memories. With the help of her medical examiner boss and a police detective, she solves homicide cases in order to quiet the disturbing voices in her head.
95% of the reason I’m excited about this show is that it comes from Rob Thomas aka creator of the sublime Veronica Mars and Party Down.

The Messengers
Logline: When a mysterious object crashes down to Earth, a group of seemingly unconnected strangers die from the energy pulse, but then awaken to learn that they have been deemed responsible for preventing the impending apocalypse.
I’ll give it a shot but I don’t expect much after they CW’d The Tomorrow People

Upfronts Preview Pt. 1: Will Your Favorite Shows be Canceled or Renewed?

Upfronts is the annual presentation each year in New York City in early May where the 5 major broadcast networks pitch their schedule for the upcoming television season to ad buyers and try to sell the bulk of their commercial time and also to start creating buzz for their new shows. So it’s usually (but not always) the deadline by which executives decide to cancel/renew shows (although it’s usually decided sooner, but it’s public and official at Upfronts). While cable networks (and increasingly, websites with digital shows) have been getting in on the action with their own upfronts presentation, I’ll focus on the Big 4 (+CW).

In Part 1, I’ll look at the current shows. Many of them have already been renewed/canceled, but there’s about two handfuls of those still on the bubble. Next week I’ll look at some of the pilots in consideration to become next season’s new shows and see which ones sound interesting.

Bold=Renewed/Cancelled Otherwise just speculation

ABC
Another season, another 3rd/4th-place finish. Since it’s Desperate Housewives-Lost-Grey’s Anatomy heyday, ABC has lost a LOT of ground. It has a very small handful of hits, but they are oases in a mostly barren desert. Perhaps this is why, while the other networks have issued a lot of renewals already, ABC hasn’t announced the fate of any of its shows. Let’s look at how their shows will probably shake out.
Likely Renewal:
-Modern Family Of course, it’s their top-rated show
-Scandal Their top-rated drama
-Grey’s Anatomy Yes this show is still on and while it’s dropped from its peak seasons, it still pulls in solid ratings. And it shuffles old cast members out and new ones in often enough to swap out the old faces (with more expensive contracts) for new ones (who cost less)
-Revenge Rule of Syndication: When a show hits 3 seasons of ≈22 episodes each, they only need one more full season to hit enough episodes to enter the lucrative syndication market. If a show gets 3 full seasons, they are practically guaranteed a 4th season, even if the ratings are lousy. Revenge will get a 4th season for that sweet, sweet syndication money
-Once Upon a Time See above
-The Middle It gets lost in the shuffle of ABC’s other, more high-profile shows, but The Middle has been steadily chugging along for 5 seasons, and it has beaten/tied American Idol a couple times this season in the 18-49 rating/total viewership this season. It’ll come back to continue anchoring ABC’s Wednesday night comedy line-up
-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Started off hot, has dropped off QUITE a bit since. It’s averaged a decent enough level for ABC to give it another shot (helps that ABC’s other new dramas have fallen flat), plus that sweet sweet Marvel synergy (Disney owns Marvel & ABC)
-Castle A steady performer
-Dancing with the Stars ” “
-The Goldbergs One of the few new ABC shows this season that has steadily drawn viewers. Not a huge amount, but a decent-enough number consistently
-Last Man Standing 3 full seasons=It will get one more to get to syndication
-Shark Tank One of ABC’s better performers, and it’s a cheaper reality show, it’ll be back

Toss-Up:
-Resurrection This show started off with very strong ratings but has fallen off sharply since then, dropping with every episode (because the show’s mediocre at best). If the ratings stabilize it’s viable for another season, if not…
-Suburgatory It’s at 3 seasons BUT its 3rd season was only 13 episodes long which means even with a full season renewal it will still fall short of the number of episodes needed to hit syndication. It’s ratings aren’t a disaster but still consistently drop off from its The Middle lead-in. ABC has a lot of holes to patch up so they may decided to leave this be for now and pick it up for another half(/full) season while they try to plug bigger holes in their schedule
-Nashville A true toss-up. See what I said about a show getting 3 seasons practically guaranteeing them a 4th. So if Nashville gets picked up for a 3rd season that pretty much means it’ll get a 4th season. Nashville’s ratings bounces around from cancellation-area low 1’s to doable mid-to-high 1’s. Seeing as how a tour for the show’s stars was recently announced, I imagine ABC will give this show another go, but it’s hard to tell with a show whose ratings routinely flirts with cancellation-level ratings

Likely Cancellation:
-Super Fun Night Awful in every way imaginable, didn’t get picked up for a full season after its initial 13 episodes (it got a discouraging 4 episode pick-up)
-Mixology Not as terrible as its concept and title would suggest, still, it’s dropping off a ton from it’s Modern Family lead-in and getting to Super Fun Night numbers, also ABC schedules new episodes of it when the rest of their Wednesday night line-up are in repeats, not an encouraging sign
-Trophy Wife This show was warmly received by critics (a lot better than its awful title suggests, it’s more of a Modern Family-lite), but has sunken to ratings firmly in the cancellation zone. ABC may turn around and surprised everyone with a renewal, but from purely a ratings standpoint, that’s highly, highly unlikely
-The Neighbors

CBS
CBS has given renewals to the vast majority of its shows already, the handful of shows that didn’t get a renewal probably won’t be seeing one
Renewed:
-The Big Bang Theory Renewed for 3 additional seasons taking it through 2016-17
-60 Minutes
-The Good Wife Thank God, I’ve recently really got into this show and would hate for it to get axed right when I was getting into it during one of its apparently strongest seasons
-2 Broke Girls
-Mike & Molly
-Mom
-NCIS
-NCIS: Los Angeles
-Person of Interest
-Survivor 2 more seasons
-Criminal Minds
-CSI
-The Millers
-Two and a Half Men
-Elementary
-Undercover Boss
-Hawaii Five-0
-Blue Bloods

Likely Cancellation:
-The Crazy Ones CBS’s weakest comedy from a ratings stand-point. I’ll be a bit sad to see it go but CBS will likely let it go and see if it can do better with a new show. Also doesn’t jive well with the rest of CBS’s multi-cam, laugh-track comedies
-The Mentalist It’s an older show (i.e. pricier to produce), gets very modest ratings, and (most damningly) wasn’t included in CBS’s slew of renewals.
-Friends with Better Lives It’s only had 2 episodes so far with its premiere following the series finale of How I Met Your Mother so it’s hard to tell. It couldn’t cash in on the massive HIMYM finale and ratings dropped off massively from HIMYM to FwBL and if it can’t get a good viewership with that lead-in, it will probably only go downhill from here on out. It doesn’t look optimistic
-Hostages, Intelligence They were both promoted as ‘limited series,’ if they did well they could be picked up for another season (i.e. Under the Dome), they both did miserably. They will not be returning

FOX
I’ll have a lot to say about FOX in the 3rd part when I talk about how I would schedule their 2014-15 season if I had control. FOX has crashed and burned hard this season, about 40% of its schedule was singing competitions and that over-reliance was good when the times were good during the heyday of American Idol, but it has fallen to Earth (and then some) and X-Factor never took off and was canceled so they have a LOT of real estate to fill for the upcoming television season.
Renewed:
-Bob’s Burgers
*American Dad! Will move to TBS for its next season
-The Simpsons
-Sleepy Hollow
-The Following
-Brooklyn Nine-Nine
-New Girl
-The Mindy Project
-Glee
-Bones
-MasterChef Junior
-MasterChef
-Family Guy

Toss-Up:
-Almost Human Its ratings weren’t particularly great, but wasn’t in cancellation territory either. That it wasn’t included in the slew of renewals FOX has handed out makes it seem like FOX will let this one go away quietly, buuut its ratings are on par with The Following (which got renewed) and they have at least 3 hours to fill come fall, I would renew it if I were FOX
-Surviving Jack Based on the two episodes I’ve seen, it’s not terrible (reminds me of The Goldbergs). It’s ratings aren’t great, but relative to FOX’s other comedies as of late, it’s about average. It’s only aired 4 episodes so it depends if it can maintain that level or if it falls off

Likely Cancellation/Canceled:
-Raising Hope 😦 R.I.P. Raising Hope, a charming, consistently good show that flew under the radar for 4 seasons. I’ll miss you Chance Family, Burt & Virgina 4ever
-Dads It got 5 episodes tacked on to its original 13-episode order instead of a full renewal and its last 2 episodes were burned off during the Olympics. Despite what seemed like universal hate of this show, it actually pulled in fairly decent numbers (on par with Brooklyn Nine-Nine). I wouldn’t be surprised if it were renewed despite its short season and universal scorn.
-Rake When you get demoted from a plum post-American Idol time slot to Friday and then again to Saturday, you’re gonna get canceled
-Enlisted It got pulled after its 9th episode with the rest of its episodes to be ‘aired at an unspecified future date,’ that is not what you do with a show that’s not going to get canceled

CW
Renewed/Likely Renewal:
-Supernatural
-The Vampire Diaries
-Arrow
-The Originals
-Reign
-Hart of Dixie Refer above to ABC’s Revenge about syndication

Toss-Up:
-The Tomorrow People Started off well enough after a strong Arrow lead-in, quickly shed viewers and is straddling the line between toss-up territory and cancellation
-The 100 Same as above

Likely Cancellation:
-The Carrie Diaries, Star-Crossed Terrible ratings, even by CW standards, nowhere near close to getting a syndication-ready number of episodes
-Beauty and the Beast Same as above with the addition of having its last 5 episodes pulled off the schedule to be burned off during summer, not something you do with a show you plan on renewing

NBC
Renewed/Likely Renewal:
-The Blacklist
-Chicago Fire
-Chicago PD
-Grimm
-The Voice
-Parks and Recreation
-About a Boy Granted its lead-in is The Voice, but it’s still NBC’s highest-rated comedy
-Growing Up Fisher Same as above except 2nd-highest rated comedy
-Law & Order: SVU It’s an older (aka pricier) show, so there’s been some speculation whether or not it’ll return. It helps anchors NBC’s Wednesday night and still performs decently, I don’t see NBC feeling comfortable enough with its schedule to give that up right now even if it’s expensive to make

Toss-Up:
-Community Of course Community is on the bubble. Relative to other NBC comedies, Community has been just barely strong enough to earn a renewal in seasons past, its edge has been cut ever thinner/disappeared with its past couple of episodes. It’s earning ratings on par with where Michael J. Fox Show/Sean Saves the World/Welcome to the Family were at when they were canceled. It’s reached enough episodes for syndication, this may be the season Community doesn’t escape cancellation. At least on NBC. I’d say Comedy Central picks up Community if NBC cancels it (they picked up rights to rerun Community really early and have saved Futurama from cancellation in the past) and helps it fulfill its question for #sixseasonsandamovie
-Hannibal, Dracula Both these shows are international co-productions, which means it’s a lot, lot cheaper to make. Which is good because these shows get dreadful ratings (even on the lower standards of Friday night). This all comes down to whether the low costs of the shows can offset the low ratings. Dracula earns slightly lower ratings than Hannibal and Hannibal has received critical acclaim (its second season has been SO solid). I’d say NBC cuts Dracula and brings back Hannibal for another season, but wouldn’t be particularly surprised if they both come back (or get canceled, though I will mourn for Hannibal if that is the case)
-Revolution It’s ratings have been just a hair above cancellation territory, seeing as how it’s in its 2nd season, if it gets renewed for a full 3rd season, NBC is basically on the hook for a 4th season (syndication money, remember), I don’t think they want to saddle themselves with a low-performed for that long
-Parenthood Pretty much in the identical situation as Community, borderline-cancellation territory show for 5 seasons, well-received by critics, ratings have dropped every season but was saved by its ratings relative to the rest of NBC’s schedule, but this season might be the one it finally bites the dust

Canceled/Likely Cancellation:
-The Michael J. Fox Show
-Ironside
-Sean Saves the World
-Welcome to the Family
-Crisis, Believe It’s fallen to terrible ratings