2015 Upfronts Pt. 3e: If I Scheduled the CW for 2015-16

Whew, the last part of my preview of Upfronts 2015, that daily ritual where the networks trot out to NYC to present next season’s television schedule to advertisers in an effort to entice them to buy commercial time upfront. I’ve taken a look at what shows look likely to be cancelled or renewed (the fates of which have pretty much all been revealed by now), the pilots under contention to be picked up to series, and how I would schedule the upcoming seasons of ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX. Time for the last network to schedule!

CW is a bit easy to schedule, and not only because it only has 10 hours of programming as opposed to 19 hours on the Big 3 and 14 on Fox. It renewed pretty much every scripted program not named ‘Hart of Dixie’ or ‘The Messengers’ from this past television season. While it launched one of, if not the most successful shows in CW history with The Flash, the ratings trends in Spring bring some cause of concern: The Vampire Diaries are hovering around series lows, Reign somehow is still alive, and Monday’s are modestly rated. Still, CW is in a stronger position than last year (evidenced by early renewals for the bulk of its shows), has opportunity, and more importantly, momentum to grow.

Monday
Current Schedule: The Originals/Jane the Virgin
Jane the Virgin has been a modest performer for the CW. But, it is easily, hands down the most critically acclaimed show broadcast on the CW…ever (granted the CW’s only been around for 9 years, but still). While that’s a low bar to clear, it’s also been one of the best-reviewed network shows this season and won a Golden Globe for star Gina Rodriguez. That’s all to say, the CW will keep with a modest performer if it can shine a light and garner awards/nominations. A minor uptick in the ratings following Rodriguez’s Golden Globe win didn’t really sustain through the rest of the season but its 18-49 ratings are on par with lead-in The Originals. At some point the CW may want to reconsider the time-slot, going up against femme-skewing shows like The Voice/Dancing with the Stars/The Bachelor(ette), but for now, let JtV stay put and let the audience find it (especially after potential Emmys). The lead in is the one that might need to adjust as the Vampire drama is an odd bedfellow for the dramedy. Let’s get comedy in front of comedy and use Whose Line is it Anyway to kick off the night. Tonally it’s more similar, and WLIIA has showed itself to be a reliable ratings draw no matter what day or season it airs. WLIIA has been wont to use CW castmembers as guests so kick off premiere week with 2 episodes of Whose Line featuring Jane the Virgin actors leading into the season premiere of Jane the Virgin.
(I see a strong possibility that the CW will slot very compatible musical-comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (originally developed for Showtime(!)) with Virgin)

Tuesday
Current Schedule: The Flash/iZombie
The Flash stays put…but what follows it? Will iZombie get a 22-episode order? Does the CW want to use Flash to launch a new show or prop up ratings for a current show? Where will The Originals go? Let’s use Flash to help launch Cordon. There’s only 2 new shows on the fall schedule and some short-order shows. iZombie, The Originals, Legends of Tomorrow (Flash-Arrow spinoff) are waiting in the wings and the CW can move around the schedule a bit in Winter/Spring to keep things interesting.

Wednesday
Current Schedule: Arrow/Supernatural
This combination works well, it’s been faltering a bit in recent weeks but still a potent combo. Leave it be.

Thursday
Current Schedule: The Vampire Diaries/Reign
Reign’s gotta go. Keep Vampire Diaries here and slot Cordon (which shares executive producer Julie Plec with Vampire Diaries) after it. Stick in Super Ex-Girlfriend. If iZombie gets another short 13-episode order, use The Flash to launch a show and the buzzier more compatible show would be Cordon.

Friday
Current Schedule: Whose Line is it Anyway?/The Messengers
Banish Reign here, but give it America’s Next Top Model has some sort of lead-in. ANTM starts early in summer, wraps up in mid-to-late fall then The 100 takes over.

2015-16 CW television schedule
new shows in italics

Monday: Whose Line is it Anyways?/Jane the Virgin
Tuesday: The Flash/Cordon
Wednesday: Arrow/Supernatural
Thursday: The Vampire Diaries/Super Ex-Girlfriend
Friday: America’s Next Top Model/Reign

Last Year’s Upfront Preview:
Part 3: CW
Part 3: FOX
Part 3: NBC
Part 3: CBS
Part 3: ABC
Part 2: Pilot Preview
Part 1: Cancel/Renew

2015 Upfronts Pt. 3d: If I Scheduled FOX for 2015-16

Other posts in the 2015 Upfronts Series: Cancel/Renewal Predictions. Pilot Preview. ABC Schedule. CBS Schedule. NBC Schedule.

FOX is gonna be a fun one to schedule. Fox had one of the biggest TV launches in quite some time, with unprecedented consistent growth. I’m talking of course about Empire. And if hadn’t been for Empire, the headlines in Spring would’ve read something along the lines of ‘American Idol hits ANOTHER low.’ Indeed, outside of Empire, FOX had few other successes. Glee and The Following went out with a whimper. Multiple shows didn’t just fail, but failed spectacularly. Almost every night is a fixer upper. Much of the past season’s shows were greenlit by Entertainment chief Kevin Reilly who left (ahem, pushed out) before the start of the season. This upcoming season will feature shows greenlit and promoted/executed by the pair of Dana Walden and Gary Newman, who long jointly headed 20th Century Fox Television, known for its great successes with shows such as Glee, Sons of Anarchy, Modern Family, etc.

Sunday
Current Schedule: Repeat/Bob’s Burgers/The Simpsons/Brooklyn Nine-Nine/Family Guy/Last Man on Earth
Not much to mess around with here. Simpsons, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Family Guy all staying put. Originally I wanted to push New Girl here and burn off what will probably be its last season in the 7/6 o’clock hour, which may very well still be an option, but hold it back for later in the season. Star Zooey Deschanel is pregnant anyways which will delay production on the show a bit. Also NFL football usually bleeds into Fox’s Sundays and New Girl is a hard transition from football. The live-action/animation mix has proven itself to be a good mix (proving my skepticism wrong) so keep it up. Save Last Man on Earth for spring and put John Stamos-starring ‘Grandfathered’ in the last half-hour.

Monday
Current Schedule: Gotham/The Following
Gotham stays, it can anchor the night. I still like Sleepy Hollow, though the last couple episodes of season 2 felt obviously tacked on. Its ratings suffered a bit in the second season so move it to another night where the worst it can do is hold at current ratings. Lucifer is another DC comics shows so double up and call it DC Night.

Tuesday
Current Schedule: Hell’s Kitchen/New Girl/Weird Loners
Tuesday needs a dramatic overhaul. No more Hell’s Kitchen on any of the other nights. It can’t sustain a 2-season/year cycle. It burns itself out too much. Dancing with the Stars & The Voice can do it because they replenish their cast and coaches, Hell’s Kitchen retreads itself way too much to have 2 16-or-so episode seasons months apart. Also New Girl is barely sustainable at its current ratings and there is no 9:30/8:30 comedy to follow it. Scrap this night and start from scratch.
Glee made Tuesdays its home for much of its run, so slot another Ryan Murphy show to see if the night can return to those ratings heights. Horror-comedy Scream Queens is probably the buzziest of Fox’s new shows (as close to a slam-dunk hit as Fox could get) so use that to launch the night. Follow it with another buzzy and not entirely-incompatible show: Minority Report.

Wednesday
Current Schedule: American Idol
Fox faltered here last fall with Red Band Society. Fox has also been slightly mistreating its veteran show Bones, attempting to ship it off to Friday 2 seasons ago before bringing it back to Mondays and have a big hiatus in the middle of its current season. As a result its ratings have suffered. Plunk it down in on Wednesdays and let it be to lead off the night. The investigative genre and male-female leads of Rosewood sound very compatible: “…series centers around the brilliant Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr., the top private pathologist in all of Miami. As owner of one of the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art independent labs in the country, he finds the secrets in bodies that others usually miss. Despite being constantly surrounded by death Rosewood is obsessed with life and savors every moment. His eternal optimism will frustrate the cynical female detective he often works with, but she can’t argue with the results that his unique perspective provides.”
There will inevitably be a failure on the schedule, particularly on the revamped days. Fox should just show repeats of Empire after a show fails. I’d be curious to see what kind of ratings it gets. Don’t waste the repeats on Friday, it’ll probably do well enough to be competitive.

Thursday
Current Schedule: Bones/Backstrom
Sleepy Hollow & Frankenstein. I can’t say I’m entirely optimistic about Thursday’s chances. Masterchef Junior could go here followed by Frankenstein but it seems too cruel to just cast Sleepy Hollow off to die on Friday.

Friday
Current Schedule: Movie
Masterchef Junior pulls in perfectly respectable ratings and it may be a bit of a waste it here but if worse comes to worse, if something fails on a different night MJ can be moved to that night with repeats continuing on Friday.

2015-16 FOX television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: Repeat/Bob’s Burgers/The Simpsons/Brooklyn Nine-Nine/Family Guy/Grandfathered
Monday: Gotham/Lucifer
Tuesday: Scream Queens/Minority Report
Wednesday: Bones/Rosewood
Thursday: Sleepy Hollow/Frankenstein
Friday: Masterchef Junior/Encore

Last Year’s Upfront Preview:
Part 3: FOX
Part 3: NBC
Part 3: CBS
Part 3: ABC
Part 2: Pilot Preview
Part 1: Cancel/Renew

2015 Upfronts Pt. 3c: If I Scheduled NBC for 2015-16

Cancel/Renewal Predictions. Pilot Preview. ABC. CBS.

Let’s talk about the last of the Big 3: NBC. It’s most likely to be the #1 network of the season, boosted by airing the Super Bowl, The Voice, Chicago P.D./Fire & The Blacklist. But it had one helluva rough season, its crop of new shows were a wash, Mysteries of Laura was (somehow) renewed while pretty much the rest of its freshmen shows came and went without so much as peep. As an example of how bad it is at NBC right now, this past week 5 of its hours were filled with Dateline. It could be looking at a steep drop in the ratings if it doesn’t shore up its schedule (particularly days when it’s not airing The Voice) quick.

Sunday
Current Schedule: Dateline/A.D.: The Bible Continues/American Odyssey
After football season was over, NBC aired A LOT of repeats and Dateline on Sundays. It’s like they just gave up on the day.
Originally I was gonna slot 3 female-led shows that NBC could promote as some sort of ‘Women Who Kick Ass’ night but then realized Shades of Blue would be better suited/more likely to get a post-Voice slot and Telenova was only half an hour.
Dateline will kick off the night because there’s only so many hours of the show that can be replaced, follow it with the slightly intriguing-sounding Blindspot (it may be NBC’s best bet of the night quality-wise and may be better to start it an hour earlier than when most cable dramas start). Chicago Medical may be a spin-off too many but at least it (probably) won’t out-and-out bomb, though I don’t foresee it becoming a runaway hit. That’d still be an improvement on all the dramas NBC have tried—and failed—to launch lately. Medical show Heartbreaker may be suitable follow-up, though I’m bearish on its prospects. Is it too early to start making predictions on which show will be the first to be axed in the fall season?

Monday
Current Schedule:The Voice/The Night Shift
NBC likes to gives its biggest, buzziest shows the post-Monday Night Voice slow, first was Revolution, then Smash, Blacklist, and State of Affairs. Whichever show gets the slow in the fall may not feel great to be on that list since 3 of those shows are cancelled and The Blacklist is hitting series lows after being moved. But, following the logic of it all, NBC will likely slot its big Jennifer Lopez-starring cop drama (I know, who the fuck, aside from the blind (and even then) will buy Lopez as a dirty cop) after The Voice. Hell they’ll probably get her to perform on the episode of The Voice preceding Shades of Blue’s premiere.

Tuesday
>Current Schedule:The Voice/Undateable/One Big Happy/Chicago Fire
The Voice starts off the night, Chicago Fire ends it. NBC has ordered a number of pilots, which means it could try launching comedies on another night, but Tuesdays comedy block will probably stay intact. Eva Longoria-starring Telenovela sounds extremely compatible to the post-Voice slot given their respective and likely audience. Out of the other comedies NBC has ordered, People are Talking or Superstore sound like a fit. People are Talking sounds like a good candidate…..to get its series order cut and not premiere until the summer of 2017 so Superstore it is.

Wednesday
Current Schedule:The Mysteries of Laura/Law & Order: Special Victims Unit/Chicago P.D.
The ratings on this night seems to swing wildly depending on whether or not there’s a crossover event on all of Dick Wolf’s shows. While it might seem like a good idea to keep Wednesday’s in tact, and it is, it’s a better idea to prop up NBC’s Thursday, which is on life support, to put it generously. Move Chicago P.D. over to kick off that night, keeping Mysteries of Laura and Law & Order in place. Crazy idea, slot comedies Coach and Crowded after Law & Order. I doubt it will happen, if anything Coach will get a Friday or earlier Wednesday slot, maybe even Thursday if NBC gives up on all drama Thursdays (or Tuesday if NBC wants to be crazy, the demographic of Coach does not match that of The Voice). The demographics of Mysteries of Laura fits well with Coach, but it would probably get stampeded by Modern Family.

Thursday
Current Schedule:Repeats/The Blacklist/Dateline
In theory, moving NBC’s smash hit The Blacklist to Thursdays to remake it as a drama night wasn’t bad on paper.
Except a) the audiences of Scandal and The Blacklist seemed to cannibalize each other a bit and
b) season 2 of Blacklist had been trending downward and was seemingly exacerbated by its move
While The Blacklist remains an extremely strong DVR player, NBC needs to build up the night quickly as the 2 dramas they surrounded it with (The Slap, Allegiance) quickly sunk like a stone.
With that in mind, move over Chicago P.D. from Wednesday so serve as a suitable lead-in, and close out the night with another seemingly testosterone-fueled show Game of Silence. It may be tempting to slot a different new show in the 1st hour and Chicago Medical in the last hour (y’know, to harken back to the days of ER) but 3 days in a row of Chicago [whatever] might be a bit much. I can’t wait ’till NBC greenlights Chicago Waste Disposal.

Friday
Current Schedule:Grimm/Dateline
Without some of sort of genre show to pair with Grimm this year as in years past (Constantine, Hannibal, Dracula), Friday is a bit tough to schedule. NBC could very well throw up their/its hands and say ‘fuck it’ and continue on with Grimm and 2 hours of Dateline, but The Player sounds like a show that will be schedule for the fall.

2015-16 NBC television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: Dateline/Blindspot/Chicago Medical/Heartbreaker
Monday: The Voice/Shades of Blue
Tuesday: The Voice/Telenovela/Superstore/Chicago Fire
Wednesday: Mysteries of Laura/Law & Order: SVU/Coach/Crowded
Thursday: Chicago P.D./The Blacklist/Game of Silence
Friday: The Player/Grimm/Dateline

Last Year’s Upfront Preview:
Part 3: NBC
Part 3: CBS
Part 3: ABC
Part 2: Pilot Preview
Part 1: Cancel/Renew

2015 Upfronts Pt. 3b: If I Scheduled CBS for 2015-16

I’ve looked at the chances of this season’s shows being cancelled/renewed. I’ve looked at some of the pilots. I’ve discussed at length what I might do if I were in charge of scheduling ABC. Now it’s time to take a look at CBS.

I touched a bit on CBS’s shaky future when looking at the pilots. They’ve had a lot of shows this season that are hits. All of them, pretty much are hits. CBS regularly dominates in total viewers, pulling in more viewers than the other networks combined. Thing is, the audience skews old. For better or worse, for whatever reason, the key demographic advertisers care about when it comes to broadcast television is the 18-49 demographic. The higher the 18-49 rating, the more they’re willing to shell out for a commercial slot. CBS may dominate in total viewers regularly (they’ve won something like 12 of the last 13 TV seasons in total viewers), but their shows skew old, and that old skew is not ‘youthening’ up (down?) anytime soon.

There’s the stereotype about CBS programming, its dramas are all spin-offs of some other crime/murderporn show, and its comedies are laugh-track, stale-joke shows. No matter the perception, for a long time, that worked. By simple virtue of having the most viewers, they naturally also had the most 18-49 viewers. That is becoming less and less the case every season. This season has seen many CBS stalwarts come down to Earth. The latest Big Bang Theory season finale finished down 20% from last year. The latest episode of NCIS pulled in 14M viewers compared to The Voice’s 9M. Totally got it beat, right? Not in the all-important 18-49 demo, they tied at 2.0. This is the demo that determines how financially-valuable a show is. And right now its right in line with a show pulling in 60% less total viewers. This is a show that pulled in 3’s and 4’s, that started out the season with a 2.9. Here’s the thing, for a show in its 12th season, that is really quite good, especially in today’s TV landscape. But NCIS is indicative of many of CBS’s shows, they’re in their umpteenth season, on a slow descent in the ratings, still pulling in respectable numbers, but CBS hasn’t really hit it big with any of its new shows in recent years. While ABC has a good mix of old, middle-aged, and young shows, CBS’s best-performing shows are shows it launched 5+ years ago and its newer shows have been middling at best.

These shows have life in them yet, but CBS is a 2nd place network. ABC (3rd) is nipping at its heels. CBS may remain in 2nd for seasons to come due to FOX & NBC’s struggles, but really, they want to be 1st and to do that they need to launch 18-49 hits, without immediately alienating their current audience or they’ll end up the network version of JC Penny.

Sunday
Current Schedule:60 Minutes/Madam Secretary/The Good Wife/Battle Creek
Sunday is a fixer-upper. Madam Secretary is another prime example of the double-edge sword of CBS programming, it pulls in perfectly fine ratings in total viewership, but man oh man does this show skew old. It started off decently with a 2.0 rating (far from spectacular given how hard CBS was pushing this show) ended with a 1.0 for its last two episodes of the season. That. is. miserable. Multiple comedies have been cancelled recently pulling in ratings a little higher than a 1.0 and a) they’re on networks worse off than CBS & b) comedies are less expensive to produce than hour-long dramas. CBS inexplicably renewed it in a wave of freshmen renewals earlier in the season, and boy they must be kicking themselves for it.
All this is to say, they probably can’t stop the bleeding, but they need stave it off. When Fox renewed Glee for 2 seasons and then saw its ratings plummet, they cut the episode order for its last season and shipped it off to Fridays.
Do that. Order 13 episodes and push it elsewhere. Sundays & Thursdays are the most valuable nights and CBS’s Sunday shows have been 3rd/4th-place finishers in the Spring.
60 Minutes usually drops off in Spring, but when it has football in front it can pull in ratings. There’s bigger problems then messing with a show that’s been in its time slot since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. CBS moved The Amazing Race to Fridays and, of course, its ratings dropped, and not to an acceptable depressed-Friday-ratings standard either. TAR was doing perfectly fine on Sundays before getting shipped off. Bring it back and see how it does. It couldn’t do worse than Madam Secretary. It serves as a segue from a news show to scripted shows, appealing to both CBS’s broad/older audience while not putting off the 18-49 demo.
Sundays is admittedly a difficult place to launch a drama, especially if you’re on network television. Cablers from AMC, HBO, Showtime, and even FX this past summer have staked their claim on Sunday nights as the place for prestige & boundary-pushing television. CBS should take its biggest, buzziest show and stick it in the 3rd hour: Supergirl. Sundays in fall particularly skew more male between Football, Walking Dead, and other testosterone-infused shows. While Supergirl will pull in comic book fans (a decidedly male-skewing demographic), it could very well intrigue and get sampling from females watching the first female superhero-starring network show in…forever?
Plant a flag on Sunday nights and follow up Supergirl with another buzzy show: Limitless.

Monday
Current Schedule: 2 Broke Girls/Mike & Molly/Scorpion/NCIS: Los Angeles
CBS’s Thursday Night Football gives it a chance to temporarily relocate its biggest comedy to help bolster its Mondays. Other than that, I wouldn’t tinker with Mondays too much; while it hovers around 2nd-3rd place for the night, Scorpion is probably the most stable of CBS’s new shows this past season. Additionally, moving NCIS: Los Angeles in its 10/9 o’clock hour, while leading to a bit of a steeper-than-predicted ratings depreciation, has managed to shore up an hour CBS has had trouble with. Its ratings have mostly stabilized. The question becomes which new comedy to have follow TBBT on Mondays? CBS hasn’t ordered too many comedies thusfar (that might change when they officially announce their schedule at their upfronts presentation), but out of the two ordered so far, Jane Lynch-starring Angel from Hell sounds better. After TBBT moves back to Thursdays, Angel from Hell will probably mesh at least decently with its presumed lead-in 2 Broke Girls.

Tuesday
Current Schedule: NCIS/NCIS: New Orleans/Person of Interest
Tuesdays is mostly firm night for CBS, but its ratings slide from the beginning to end of the 2014-15 season are worrying. The back-to-back NCIS programming might be burning out audiences who may getting their fill of NCIS after 1 hour of the show. Move NCIS: New Orleans to another night. After spending its entire 12 seasons anchoring Tuesdays, it may be time to shift NCIS (this was also right around the same time in CSI’s life that CBS moved it from its Thursday night perch). Move NCIS an hour later and help it launch a new show (sorry Person of Interest, in my scenario it gets cancelled). Put another buzzy movie-to-TV show adaptation into the 8/7c slot,, Rush Hour will probably get some sampling for its initial episode, and will counterprogram NBC’s The Voice in the same hour. That it’s a cop show will fit in with NCIS. Place Code Black, CBS’s medical drama in the 10/9 o’clock hour

Wednesday
Current Schedule: Survivor/Criminal Minds/CSI: Cyber
The first 2 hours are good enough for now, though CBS has been having some struggles in the last hour on Wednesdays. Reports are that CSI: Cyber has been renewed. Whether or not it has, let’s not place it back in its old time slot where it premiered modestly and by the end of its run was routinely beaten by competition on NBC (Chicago P.D.) and ABC (Nashville). NCIS: New Orleans goes into the 10/9 hour to stem the bleeding and hopefully stabilize the hour.

Thursday
Current Schedule: The Big Bang Theory/The Odd Couple/Mom/TBBT repeat/Elementary
With the relative dearth of comedy orders from CBS coupled with its struggles maintaining 2 hours of comedies on Thursday (it currently has a TBBT repeat regularly scheduled for the night) AND its many drama renewals, it’s conceivable that it will cut back an hour of comedies on Thursday.
But, I’m more bearish than bullish on the likelihood of that possibility so sticking with the 2 hours of comedy that CBS currently has, and assuming The Odd Couple gets renewed (it had a pretty good hold of TBBT’s audience until it tapered off a bit towards the tail end of its run), have TBBT & Mom continue leading off the 7(/8) and 8(/9) hours, with The Odd Couple sandwiched between them and and Mom leading out to new family comedy Life in Pieces. Initially I was adamant that Elementary would move to Friday (and still think that very well could be the case), but given how I’ve scheduled the preceding days and not seeing any chance of Madam Secretary moving to Thursday, I reluctantly keep Elementary in its place. It’s definitely a prime candidate for a move to Friday given its trending downward ratings.

Friday
Current Schedule: The Amazing Race/Hawaii Five-0/Blue Bloods
Hawaii Five-0 could very well get cancelled, but I’m a bit more optimistic about its survival chances. I don’t see Madam Secretary getting a chance to lead in to any programs so stick it into the last hour and shift the current scripted shows on Friday back an hour.

2015-16 CBS television schedule
new shows in italics

Sunday: 60 Minutes/The Amazing Race/Supergirl/Limitless
Monday: The Big Bang Theory/Angel from Hell/Scorpion/NCIS: Los Angeles
(After football: 2 Broke Girls replaces TBBT)
Tuesday: Rush Hour/NCIS/Code Black
Wednesday: Survivor/Criminal Minds/NCIS: New Orleans
Thursday: Thursday Night Football
(After football: The Big Bang Theory/The Odd Couple/Mom/Life in Pieces/Elementary)
Friday: Hawaii Five-0/Blue Bloods/Madam Secretary

Last Year’s Upfront Preview:
Part 3: CBS
Part 3: ABC
Part 2: Pilot Preview
Part 1: Cancel/Renew

2015 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 upcoming television season to ad buyers in an attempt to sell the bulk of their commercial time (and also create early buzz for their shows). It’s usually (but not always) the deadline by which executives decide which shows to renew/cancel (although it’s usually decided sooner, it’s public and official at the 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 look at the current schedule for the nearly-ended 2014-15 season (summer shows excluded). Many have already been renewed/canceled, and the fates of the rest are mostly obvious but there’s a handful still on the bubble. Next week I look at pilots under consideration to receive a series order.

Shows in bold have officially been Renewed or Cancelled, shows NOT in bold are predictions.

ABC
Renewed/Likely Renewal:
-How to Get Away with Murder
-Modern Family
-Scandal
-Grey’s Anatomy
-The Middle
-The Goldbergs
-Black-ish
-Nashville
Consistently middling ratings but having 3 full seasons under its belt practically guarantees a fourth full season due to syndication; 88 episodes is the unofficial minimum number of episodes a show needs to be eligible for the lucrative syndication market
-Fresh off the Boat
-Agent’s of S.H.I.E.L.D.
-Once Upon a Time
-Dancing with the Stars
-The Bachelor(ette)
-America’s Funniest Home Videos
-Castle
-Secrets & Lies
-Shark Tank
-20/20

Toss-Up:
-Agent Carter
I hope Agent Carter comes back for another season as it’s probably my favorite comic book-based TV show (either Carter or iZombie, but probably Carter). It had middling ratings, however, news that ABC is developing not one, but TWO, Agents of SHIELD spinoffs doesn’t bode well for Agent Carter. They’d probably rather take a chance on a spin-off featuring two new, popular characters from AoS than continue on with a show that never really broke out.
-Last Man Standing

Likely Cancellation:
-Selfie
-Manhattan Love Story
-Forever
-The Taste
-Cristela
-Resurrection
-Galavant
-Revenge
-Repeat After Me
-American Crime

CBS
Renewed/Likely Renewal:
-The Big Bang Theory
-Mom
-2 Broke Girls
-Mike & Molly
-Madam Secretary
-NCIS: New Orleans
-Scorpion
-60 Minutes
-Undercover Boss
-NCIS: Los Angeles
-NCIS
-Person of Interest
-Survivor
-Criminal Minds
-The Odd Couple
-Elementary
-Blue Bloods
-48 Hours

Toss-Up:
-The Good Wife
I really, really hope it comes back. If it does I imagine it’ll be a shortened 13-episode season. Its ratings are pretty miserable this season though
-CSI: Cyber
-Stalker
-Hawaii Five-0

Likely Cancellation:
-The Millers
-The McCarthys
-Battle Creek
-CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Final Season Complete
-The Mentalist
-Two and a Half Men

CW
Renewed/Likely Renewal:
-The Flash
-Arrow
-Supernatural
-Vampire Diaries
-The Originals
-Jane the Virgin
-The 100
-Hart of Dixie
-Reign
-America’s Next Top Model
-iZombie
-Whose Line is it Anyway?

Toss-Up:
-The Messengers
Pretty bad ratings, even for Friday, granted it’s only had 2 episodes thusfar. Could be renewed & aired as a summer show a la Beauty & the Beast depending on how its ratings shakes out

Cancelled/Likely Cancellation:
-Hart of Dixie

FOX
Likely Renewal:
-Empire
-Gotham
-The Simpsons
-Last Man on Earth
-Sleepy Hollow
-New Girl
-Bob’s Burgers
-Brooklyn Nine-Nine
-Hell’s Kitchen
-Family Guy
-American Idol
-Masterchef
-Masterchef Junior

Toss-Up:
-Bones
-The Mindy Project
When its 3rd-season episode order was upped to 21, this show was practically guaranteed a 4th season thanks to syndication
-World’s Funniest Fails

Cancelled/Likely Cancellation:
-Gracepoint
-Mulaney
-Red Band Society
-Utopia
-Weird Loners
-The Following
-Backstrom

Final Season Complete
-Glee

NBC
Likely Renewal:
-The Blacklist
-Chicago Fire
-Chicago P.D.
-Law & Order: SVU
-Grimm
-The Night Shift
-Undateable
-Dateline
-The Voice
-The Biggest Loser

Toss-Up:
-The Mysteries of Laura
Not great 18-49 demo ratings, but a solid overall viewership, has held pretty consistently throughout its run

Likely Cancellation:
-A to Z
-Bad Judge
-Allegiance
-Constantine
-Marry Me
-American Odyssey
-About a Boy
-One Big Happy
-State of Affairs

Final Season Complete
-Parks & Recreation
-Parenthood

Last Year’s Upfront Preview:
Part 1: Cancel/Renew