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
AVthatsme 