It’s that time again, upfronts season. This week is when the big TV networks all announce their fall schedules, including which new pilots are in and which failed shows from last year are out. And while the upfronts are supposed to be geared just towards advertisers, over the last decade, with the rise of the internet, it’s really turned into a huge press day for letting the viewers know which new shows will be coming out this September.
Today was NBC’s day to make their announcements. And I’m not going to cover everything, since you can find full coverage in a hundred other places, including TV Squad and Zap2It. But here are some of the things that jump out at me:
Scrubs had been on the bubble over the last few weeks, with news coming out that it was renewed, or it was cancelled, or NBC was cancelling it and it would move to ABC, to a hundred other possibilities. But today it’s official that the show is staying on NBC, Thusday nights, although this will almost surely be the last season. For a show that has ridden under the radar with middling ratings for its entire life, seven seasons is damn good. Glad to see it’s back.
Studio 60 is cancelled. Officially. Which isn’t a huge surprise since it got trememdously low ratings and was jerked all around the schedule this spring. At least it wasn’t cancelled and pulled early in the season, like so many other unlucky shows were, but it certainly wasn’t treated well. It’s coming back on May 24th to finish out the rest of the season, probably another six episodes. And that’s a courtesy many cancelled shows don’t get, so I guess we should be happy.
Also cancelled: a whole raft of midseason shows that just didn’t catch on. This was a really weak midseason, for all the networks but NBC in particular. The Black Donnellys, Andy Barker, P.I., Raines. Didn’t watch ‘em, don’t care.
Heroes is back, of course. It’s one of the biggest hits NBC has right now. And next year they’re making six extra episodes, called “Heroes: Origins”, that will be outside the season’s main story arc and each introduce one new character. Kind of a strange idea, and we’ll have to see how it plays out. There’s nothing wrong with more Heroes.
New shows: All dramas and dramadies this year for NBC. And they’re trying to cash in on the whole sci-fi/superheroes thing a little bit, which might backfire on them. Bionic Woman is an update of the old show from the 70s, Journeyman is about a guy who travels through time changing lives, and Chuck is an ordinary guy who gets a bionic brain implant. Can’t say any of those jump out at me, but I’ll probably give the first episodes a try, at least.
The Apprentice is not on the schedule at all, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. It just means they still have a Trump headache and don’t want to think about him for a while. Can’t say I blame them.
Tomorrow? ABC’s new shows.
