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.

Variety has an article this week about which shows are “on the bubble,” that is to say the ones that are in danger of being cancelled to make way for new shows in the fall. Luckily none of the shows I watch are on the list, except Studio 60. But I’ve had months to prepare for Studio 60′s death.

One interesting thing is the note that Scrubs might switch networks, from NBC to ABC. Switching networks is something only a very few shows have been able to pull off, and most of them weren’t in their seventh season when it happened. But we’re always expecting every season of Scrubs to be its last, just because it never seems to find a big enough audience, so nothing will come as a surprise.

Of course, you also have to wonder when a show is considered “off the bubble” and just plain old cancelled. Like, for example, The Nine is listed as a “long shot”. Which, consdiering they yanked it from the schedule last year and never even hinted they’d ever show any more episodes, I think it can be taken off the list. You know? “Long shot” means there’s actually some kind of chance.

The rest of the list are all shows that I don’t care about one bit. It’s a surprise to see Jericho on there, because I thought it was doing pretty well. Even if I did stop watching it months ago. The rest of them? They were duds right out of the box, and apparently I could tell because I never watched any of them. So they won’t be missed. Bring on the new pilots!

Hat tip: TV Squad.