Schedule Five-Spot, WE 1/15/12 - Hot in Cleveland, Psych, Apartment 23, Work It, Mad Men

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending January 15, 2012:

Hot In Cleveland - Happy 90th, Betty White! TV Land is celebrating with a 24-episode fourth-season renewal for Betty's sitcom Hot in Cleveland. It persists as the face of the network's original programming despite continued big ratings declines (because they still can't find anything that does better). Additionally, they're picking up Have Faith, the first Hot In Cleveland spinoff. It stars Cedric the Entertainer as a priest he played in a previous Hot episode.

Psych - One of my personal faves will be returning for a seventh season as USA has renewed Psych. The first half of season six held up quite nicely in what was otherwise a mostly down autumn for USA's dramas, and it actually ever-so-slightly edged Burn Notice as USA's biggest drama in 18-49 this fall (1.03 to 1.02). It's amazing that by the end of this renewal, the show will be just one season shy of Monk's run, as Monk just always seemed higher-profile.

Apartment 23, Scandal - ABC left three scripted shows unscheduled in its midseason announcement. For two of those, it was certainly worth the wait. Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 will become the fourth show to regularly air post-Modern Family starting on April 11, while Shonda Rhimes newbie Scandal goes after Grey's Anatomy starting April 5. Private Practice's 3+ year run after Grey's Anatomy ends, at least for now, as it shifts to Tuesday.

Work It - The third of the unscheduled scripted shows may be getting a timeslot as early as this week. If the speculation is to be believed, then phase one of Cougar Town's return was the removal of Work It, which posted a (lemme rub it in one last time) "not-a-flop" 2.0 on premiere night, dropped to 1.5 last Tuesday and is now gone. Anyway, the speculation is that the 15-episode Cougs order will replace Work It on Tuesday at 8:30 in early February.

Mad Men, The Killing, The Walking Dead - Lots of AMC news came out of the TCA press tour. First, season three of The Walking Dead (that is, the next one) will be 16 episodes. And their spring scheduling fell into place; Mad Men returns March 25 and airs Sunday 10/9c, and controversial (to put it kindly) The Killing amusingly returns on April Fool's Day and airs Sunday 9/8c. Both have two-hour premieres. And unscripted series Comic Book Men kicks off on February 12.

The Five-Spots are my recaps of what aired, what got renewed/cancelled and what rated well or poorly last week in TV. For more Five-Spots, see the Index.