Schedule Five-Spot, WE 4/29/12 - CBS Summer, The Lying Game, Fringe, Happily Divorced, Community

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending April 29, 2012:

CBS Summer - CBS revealed the deets on yet another relatively light summer of original programming. For the third straight summer, Big Brother will air on Wednesday/Thursday/Sunday, with the premiere coming on Thursday, July 12. Dating series 3 goes after the Sunday edition of Big Brother starting on July 22. Their other new summer series, reality program Dogs in the City, will start much earlier in the summer, airing Wednesdays at 8/7c starting May 30.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 4/15/12 - New Girl, Game of Thrones, Breaking In, Hell's Kitchen, The Game

Another edition covering two weeks! Technically speaking, here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending April 15, 2012:

New Girl - Fox handed out renewals to their Tuesday lineup of Glee, New Girl and Raising Hope. New Girl has dropped a ton from its early fall numbers but is still easily Fox's biggest success in the live action half-hour arena in quite some time. Critically beloved Raising Hope probably made its case when it held up pretty well in its tryout at 8/7c this spring. Glee remains way down year-to-year but certainly deserves a season four, even if it'll likely keep bleeding.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 4/1/12 - The Big Bang Theory, Teenage Daughter, Smash, Hell's Kitchen, Bones

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending April 1, 2012 (and also the previous week):

CBS Season Finale Dates - The CBS finale dates revealed that the net is basically sitting out nearly the entire final week of May sweeps. Its last finales come on May 17, the first day of the final week of the season, and Thursday tentpole The Big Bang Theory is ending a week earlier. Several shows (2 Broke Girls, Unforgettable, CSI) are ending even earlier to make way for double-sized finales for How I Met Your Mother, NCIS: Los Angeles and Criminal Minds.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 3/18/12 - Luck, The Good Wife, Dallas, Grimm, Jersey Shore

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending March 18, 2012:

Luck - In one of the season's more bizarre stories, HBO's Luck is suddenly done for after a third horse died during production of the racing drama. This happened early in the production of season two, and the show will conclude airing at the end of its first season on Sunday. Despite critical acclaim, the show was a huge ratings disaster, frequently coming in below the 500,000 viewer and 0.2 demo thresholds.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 3/11/12 - Terra Nova, The Star Next Door, Justified, Duets, America's Got Talent

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending March 11, 2012:

Terra Nova - The buzziest news of the week had to be Fox's cancellation of Terra Nova. I asked when evaluating its first two weeks whether this was a show that needed to be a big hit to survive. Though the show did drop a lot from the 3.1 demo of those first two weeks, I still think that was probably close to the truth. Later in the week, Netflix "eyed" a pickup of the show. My advice: treat that as what it is - a long shot - and be pleasantly surprised if it happens.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 3/4/12 - Anger Management, The Finder, Shark Tank, Jane By Design, Saving Hope

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending March 4, 2012:

FX Summer - The big cable schedule announcement was that FX will have a jam-packed comedy Thursday starting on June 28. The Wilfred/Louie block that inhabited the night last summer returns intact, but it'll be surrounded by much-ballyhooed Charlie Sheen sitcom Anger Management (which premieres with two eps starting at 9:00, but will usually be original just at 9:30) and Russell Brand late night show Strangely Uplifting (at 11:00).

Schedule Five-Spot, February 2012 - House, Touch, Bent, Community, Archer

It's been three weeks since my last one of these, and since I don't particularly care about pilot casting, there's never really been a week with five good scheduling "spots" at once. So I'm just gonna recap some of the bigger scheduling news from the last three weeks.

House - The big scheduling tidbit of early February had to be Fox making official the end of House. This was one of the dominant TV ratings forces of the aughts, and looked pretty healthy as recently as two years ago. But the last couple years have brought huge and fairly consistent declines. As is usually the case with former ratings giants, the negative costs got driven up, making its still decent ratings much less acceptable than they'd normally be.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 2/5/12 - Cable Renewals, Alcatraz, Kitchen Nightmares, Awake, Breaking In

After two weeks full of pilot pickups but very little immediate scheduling news, it all came at once, as it so often seems to. So here's the Schedule Five-Spot for a busy week ending February 5, 2012:

Cable Renewals - Lots of these this week. Showtime re-upped its whole current Sunday lineup of Shameless, House of Lies and Californication as did HBO with Luck despite its weak ratings start. Top Chef will be back for season 10 on Bravo. TV Land renewed The Exes, meaning we still don't know how low a TV Land show has to go to get axed. And FX renewed Sons of Anarchy for season six while inking creator Kurt Sutter through a potential seventh.

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.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 1/8/12 - So You Think You Can Dance, Flashpoint, In Plain Sight, The Voice, Allen Gregory

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending January 8, 2012:

So You Think You Can Dance - Credit Nigel Lythgoe for putting this news in the most inflammatory way possible (the dreaded C-word). Is it technically a cancellation when you just cut the runtime back? As I tweeted earlier, the irony is SYTYCD is really the only talent competition whose results and performance show ratings are about equal, but of course the overall declines are more important; the show couldn't consistently break a 2.0 demo late last season.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 12/18/11 - The Finder, The League, EM:HE, Undercover Boss, Off Their Rockers

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending December 18, 2011 (plus one from two weeks ago):

The Finder - One note from an otherwise slow WE 12/11/11 was that Fox rectified one of the strangest items from its midseason announcement. Previously, Fox was planning to launch Bones spin-off The Finder with no real support after a repeat of Bones on January 12. Now, Fox has moved an original into the 8:00 hour. Not only should this help The Finder, but it'll be a good indicator of where Bones (which has had big lead-ins all season) is really at.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 12/4/11 - Grimm, Touch, Breaking In, Justified, Army Wives

Didn't do one of these for the short Thanksgiving week, but I'm bringing over the one significant piece of news from that week (the Grimm full season) and trying to squeeze that, a Fox midseason announcement and lots of cable news into one Five-Spot. Good luck to me! Here's the Sked Five-Spot for the week ending 12/4/11:

Grimm - The full season is certainly good news for Grimm, but it doesn't really even cancel out the horrible news from the previous week that it'll stay on Friday. As I said last week in the Power Rankings, I think the low viewing levels of Friday will eventually wear down this kind of show. Fringe and Dollhouse also had promising Friday night starts but eventually lost huge chunks of that initial audience. I'll be watching its Thursday ratings with great interest this week.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 11/20/11 - Rules of Engagement, A Gifted Man, Survivor, Dexter, South Park

Phew! The news just seems to come in bunches. This one is mostly about CBS' midseason announcements but touches on a couple other things too. Here's my third and final Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending November 20, 2011:

Rules of Engagement - OK, so I know CBS likes to be particularly retentionista with their comedies, but does Rules of Engagement really deserve to have its episode count trimmed? I don't have any delusions that the show is Truly as strong as its raw numbers indicate, but my metric still has the show a little stronger than most of CBS' second tier of mostly "safe" dramas. If an expansion of comedy is nigh (and it should be), I'd want to have this around.

Schedule Five-Spot, NBC Midseason

Here's the second of three Schedule Five-Spots this week, looking at all of NBC's midseason moves. I looked at ABC's midseason earlier.

New Comedy Flip - I give this one the "good news" color because moving Up All Night to the Thursday lineup and Whitney to Wednesday is shrewd. It still probably should've happened at the upfront. Even at its current below-2.0 level, Up All Night is arguably overachieving on Wednesday, and it's certainly Truly stronger than a Whitney getting similar demos in a much easier timeslot. Meanwhile, newbie Are You There, Chelsea? joins Whitney on Wednesday.

Schedule Five-Spot, ABC Midseason

OK kids, there will actually be three Schedule Five-Spots this week, which will hopefully make up for the lack of one last week. I'll look at ABC and NBC midseason today, then do the miscellaneous stuff (mostly but not totally CBS) tomorrow.

Tuesday - ABC's only real "problem night" this season has been Tuesday, where Man Up! has bombed, Body of Proof has underperformed and Dancing with the Stars is leaving the schedule for several months. The Man Up! void will be filled by critically-reviled newbie Work It!, which is at least another multicam, while ABC's main attraction in the twixt-Dancings slot will be short-order drama The River. Meanwhile, Body of Proof gets a small extension to 20 eps total.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 11/6/11 - Bob's Burgers, American Horror Story, Who's Still Standing?, One Tree Hill, Once Upon a Time

Not included here is the renewal of The X Factor, but I didn't have much to say about it! Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending November 6, 2011:

Bob's Burgers - Fox has given a full-season order to sophomore animated comedy Bob's Burgers, which had only a 13-episode order originally since it premiered at midseason last year. If you're into tea-leaf reading as I am, I see this as having much less to do with Burgers itself (it's not even airing currently) than with the weak opening ratings from Allen Gregory. News of the back nine came right around the same time Fox would've seen the ratings. Coincidence?!

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 10/30/11 - The Walking Dead, Person of Interest, Homeland, Anger Management, In Living Color

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending October 30, 2011:

The Walking Dead - AMC's picked up a third season of their zombie drama. To say this is "no surprise" is a major understatement. Season two premiered on October 16 with a 3.8 A18-49 rating, then week two dropped to a 3.6. If it can stay there, it'd be cable TV's strongest drama, with really only NCIS and Criminal Minds consistently higher among the broadcasters. It's warped expectations for AMC, which still struggles to break 1.0 with its other dramas.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 10/23/11 - Sons of Anarchy, The Glades, How to Be a Gentleman, Fear Factor, Love in the Wild

Here's your Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending October 23, 2011:

Sons of Anarchy - FX has renewed their flagship original program Sons of Anarchy for a fifth season. The show's fourth season set series highs in the opener with 4.927 million viewers and a 2.5 A18-49 rating and should be in the running with season two for the highest-rated Sons season yet. Despite FX's recent successful launch of American Horror Story, Sons remains (at least for now) the highest-rated FX series by a fairly comfortable margin.

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 10/16/11 - Ringer, Suburgatory, Boardwalk Empire, Charlie's Angels, Prime Suspect

Another jam-packed week of scheduling news. Thought about splitting it in two again, but instead I'll just cover multiple items in most of these "spots." An exercise in being concise! Here we go:

Ringer, The Secret Circle, Hart of Dixie - The CW gave full-season orders to all of their new scripted shows this fall. It marks two straight seasons that all the net's new scripted shows got the order. Like last year's Hellcats/Nikita slate, none of these shows are clear hits, but none are clear flops either. At least not yet. The moves ensure the net will have a relatively full schedule this season, so does One Tree Hill go to Wednesday or replace repeats elsewhere?

Schedule Five-Spot, WE 10/9/11, Good News - New Girl, Up All Night, Whitney, 2 Broke Girls, Fox renewals

I wanted to bring back the full complement of weekly Five-Spots last week or a couple weeks ago. But there was very little scheduling news until last week, when it all flew in at once. So I'm kicking off a new season of Schedule Five-Spots with a double dose today. This is the "good news" edition looking at the full season pickups to date and some other renewals from this week. "Bad news" went up about an hour ago.

New Girl - For the second straight year, the first full-season pickup went to a show airing on Tuesday at 9/8c on Fox. Last year, Raising Hope. This year, Zooey Deschanel's New Girl, which has done far better even than Hope (and was picked up a week earlier). It broke out with a 4.8 demo on premiere Tuesday and has remained well above a 4.0 in its two subsequent airings, and this has come despite major declines from Glee at 8:00.