FOX’s most highly-touted drama pilot the entire development season was RAKE, which is indeed on the air.  The price of scoring Greg Kinnear as a lead (much as it had been last year with Kevin Bacon) is that he would only commit to a limited number of episodes, so the show will air on […]

  We’re continuing our survey of the fall primetime schedule (our merry band includes former head of NBC Scheduling Mitch Metcalf, former head of NBC Current Programming Ted Frank and myself) with Thursdays, when CBS will finally do what people have been expecting for the past several seasons and expand to a 4-sitcom night.  (Here […]

  BACKSTROM:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  Rainn Wilson plays your basic difficult-but-brilliant homicide detective in a procedural based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, adapted for television by Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones.  Backstrom is grumpy and dismissive of his colleagues, and unhealthy in his eating, drinking and general living habits, […]

  The biggest surprise from CW wasn’t any one of its pilot orders–it was the decision to renew THE CARRIE DIARIES, a show that showed little ratings promise in its first season.  Apparently the explanation is that the series does very well on Hulu, and rates strongly with the younger segment of CW’s female demo.  […]

  RESURRECTION is one of ABC’s TBD series, and it seems that it may be intended to have a limited run (perhaps bridging the gaps of a serialized show, in order to avoid reruns and preemptions), although it’s not clear if that means it would come to a definite end in the way of a […]

  Once again, CW demonstrated that it operates under different economics than the other broadcast networks.  Much of its revenue comes from episodes streamed online via Netflix and Hulu, which makes sometimes puny on-air ratings acceptable.  Also, virtually everything it airs is produced by one of its in-house studios, Warner Bros Television or CBS Television […]

  SECRETS AND LIES:  Midseason TBD on ABC THE FACTS:  Another ABC murder soap, this one starring Ryan Phillippe as a man who finds the body of a neighbor’s child in the woods, KaDee Strickland as his wife, and Juliette Lewis as the homicide detective who thinks he’s the killer.  It’s based on an Australian […]

  As part of today’s Upfronts presentation, NBC has released full trailers of its new series.  Now, it’s absolutely unclear to judge a TV series from its trailer–even more than it’s unfair to judge a movie by one–because apart from the fact that you’re only seeing a few carefully selected and edited moment, TV shows […]