TV Land December 2009 Includes 10th Annual Merrython; TNT Picks-Up Southland

This December on TV Land there are not many changes to the regular schedule, but of course we have the 10th Annual Merrython coming up filled with holiday episodes of all your TV Land favorites! But first, TV Land original series Make My Day returns Wednesday, December 2. It was pulled from the schedule in August but now will be burned-off with three weeks of episodes in the 10pm & 10:30pm half-hours. Amazing dreams really do come true when TV Land returns its new original comedic hidden camera series Make My Day on Wednesday, December 2 at 10:00 P.M. ET/PT on TV Land PRIME. The 30-minute series executive produced by Michael Davies provides an exciting window into the eventful day of an unsuspecting and deserving participant as hidden cameras capture the weird coincidences, extraordinary situations and surprise celebrity appearances that occur for them over the course of a seemingly "normal" day.
Kick start the holiday season with TV Land's 10th Annual Merrython on Sunday, December 13! TV Land delivers holiday cheer to our viewers during this all day marathon featuring holiday-themed episodes from classic series like Andy Griffith, All in the Family, Brady Bunch, Three's Company, Sanford & Son and Beverly Hillbillies together with modern favorites from Roseanne, 3rd Rock and The Cosby Show. Grab the eggnog, tune in with loved ones, and celebrate the holiday season with TV Land! It's three days of holiday magic on Sunday, December 13, 2009 from 6am-6am,
Thursday, December 24 from 8pm-6am and continues Friday, December 25 from 9am-9pm!
Saturday classic marathons continue in December with big blocks of Sanford & Son, Good Times, and Beverly Hillbillies. And the Friday night PRIME movies for the month are The Pelican Brief, Top Gun, and Planes Trains & Automobiles. Encore showings on weekends are of Crocodile Dundee II and City Slickers.
View the FULL TV Land December 2009 highlights with full Merrython details!

TNT has picked up the critically acclaimed series Southland, closing a deal with Warner Bros. Television that will bring the drama from Emmy-winning producer John Wells (ER, The West Wing) to the network in January. TNT has obtained exclusive rights to air all six episodes that have been shot for the second season, as well as the seven episodes from the series' first season. Southland will air on TNT Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT), beginning with the very first episode of the series on Jan. 12. Southland aired on NBC in the first season and they picked up a second season but then decided to cancel it before it even launched its second season. It is unclear right now if TNT will make more than the 6 episodes produced for season two. It will depend on ratings of the first season and the new second season.
As of now TNT will air the series following repeats of Law & Order. TNT will give it a lot promos though on their Monday night original block of The Closer and Men of a Certain Age.

Cougar Town Special Marathon on SOAPnet, ION Television November 2009; TV Land Makes Changes to Yesterday's Changes

SOAPnet announced that it will air a four-episode marathon of ABC's hit comedy Cougar Town on Saturday, November 14 from 5:00PM to 7:00PM. The critically acclaimed series airs Wednesdays at 9:30PM ET/PT on ABC. They are doing this to attract even more new viewers to the program. The show has done very well in the ratings, especially in the 18-49 demo. The Cougar Town marathon will include four previous episodes ("Pilot," "Into the Great Wide Open," "Don't Do Me Like That," and "I Won't Back Down") previously broadcast on ABC earlier this season.
Courteney Cox stars as Jules, a recently divorced single mother exploring the honest truths about dating and aging in our beauty and youth obsessed culture. While most women in their twenties go through life experiencing the challenges and often humorous pitfalls of meeting men, Jules took on the responsibilities of marriage and raising a son. Now in her forties, she embarks on a journey to self-discovery whilst surrounded by fellow divorcees and singletons eager to live or re-live a time gone by.
Along for the journey are her friends and family: Laurie (Busy Philipps), the younger, feisty co-worker who encourages her to get out there and have some fun; Ellie (Christa Miller), the sarcastic, unapologetic confidante content with her life and marriage to her average, but loveable husband, Andy (Ian Gomez); ex-husband Bobby (Brian Van Holt), a classic under-achiever who'll test her patience as they attempt to raise their teenage son, Travis (Dan Byrd); and newly divorced neighbor Grayson (Josh Hopkins), who proves to be a catalyst of sorts for Jules.

This November on ION Television, we don't have any schedules changes, as of now, but we have a lot of movie premieres. ION airs movies Fridays in primetime and all-day on Saturday & Sundays (3pm-11pm). Movie premieres for the month are On Deadly Ground, Breach, Heist, Miami Vice, Out for Justice, Waterworld, Demolition Man, and The Rookie. Encore airings include Hunt for Red October, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Last Boy Scout, Batman Forever, Sphere, Pale Rider, Magnum Force, and The Enforcer.
So the regular weekday schedule will remain the same as it is now, with Reba at 4, Family Feud from 5-7p, Ghost Whisperer at 7, and in primetime Ghost Whisperer at 8, followed by various nights and times of NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Durham County.
See the full ION Television November 2009 schedule.

Yesterday we announced some TV Land schedule changes that starts today...and now they have made changes to those changes. Bonanza will still replace Gunsmoke at 3pm, leaving Gunsmoke only at 2pm on weekdays, but now Bonanza will remain in its 4pm and 5pm hours. That means All in the Family (originally scheduled to air 4pm) will now air back-to-back in the 6pm hour replacing Little House on the Prairie, which leaves the weekday schedule now. It will remain Sunday nights (early Monday mornings) from 4-6am. Sanford & Son (originally scheduled to air 5pm) will now get the 7pm hour, replacing Andy Griffith, Hogan's Heroes and Brady Bunch hours. Andy Griffith Show will still be replacing series from 8-10pm weekdays (Fridays it is 8-9pm), as we announced yesterday. However, Cosby Show will replace Andy's Monday block from 10pm-12am. Other little changes include two-hour episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on weekends from 8-10am, Gunsmoke & Bonanza on Sundays are now 10am-3pm, and Andy Griffith is now 3pm-9pm on Sundays. M*A*S*H follows on Sundays from 9pm-11pm, as Roseanne gets an additional hour now on Sundays airing 11pm-2am. Also a personal bummer for me, the Three's Company marathon slated for this Saturday (Oct. 31) from 12:30pm-8pm, will be replaced by Sanford & Son and it gets two more hours, too, airing from 12:30pm-10pm.
See the full changes and the full TV Land schedule now.

Married with Children Returns To Spike TV; TV Land Celebrates Brady and Cosby Anniversaries

Married... with Children is returning to Spike TV starting October 5! It will air weekdays at 1pm & 1:30pm replacing an airing of CSI: NY. This means CSI: NY will only now air weekdays at 2pm. The original CSI airs weekdays from 3-8pm. Married...with Children will continue to air on sister network TV Land as well this time. So you get Married on Spike in the afternoon on weekdays and Married on TV Land in primetime and weekends. Al Bundy likes!
In other changes, Unsolved Mysteries will also air on Sunday mornings from 9-11am starting Oct. 11. This is in addition to its return to the daily line-up airing Mon-Wed at 2am starting Sept. 28, as we previously mentioned
View the full and update Spike TV Fall 2009 line-up.

We mentioned that TV Land will do anniversary stunts for The Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show, and now TV Land has given the full details.
TV Land breaks out the bubbly this September to celebrate the milestone anniversaries of two of television's most beloved and celebrated sitcoms, The Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show. The network will pay homage to Mike, Carol and the whole Brady clan for the 40th anniversary of the launch of the series and will also celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Huxtables joining the TV fray with marathons of the most memorable episodes from both series, including the premiere episodes. Additionally, TVLand.com will honor the two series' with content such as extensive photo galleries, video clips of classic moments from each show, games and trivia.
The network will honor the 40th anniversary of the day when this lovely lady met this fellow and they became The Brady Bunch almost 40 years to the day beginning Monday, September 21, 2009 through Friday from 7PM-9PM ET/PT and Saturday, September 26 & Sunday, September 27 from 10AM-6PM ET/PT. Tune in to some of the funniest episodes including the September 26, 1969 pilot featuring Mike and Carols wedding when Tiger destroys the cake and other classics like Cindy's missing Kitty Karry-All doll, Greg and Marcia competing for class president, Jan in a brunette wig, a family trip to the Grand Canyon and many more! TVLand.com gets in on the anniversary action with exclusive web content on The Brady Bunch microsite which includes photo galleries, games such as the "Marcia Brady Football Toss" and Brady trivia, as well as video clips of favorite Brady moments and beloved musical performances. Additionally, in partnership with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation's Archive of American Television, interviews with the cast and Brady creator Sherwood Schwartz will be featured. Fans will also be able to follow Barry "Greg" Williams, Susan "Cindy" Olsen, Geri Reischl ("Fake Jan" of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour), Wendy Winans (BradyWorld.com) and author and Brady expert Lisa Sutton on Twitter as they "tweet" throughout the anniversary marathon week. Sutton will also contribute to blog entries during the week to discuss subjects such as "Where are they now?" and "Brady Collectibles."
The festivities honoring the Huxtables Silver 25th anniversary will air with a marathon of extra-special episodes of The Cosby Show highlighting memorable moments on Wednesday, September 23 from 9PM to Midnight ET/PT. From the pilot episode which originally premiered September 20, 1984 when Denise goes on a date with an older merchant marine -- much to Cliff's dismay -- to Theo's disastrous designer shirt knock-off home-sewn by his sister, to the unforgettable staircase family lip-synch performance of Ray Charles' classic, "Night Time Is The Right Time," for Grandma and Grandpa Huxtable's Anniversary, viewers are sure to have a smile on their face – especially after Rudy steals the show. The Cosby Show is also featured at TVLand.com with a Cliff Huxtable sweater gallery, favorite video clips from the show and Cosby trivia about the cast and the loveable characters they played.
Congrats to our friend Wendy of BradyWorld.com on being featured on the Brady Bunch anniversary! As for The Cosby Show, WGN America will be doing a much better tribute this coming Sunday, as we mentioned.

TV Land October 2009 Highlights; Retroality.TV's Totally Awesome Features for September

October 2009 for TV Land will be the same regular schedule that will start in September, as of now. There are some minor weekend time adjustments, but it is not a big deal. This October, Married...with Children's Saturday block goes from 5pm-10pm to 2pm-10pm, while Andy Griffith Show's Sunday block goes from 5pm-10pm to 5pm-12am. As a result, M*A*S*H's Sunday primetime airing gets shifted to Saturdays 10pm-1am replacing Cosby Show. That's all but there are plenty of highlights! First off, leading into Married on Saturdays will continue to be various classic marathons each week, in October on Saturdays we have 3rd Rock from the Sun, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Sanford & Son, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Three's Company...with time varying, but usually between 10am-2pm. Leading into Andy on Sundays will continue to be various classic marathons each week as well, in October on Sundays we get Hogan's Heroes, Bonanza, Good Times, and Gunsmoke.
TV Land invites you again for the annal event CASA Family Day. Spend the 6pm hour with your family around the family table during CASA's annual Family Day on Monday, September 28. This year an episode of Little House on the Prairie will air.
This Halloween be scared. Be very scared! Because it's Roseanne's Wicked Halloween Bash! Catch every single Halloween episode from Roseanne's run on Halloween night from 10pm-2am! What better way for a wicked Halloween bash? Michael Myers who?
Finally, the TV Land PRIME movies for October are Police Academy, Office & a Gentleman, The Mod Squad, The Bodyguard, and Private Benjamin.
View the TV Land October 2009 Highlights.

Chris Mann's Retroality.TV has many many new features coming this September that will something for everyone! The cover story for September will be about Susan Olsen's new book Love to Love You Bradys, a look at how the Bradys paved the way for reality TV! There will be another cover story as well! Chris Mann has part 1 of an explosive two-part, in-depth interview with Farrah's Story executive producer Craig J. Nevius. Two days before NBC premiered the special back in May, Nevius sued Ryan O'Neal and Alana Stewart, claiming they interfered in the project and barred him from carrying out the terms of his signed April 2008 contract with Farrah. Nevius also was barred from contacting Farrah during the last three months of her life. She died of course on June 25 after a three-year struggle with anal cancer. In part one of this exclusive interview, Nevius discusses his five-year friendship and business relationship with Fawcett--beginning with a failed Charlie's Angels reunion and then TV Land's Chasing Farrah--and his promise to help her win an Emmy (She and Nevius are nominated for their roles as executive producers in Farrah's Story). Part 2 of the story will post by Sept. 7, leading up to the Creative Arts Emmys on Sept. 12.
Also, coming this September to this wonderful and cool website is a story on why TV Land censors Sanford and Son from guest columnist John Wekluk. And Price is Right fans take note, part four of Holly Hallstrom's audio interview will be posted in mid-September. She discusses, among other things, Rod Roddy's tragic, lengthy battle with colon cancer and why Bob Barker's longtime on-screen sidekick was suddenly taken off camera--against Roddy's wishes--on The Price is Right in 2002. Was it "Come on Out" instead of "Come on Down" for Roddy? You'll want to hear this!
And finally, the home page of Retroality.TV will feature links to last month's exclusive Hollywood Show video interviews, including Chris' chat with Tanya Roberts (who discusses her husband's death after a long illness, as well as Farrah's passing), Three's Company's Jenilee Harrison (Cindy Snow), and his revealing four-part chat with Susan Olsen (who gives Chris Brady scoops on her book, the Jan and Marcia "feud" and a rumored Oprah reunion this fall). That Olsen video is perfect timing since one of the cover stories is on Susan Olsen!
So head on over to our pals at Retroality.TV! Chris Mann never disappoints!

WGN America Fall 2009 Schedule; Notes from Around the TV Horn

There will be lots of changes this fall to WGN America, but it will take a few weeks each in September to finally get there. First up, effective September 8 Cheers will now also air on the weekday schedule! Cheers will air weekdays at 5:00pm & 5:30pm ET (2 & 2:30pm PT) replacing one of the Scrubs hours (Scrubs remains at 11pm ET). During late nights, Corner Gas will now leave the line-up starting Sept. 7, replaced by Homicide: Life on the Street for this week only from Mon-Wed at 4am ET (1am PT). Funniest Pets & People will take the 5am half-hour Mon-Wed this week as well. Corner Gas was airing Mon-Tues from 4am-5:30am ET. Finally for this week, The Cosby Show moves to the 7pm ET (4pm PT) hour on the Outta Sight Retro Night on Sunday nights, as WKRP in Cincinnati leaves.
Moving on to the week of September 14, South Park will join the late night line-up airing weeknights at 12:00am & 12:30am ET (9 & 9:30pm PT), replacing Bob & Tom Show, which will move to 2am ET (11pm PT) replacing Steve Wilkos Show...which is now gone. And as I was saying, the late night 4am-5:30am block for week of Sept. 7 was temporary. Effective Sept. 14, Reno 911! will air Mon-Wed at 4am ET, South Park on Thursdays from 4-5am ET, and Chappelle's Show on Fridays from 4-5am ET. The Cosby Show will air Mondays and Tuesdays at 4:30am ET, while Reno 911! airs for the full 4am hour on Wednesdays. And Funniest Pets & People will expand to all five days at 5am ET (2am PT), but for this week only.
Next up is the week of September 21, we now get two hours of In the Heat of the Night, as Nash Bridges is off the schedule at 12pm ET. The Beverly Hillbillies will return to WGN America and at a better time now! It will air weekdays in the 2pm ET (11am PT) hour replacing Bewitched, which moves to the 4pm ET (1pm PT) hour replacing The Cosby Show. The Cosby Show will only air now Monday nights at 4:30am and in the Sunday night block in the 7pm hour. Joining the weeknight schedule now will also be Punk'd airing weekdays at 5am ET (2am PT) replacing Funniest Pets & People, which will leave the line-up. Punk'd will also air Tuesdays at 4:30am ET. Joining the Sunday schedule will be new first-run syndicated series Smash Cuts airing for a full-hour on Sundays at 4pm for its first week only & will regularly air at 4am ET on Sunday nights. South Park will air Sundays in the 3am ET hour, while Nash Bridges will air in the 2am ET. Boston Legal will air weekends at 1pm ET after baseball season is over (starting Oct. 10).
Finally by September 28, we are all set basically for the fall. Just a few more changes are happening. Punk'd will get a decent addition airing Thursdays at 9pm ET replacing American Gladiators, which is leaving. It will also air Sundays at 11am ET after baseball season. Joining the weekend schedule will be Bones on Saturdays at 6pm and 7pm ET and Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Saturday nights at 4:30am ET and Sunday nights at 2am ET for its first week ONLY before settling into Saturday afternoons at 2pm and 3pm ET after baseball season is over.
Boy that's a lot of new additions! Let's recap: South Park, Punk'd, Smash Cuts, Bones, Law & Order: Criminal Intent are all new. Beverly Hillbillies returns. Corner Gas, Funniest Pets & People, Homicide: Life on the Street, Steve Wilkos, American Gladiators, Bullwinkle, WKRP in Cincinnati, Coach are leaving. Coach is not scheduled, but they will likely air it at some point (enjoy the marathon on Sept. 6).
View the FULL WGN America Fall 2009 schedule, so you get the full taste of the line-up that will essentially happen by Sept. 28.
As for highlights, we already noted the marathons including the Cosby Show 25th anniversary marathon on Sunday, Sept. 20. We now get word the marathon is even longer now! 1pm-5:30pm ET has been added, in addition to the 5:30pm-7pm ET & 11pm-4am ET. The 25th anniversary half-hour special is airing at 1pm and 6:30pm ET. Classic NBC line-up on that date from 7pm-10pm ET is of course airing with The Cosby Show pilot at 7pm ET, Family Ties at 7:30pm ET, a full-hour of Cheers at 8pm ET and Hill Street Blues at 9pm ET. All episodes that exactly aired on NBC from that night. View more marathon info for Honeymooners and Coach.

Moving on to some TV tidbits...Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away at age 77 yesterday. In honor of his memory we have some specials. Bio TV will air Biography Remembers: Ted Kennedy on Thursdays at 9pm ET and Saturday at 12pm & 4am ET. Biography: John F. Kennedy and Biography: Barack Obama will air before and after Kennedy's episode on Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. Biography: John F. Kennedy Jr. will air at 11pm Thursday and 10am Saturday.
On the broadcast networks, ABC will air ABC News Special: Remembering Ted Kennedy at 10pm ET, preempting Primetime: Crime. Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer will anchor this special. CBS will air Ted Kennedy: The Last Brother at 8pm ET preempting comedy repeats. Katie Couric will report. NBC will expand NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams to one-hour, but nothing will air in primetime. CNN will air the documentary Teddy: In His Own Words from 7-9pm ET.
Finally, NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution has sold Bravo's unscripted series The Real Housewives as a one-hour syndicated strip for fall 2010 to NBC and Hearst television station groups, B&C reports. The series has taken place in Southern California's Orange County, New York City, New Jersey and Atlanta. It will reach 100 episodes this fall on Bravo.

Gospel Music Channel Fall 2009; WGN America's Huge 25th Anniversary Bash for Cosby Show

Today we will give you the September schedule for The Gospel Music Channel. First, the Monday comedy line-up will change a bit starting Monday, August 24. Sister, Sister will remain in the 8pm hour. At 9pm Good News will be removed, and will be be replaced by another Amen so Amen will air for the full hour at 9pm. Sister, Sister will encore in the 10pm and 12am hours, while Amen will encore in the 11pm and 1am hours. Sister, Sister will also air on Fridays in the 10pm hour. Amen and Sister, Sister will also get Saturday morning airings starting Aug. 29! Amen will air Saturdays 8-10am and Sister, Sister Saturdays 10am-12pm.
Starting Monday, August 31, Promised Land will now air also on weekdays. It'll air weekdays at 1pm and will also continue to air in primetime on Wednesdays from 8pm-11pm (encore from 11pm-2am). Meanwhile, Dr. Quinn goes from weekdays 5-7pm to 6-8pm, while Doc moves from 7pm to 5pm.
Starting Monday, September 14, Gospel Music Channel has acquired another new series. This time Sue Thomas F.B.Eye. Sue Thomas F.B.Eye will air weekdays at 4pm replacing Christy, which will leave the line-up.
Everything else remains the same basically, with series like Clash of the Choirs airing Sundays at 10pm and weekday afternoon movies at 2pm such as The Dreamer of Oz starring John Ritter (Sept. 23 at 2pm). That is a very rarely seen movie and it will come out on DVD on Sept. 29 part of the Oz The 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition from Warner Home Video.

Early last week we broke the news about WGN America honoring The Cosby Show with a very special 25th anniversary marathon. Now we have the FULL details on it!
Sunday, September 20, 2009 marks the 25th anniversary of The Cosby Show and to celebrate the milestone (to the day) WGN America will be airing a series of tributes to The Cosby Show including the replication of the original NBC Thursday night lineup as it aired on Thursday, September 20, 1984 (the day The Cosby Show premiered) with interviews by Lilly Tartikoff, a Cosby Show Viewer's Choice Marathon, an online contest and an online game.
Following the WGN America broadcast of the Chicago Cubs baseball game at 5:30pm ET, WGN America will be committing the prime and overnight schedule to The Cosby Show and the NBC Thursday night line-up that dominated the 80's. At 5:30pm and 6:00pm ET will see two best-of episodes and at 6:30pm ET WGN America will air a 25th Anniversary Special. Then from 7-10pm ET WGN America will re-air the original Brandon Tartikoff NBC Thursday night line-up EXACTLY AS IT AIRED IN 1984: The Cosby Show: "Pilot Presentation," Family Ties: "The Gambler," Cheers: "I'll Be Seeing You, Parts 1 and 2," and Hill Street Blues: "Eva's Braun."
Additionally, WGN America has interviewed philanthropist Lilly Tartikoff who shares her thoughts on the iconic programs of 1984 and memories of her husband, programming visionary Brandon Tartikoff. Lilly's interviews will air as interstitials in primetime from 7-10pm ET during the WGN America recreation of the 1984 lineup. Also, from 7-10pm ET WGN America will adopt the NBC theme "Let's All Be There" (circa 1984) using original promotional elements (A special thank you to NBC for sharing their archive materials).
In the overnight (11pm-4am ET), WGN America will air a viewer's choice marathon of the top ten Cosby episodes voted by viewers at WGNAmerica.com. Voting for The Cosby Show Viewer's Choice Marathon begins today and runs through Monday, September 14.
The Cosby Show Viewer's Choice Marathon will also have a contest component, all viewers who submit their favorite episode to WGNAmerica.com will be entered to win a complete DVD set of all eight seasons of The Cosby Show autographed by Bill Cosby plus a Cosby Show Prize Pack. Four runners up will receive a complete DVD set.
View the complete press release.

TV Land and Spike TV Fall 2009 Updates; Lifetime Original Sitcoms Update; A Personal Message

Today we have a couple of updates to fall schedules we already gave you. Viacom strikes again. Yesterday we mentioned Married...with Children is returning to TV Land effective immediately. So yes this will indeed affect TV Land's September line-up that we originally gave you. Married...with Children will remain on the TV Land schedule this September as well! Starting Sept. 14 it will air weeknights 8-9pm and will join the weeknight 9pm-12am block on Tuesday nights. So this means Andy Griffith Show will not air weeknights 7-9pm anymore, as originally planned. Beverly Hillbillies will still fill the 7pm hour, as that change starts next week. Originally the 9pm-12am block from Mon-Thurs had Andy on Monday, Roseanne on Tuesday, M*A*S*H on Wednesday, and Cosby Show on Thursday. Now it will be Andy on Monday, Married...with Children on Tuesday, Cosby Show on Wednesday, and Roseanne on Thursday.
Also, Married...with Children will air on Saturdays as well in marathon blocks during the day instead of Andy Griffith, but that will remain on Sundays. Late Sunday nights from 4-6am will now be Brady Bunch airings. And since the Cosby Show primetime block goes from Thursdays to Wednesdays, the 25th anniversary marathon moves to Wednesday, Sept. 23.
View the fully updated TV Land September 2009 line-up.

And that's not all for changes! Spike TV's Fall 2009 line-up starts on Monday, Sept. 28, as we told you. There is one change now. Instead of Married...with Children from 9-11am on weekday mornings, we now get a morning movie. Why? You guessed it...sister network TV Land is now airing the show on weekdays and Saturdays as we mentioned above. But on Sundays, Spike TV will still air the show in the mornings and sometimes in the 1am hour on that night. Everything else for Spike TV Fall 2009 is the same as we previously relayed to you, so Unsolved Mysteries is still Mon-Wed nights at 2am.

Moving on to Lifetime, we first announced the premiere date for Lifetime's new original sitcom Sherri as October 5 on our Lifetime Fall 2009 schedule...now we have full details on that and the return of Rita Rocks.
The all-new, multi-camera comedy series Sherri, premieres Monday, October 5, at 7PM ET/PT on Lifetime Television. Sherri will bow as part of a one-hour comedy block paired with the returning Rita Rocks, starring Nicole Sullivan, at 7:30PM ET/PT. Both series will feature stripped original episodes for a full week in the 7PM hour. Sherri will then move into its regular timeslot Tuesdays at 10PM ET/PT, followed by Rita Rocks Tuesdays at 10:30PM ET/PT--both starting Oct. 13.
Sherri centers around a newly single mom, paralegal and part-time comedienne/actress who tries to get back into the dating scene and move on with her life after divorcing her cheating husband. Sherri finds solace and support among her girlfriends at the office while juggling her hectic life.
Sherri marks the first comedy series ever to be wholly owned by Lifetime. The Network has picked up 12 episodes of the program, to be produced in New York by Lifetime Television. Also starring in the series are Elizabeth Regen, Kate Reinders, Kali Rocha and Tammy Townsend. Classic TV stars Malcolm-Jamal Warner and James Avery will guest-star in multiple episodes.

Finally, I have a few personal news for you. Tonight's episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is the one I went to! Watch Night 5 tonight at 8pm ET/PT on ABC. Hint: I'm sitting close to where the contestant's spouse/family member sits, but in the third row instead of the first row. And finally, since 1997 I've been raising money for a Walkathon. This year I'm raising money online as well. So I'm asking you readers out there to help me out for my online portion and donate for a great cause that benefits so many causes, including the American Cancer Society. Any amount is good and you'll feel good for donating! So please donate today (I sound like Sally Struthers, don't I?)! You'll find all the info on that link...it is amazing. Please help us out!

TV Land Brings Back Married with Children; New RTV Station In Northwest Arkansas

We interrupt our fall schedule barrage blog posts for a special announcement! The Bundys are back! TV Land made a very last minute schedule change yesterday and aired a block of Married...with Children last night from 8:30pm-11pm. TV Land will also air the show again on Friday from 7-9pm and on Saturday a 12-hour marathon will air from 12pm-12am, replacing blocks of Green Acres and Andy Griffith. The final Green Acres block is on Aug. 22 from 6am-8:30am, as the contract for the series is expiring. So, after these special airings, Married...with Children will return to the TV Land line-up! Spike TV isn't airing it daily right now, but is scheduled to return it as of now starting Sept. 28...so it seems TV Land will air it daily until then at least. Effective next week, Married...with Children will air Tuesdays 8pm-12am, Wednesdays & Thursdays 8-10pm and Fridays 8-9pm. Essentially replacing Cosby Show and Roseanne slots. The Cosby Show's 7-8pm hour will now belong to The Beverly Hillbillies starting Monday (Aug. 17), while Cosby Show moves to 3-4am instead of another hour of Roseanne.
Also, there will be another 12-hour Married...with Children marathon on Saturday, Aug. 22 from 10am-10pm, replacing the scheduled Bonanza and Andy blocks. The series has done well for TV Land but had to be pulled because Spike TV (a sister network) was putting it back on the daily schedule. Right now Spike is only airing it Sunday mornings.
View the updated TV Land August 2009 changes. So how will this affect TV Land in September starting Sept. 14? We're not sure, but I expect changes to the original Sept. schedule. Looks like we'll have to update our TV Land fall schedule post. Will Married...with Children be a part of it? We shall see. Stay with us, as always!

KPBI-TV the full power MyNetwork TV affiliate in North West Arkansas will drop its MyNetwork TV affiliation this week and become a full-time Retro Television RTV affiliate! According to Greg Fess, President of KPBI, "I am very excited to be bringing the RTV Network to the NW Arkansas area. We love the family friendly programs that we have enjoyed over the years. We know that viewers will embrace this new programming on KPBI which has served the area for many years as a broadcasting leader."
RTV's Neal Ardman pointed to the success many full power primary stations are now having using RTV on the main channel as the primary and often only network. "We have enjoyed tremendous ratings success in several markets including Boston on WMFP, Knoxville on WMAK and WPXS in St. Louis. RTV offers what other networks can't. Along with fantastic shows like Magnum P.I. and Quincy, RTV provides most of its affiliates 24/7 centralized master control on a barter basis. The RTV model has to be the future of TV for the local station to survive," said Ardman. By providing the both the local and nation content on an individual stream the stations have little if any capitol cost in launching and the only ongoing cost is the actual cost of spot sales.

We hope to have a fall schedule for you tomorrow, pending approval. So bear with us, we are trying! We still have quite a few left to deliver.

WGN America Fall 2009 Marathons; Fox Schedules King of the Hill Finale; Three's Co Bio Tonight on Bio TV

Today on the fall schedules barrage on the blog we will dish out cool marathons on WGN America! Their full fall schedule will come at a later date, but we just couldn't wait to give you details on their fall marathons! First up on Sunday, Aug. 30 we have a marathon of The Honeymooners! Following baseball, the classic sitcom will air from 5:30pm-10pm ET (2:30pm-7pm PT) and continue after the news from 11pm-2am ET (8pm-11pm PT)! The marathon will preempt the regularly scheduled Outta Sight Retro Night programming. Marathon episodes for The Honeymooners are a mix of lost and classic 39 episodes: "Game Called on Account...," "Ralph's Sweet Tooth," "Principle of the Thing," "A Dog's Life," "Here Comes the Bride," "Loudspeaker," "On Stage," "Bensonhurst Bomber," "The Safety Award," "Mind Your Own Business," "Alice and the Blonde," "Love Letter," "The Adoption," "Norton Moves In/Dinner Guest," and "Catch a Star." No word yet if The Honeymooners will return to the regular WGN America line-up.
Next up on Sunday, Sept. 6 from 4-10pm ET (1pm-7pm PT), are you ready for some football? Celebrate the return of football with a marathon of the sitcom Coach! What better way to celebrate than to air Coach? The Jerry Lewis MDA telethon will air after the news starting at 11pm ET (8pm PT). We don't have episode info yet for Coach's marathon.
Then remember the series I kept saying that will be celebrating an anniversary this fall on WGN America? Well that series is The Cosby Show! WGN America will go all out for The Cosby Show's 25th anniversary with a marathon and more! First up on Wednesday, Sept. 16 from 8-10pm ET (5-7pm PT) catch the 2002 reunion special The Cosby Show: A Look Back for the first time on WGN America. Then on Sunday, Sept. 20 we get a marathon and yet more! From 5:30pm-8pm ET (2:30pm-5pm PT) catch classic Cosby Show episodes with an all-new half-hour special at 7pm ET (4pm PT) titled The Cosby Show: 25th Anniversary Special. Thursday, Sept. 20, 1984 was the EXACT day The Cosby Show premiered on NBC, so WGN America will also air three other series that aired on NBC that night! From 8-10pm ET (5-7pm PT) catch an episode each of Family Ties, Cheers, and Hill Street Blues! What a nice and creative idea to celebrate this anniversary! We don't have episode info for this day yet, but wouldn't it be cool if the exact same episodes from that night aired? Now Cheers already airs regularly on Sunday nights, but will Family Ties and Hill Street Blues also join? You'll have to stay tuned! But wait, we're still not done with The Cosby Show! More classic episodes will air after the news from 11pm-2am ET (8pm-11pm PT). What a night!
We will certainly have the WGN America Fall 2009 schedule very soon, so stay with us! One hint: Wednesday nights in primetime will be '80s night with some nights having movies and some nights having TV series. Movies include Police Academy, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Octopussy!

After 13 seasons of beer, barbecue, bickering and bonding, the Hill family delivers a Southern-style send-off in a one-hour series finale episode of King of the Hill airing Sunday, Sept. 13 from 8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT on Fox. The King of the Hill finale will air after Fox NFL Sunday, so the lead-in will be big.
On the back-to-back series finale episodes, "The Boy Can't Help It"/"The Honeymooners," Bobby becomes quite the ladies' man when several girls in his class consider him a potential date for the Homecoming dance. When he realizes the girls are just playing with his emotions and are not really that interested, he asks his pal Connie to the dance. Also in the episode, Hank is shocked when his mother announces she is marrying a man she has only known for a few weeks. Soon after, the newlyweds celebrate by purchasing an RV and heading to Hank's. When Hank's mom and new stepfather have a heated argument, she takes off with the RV and Hank is left to rescue his mother once again.

Just a reminder tonight Bio TV premieres Biography: Three's Company tonight at 10pm ET with an encore at 2am ET. I just got an advanced copy and watched it. It is about the behind the scenes of the show--the sex, how it was developed, casting, history, and the cast after the show. I liked how they used clips of the unaired pilots, but that isn't anything new anymore. Interviewed were Matt Rousch (TV Guide), Robert Thompson (Professor, Syracuse University), Charlton McLivain (Professor, NYU), Fred Silverman, Larry Gelbart (Pilot #1 writer), Dom Taffner, Nancy Ritter, Richard Kline, George Burditt (producer), David Graham (casting director), George Sunga (producer), Carol Summers (script supervisor), and Priscilla Barnes.
It was nice to hear Larry Gelbart talk in detail on camera about this. I don't think he has done any of the other specials on the show. David Graham was also new to these specials and it was interesting on his casting take. This special said John Ritter wanted to stop the show after eight seasons. Everything else was pretty much the same from what we have known. Still worth watching and recording!

TV Land September 2009 Schedule; ABC and Fox Schedule Changes

TV Land has announced its September 2009 line-up. Is it their fall line-up though? We're not sure yet. Because this only covers Aug. 31-Sept.27. So TV Land could have something in store starting Sept. 28. There aren't much changes to the schedule. But before we get to that, we have to tell you The Andy Griffith Show will air Mondays 6-10pm and Sunday nights 4-6am now for all of August and a few times on Tuesdays (Aug. 4 and 25) from 6pm-7:30pm. Now that that is out of the way, we can tell you about September. There are only a few changes, mainly in primetime. Weekdays from 7-9pm will now be The Andy Griffith Show starting Monday, Sept. 14. It will lead into marathons on Mon-Thurs from 9pm-12am with more Andy on Mondays, Roseanne on Tuesdays, M*A*S*H on Wednesdays, and The Cosby Show on Thursdays. M*A*S*H's regular 5-6am Wednesday airings will be preempted for more Three's Company as a result of this change. Everything else is the same as August, except Little House is back Sundays 4-6am instead of Andy...for now. I say for now because the August Andy Griffith changes happened after the September schedule was released.
TV Land PRIME original series How'd You Get So Rich and Make My Day will have their season finales on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Weekends will still have classic marathons that have a classic show and Andy Griffith paired up. Those shows include Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, and Brady Bunch. Speaking of Brady Bunch, that is their 40th anniversary marathon. It's unbelievable that it has been 40 years since that "one day when that lady met that fellow" but it's true and TV Land is celebrating in grand style for one whole week. Beginning Monday, September 21 to Friday, September 25 catch episodes from 7pm-9pm and then if that isn't enough of this bunch, catch even more episodes on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27 from 10am-6pm to round out the celebration. It's the best of the Bradys all week long and it will be positively groovy!!
That's not all for anniversaries! The Cosby Show is turning 25! Join TV Land PRIME Thursday, September 24 from 9pm-12am and say Happy 25th Birthday to The Huxtables as PRIME celebrate the years of laughter The Cosby Show brought to our TV screens. This quarter-century milestone marathon features extra-special episodes that highlight memorable moments from the series and pays special tribute to America's favorite sitcom family.
Finally, catch premieres of this month's movies on Labor Day (Monday, September 7 from 9am-6:30pm) if you can't wait for them every Fridays at 9pm! All-month long the network will air new movies and you can see them on Labor Day first...Private Benjamin, Airplane II, The Bodyguard and Field of Dreams.
So is this the fall schedule? Will something new be added on Sept. 28? We're not sure yet. But stay with us! And as usual, this schedule is subject to change, since TV Land always changes something. So again stay with us for that, if it happens. View the full TV Land September 2009 schedule and highlights.

ABC has altered its schedule a bit. Late yesterday just hours before The Bachelorette finale, they decided to air an instant special encore of The Bachelorette finale for Tuesday (July 28) from 8-10pm, preempting the season finale of The Superstars and an all-new episode of comedy Better off Ted. So if you missed the drama of the Bachelorette finale, you can watch it again leading into the special all-new After the Final Rose special. So with The Superstars season finale now on Tuesday, Aug. 4 from 8pm-9:30pm, the Scrubs repeats will no longer air...but it will air at 9:30pm on this date. The final two episodes of the season of Better off Ted were originally supposed to air July 28 and Aug. 4 at 9:30pm, will now air for an hour on Tuesday, Aug. 11 from 9-10pm following Night 3 of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. One other note, ABC will encore the pilot episode of summer hit Dating in the Dark on Monday at 9pm, shifting the all-new episode to 10pm. The show will air new episodes at 10pm starting the following week now. See the announcement we made on this last night in a list form.
Also at ABC, we announced on Friday on our message board that Shark Tank is scheduled to air additional airings on Sundays on August 30, September 6 and 13, 2009 at 9:00 PM ET/PT. Shark Tank is also still scheduled to air on Sundays on August 9, 16 and 23, 2009 at 9:00 PM ET/PT after Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, as planned. However, Shark Tank is no longer scheduled to air on Tuesdays, effective August 25, 2009 in the 8:00 PM ET/PT slot. Tuesdays at 8PM starting Aug. 25 is now TBD. Shark Tank will move to Tuesdays at 8PM this fall now, likely Sept. 22 or 29. 13 episodes have been ordered and six will air in the "summer" season.

Fox has made some changes to its fall line-up. They are moving the premieres of So You Think You Can Dance and Glee up a week to Wednesday, Sept. 9, while pushing comedies Brothers and 'Til Death back slightly. Brothers will now premiere with back-to-back episodes in the 8pm hour on Friday, Sept. 25, while 'Til Death will take over the 8:30pm Friday slot the following week on Friday, Oct. 2. Fox will air more Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader episodes Fridays at 8pm now on Sept. 11 and 18. If you missed the special pilot of Glee this past May, Fox will re-air it on Wednesday, Sept. 2 and again on Friday, Sept. 4 at 9pm. Glee will also encore its first two episodes on Friday, Sept. 11 and 18 at 9pm.

TV Land August 2009 Schedule; Bio TV July Premieres; Scrubs Joins MTV

This August on TV Land we will have more weekend Classic Marathons along with some schedule changes (primarily weekday mornings) and the premiere of two new original series. First let's start with the schedule changes. Cosby Show will get the primetime block of 8-11pm on Tuesday nights starting Aug. 4, replacing Roseanne, while Roseanne takes Wednesday nights now from 8-10pm replacing Cosby Show...a flip-flop basically. Roseanne also gains Thursdays from 9pm-12am since She's Got the Look's season will be over.
The weekday morning changes begin on Monday, August 10. Kicking off mornings now will be Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in the 9am hour replacing an episode of All in the Family and Sanford & Son. At 10am we get back-to-back Good Times replacing The Jeffersons. At 11am we get back-to-back Sanford & Son replacing Good Times. In the 12pm hour we now get an episode each of All in the Family and Leave it to Beaver replacing Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. So basically everything changes times only, but The Jeffersons is totally removed and Beaver is in. Why? Because The Jeffersons' contract is up after Aug. 31, and we don't have official word yet but it seems they will not renew since it is not listed on the regular schedule. More on The Jeffersons below. The only other change is Monday nights from 10pm-12am will now be M*A*S*H instead of Roseanne.
TV Land will have two all-new half-hour original series this August. They will air in the 10pm hour on Wednesdays starting Aug. 5. First up is How'd You Get So Rich? Sure, the economy is in the tank, but like it or not, there are still millionaires out there -- and they didn't all get rich by stealing your money (thanks for nothing, Wall Street). They made their fortunes by inventing Billy Bob Teeth and Butt Paste. Enter Joan Rivers and her money-obsessed new show, How'd You Get So Rich? Then we have Make My Day at 10:30pm. This comedic hidden-camera series provides a window into one day in the life of an unsuspecting participant. Tune in as cameras capture the action as they experience weird coincidences, extraordinary situations and surprise celebrity appearances for one whole day. Make My Day is a 30-minute series produced for TV Land by Embassy Row (Power of Ten, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?), Monkey Kingdom and Sony Pictures Television. Michael Davies serves as the executive producer.
As for the weekend Classic Marathons, they will continue in August! We get two marathons a day and Andy Griffith Show is always the second one. Joining Andy are shows like Leave it to Beaver, Bonanza, Beverly Hillbillies, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Green Acres, and The Jeffersons. The latter two could be farewell marathons since they are expiring at the end of the month. Tune in on Aug. 9 from 11am-5pm for The Jeffersons and Aug. 15 from 12pm-5pm for Green Acres (and a special block from 6am-8:30am on Aug. 22). They both seem gone to me, but that will be confirmed in September.
Next it's the M*A*S*H Flashback Weekend the weekend of Aug. 21-23 in primetime. TV Land PRIME is taking M*A*S*H fans back to where it all began. The event begins on Friday at 10pm in the PRIME Movie block, when PRIME looks back at the feature film that inspired the series. Relive all of the unforgettable moments, and enjoy extra M*A*S*H commentary and trivia in the breaks from TV Land's own PRIME Players. PRIME is even taking you all the way back to the series premiere as the Flashback Weekend continues with three nights of back-to-back episodes from the first season of the hit show. So for that weekend sit back, kick back, and flash back with TV Land's M*A*S*H Flashback Weekend!
Finally, the movies for the month are Clue, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, M*A*S*H, and Doc Hollywood.
View and discuss more on TV Land August 2009.

Bio TV this July will have all-new Biography episodes of your favorite series. On Tuesday, July 7 at 10PM we get an all-new Biography on Full House. It was one of the most popular family sitcoms of the late 80s and early 90s. Over the course of eight wildly entertaining seasons, Full House enthralled audiences, created iconic teen idols, and launched the ever-expanding Olsen Empire. In this hour, Bio TV steps behind the scenes and hear from former cast members what it was like to grow up in one of TV's wackiest, most unconventional families. Join us as Bio TV opens the doors and go on a special tour of the Tanner Family's Full House.
We get the Biography premiere on David Letterman at 10pm on Wednesday, July 29. A former TV weatherman who once predicted hail stones "the size of canned hams," David Letterman was a struggling stand-up comic and TV writer when guest shots on shows such as The Gong Show caught the attention of Johnny Carson. As a result, he eventually became the permanent substitute host for the The Tonight Show. When Carson retired, however, Letterman lost a mano-a-mano battle for the coveted seat to Jay Leno and he left NBC, landing at CBS and his own late night show. Along the way, Letterman has overcome a determined stalker, emergency quintuple bypass surgery, and several failed relationships, before finding a measure of happiness in his marriage to his longtime girlfriend and the birth of their son.
These are just the premieres, there will be plenty of other TV/sitcom related Biography encores such as Diff'rent Strokes, Facts of Life, The Partridge Family, John Stamos, Bob Saget, Dana Plato, Bill Cosby, Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli. The Truth Behind the Sitcom Scandals airing for the month is an episode with The Jeffersons & One Day at a Time. They will also the reunion A Cosby Show: A Look Back.
Coming in August, three all-new Biography episodes of three classic sitcoms and more! Stay tuned in the coming weeks!

Finally, it looks like Scrubs is joining MTV beginning Monday (July 6, 2009). Scrubs will air weekdays in the 4pm hour on the Viacom owned network. MTV also recently began airing reruns of Degrassi weekdays in the 10am hour (from Viacom's The N) and recently aired Futurama in the 4pm hour for a few weeks (from Viacom's Comedy Central). Talk about Viacom sharing! This is getting crazier everyday. Because of the MTV addition, Comedy Central will remove the weekday afternoon slots of Scrubs (2:30-3:30pm), but it will still air weekdays 7-8pm.
Scrubs was supposed to join the weekday line-up on Viacom's Spike TV starting July 6, but maybe because of this change it didn't happen. Scrubs is airing for at least until end of July on MTV. There is word Scrubs will appear on Spike TV at a later date, so stay tuned for that. Spike did air a few Thursday late night airings and Sunday morning airings for a few weeks.

ABC Pulls Motherhood, Doubles Up On Samantha Who; Me-Too July Marathons; Nick at Nite's 2nd Quarter Ratings

We were the first ones to mention yesterday (on our message board) that ABC has pulled In The Motherhood after just one episode since its return. The canceled sitcom has two more burn-off episodes left, and only aired once this summer. ABC will now double-pump Samantha Who? instead. Samantha Who? is now scheduled to air new episodes on Thursdays at 8:30 PM ET/PT on July 2 and 9 with the season finale airing on Thursday July 23, 2009 at 8:30. Just to be clear, Samantha Who? will also still be all-new in the 8:00 PM ET/PT time period on these three nights as well, as the series has 6 episodes left (on July 16, ABC has an ABC News special on J.K. Rowling scheduled). Don't forget Samantha Who? fans, to DVR or watch the entire 8pm hour tomorrow!
No word if In The Motherhood will burn-off its final two episodes on another night, but we will certainly let you know. In other ABC updates, ABC has confirmed that the final two scheduled Sunday airings of Just for Laughs will also be at 7:30pm ET/PT on Sundays (July 5 and 12) like it was this past week. An abbreviated repeat of AFV will serve as its lead-in, before going back to its full-hour on July 19. Not sure how many episodes Just for Laughs has this third season, but only four were scheduled to air even before it started airing.

The daily classic TV summer marathons continue on Chicago's Me-Too this July. Continuing this July, Chicago's Me-Too will feature all-day marathons of classic shows! Me-Too, sister station of Chicago's Me-TV and WCIU-TV, showcases a different classic show every weekday from 10AM-10PM. One day you could be arrested by Kojak, the next you could be cruising in the Batmobile through Gotham City!
The schedule for the month in order starting today is: The Greatest American Hero is today, followed by The Adventures of Superman, Black Sheep Squadron, Magnum P.I., Hawaii Five-0, In the Heat of the Night, The Untouchables, Kojak, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Batman, The Green Hornet, Get Smart, Eight is Enough, Family Ties, Diff'rent Strokes, The Cosby Show, Little House on the Prairie, Wild Wild West, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Rawhide closes the month.
As you can see, each week there is a theme. First week is super heroes, then dramas, crime solving, family, and westerns.
View the schedule section on their website for episode info.

Nick at Nite closes second quarter as the number-one basic cable network with Women 18-49 in total day, averaging a 0.8 rating in this demo (448,000 viewers W18-49). Driven by hits like George Lopez, Nick at Nite also ranks as the number-two cable network with Adults 18-49 (behind only USA Network) for the quarter, averaging a 0.6 rating in this demo (668,000 viewers A18-49) and 1.5 million total viewers.
George Lopez is the network's highest-rated program in second quarter, and has posted ratings growth since the show launched in September 2007. George Lopez averages a 0.6 rating in A18-49 (678,000 viewers A18-49) at 10 p.m. for the quarter and has posted gains of 20% with Adults 18-49 launch to date. George Lopez can be seen on Nick at Nite everynight at 10 p.m. and it will be moving to weeknights at 9 p.m. next week.
In prime time (9-11 p.m. ET/PT), Nick at Nite averages a 0.6 A18-49 rating and 1.6 million total viewers for the quarter. Nickelodeon recently announced that it is extending the Nick at Nite programming block to encompass all three hours of prime time (8-11 p.m. ET/PT), providing viewers with a slate of family programming including the upcoming Nick at Nite premiere of Malcolm in the Middle on July 5.
Year to date, Nick at Nite is averaging 1.5 million total viewers, a 0.6 A18-49 rating (679,000 viewers A18-49) and a 0.8 W18-49 rating (442,000 viewers W18-49).

Stay tuned tomorrow for TV Land August 2009! So come on back for that tomorrow!

TV Land's Married Block This Thursday; Mr. Troop Mom Scores for Nick at Nite; Bio Remembers Ed McMahon

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 25) TV Land has added a Married...with Children block from 5:52pm-9pm ET/PT. Yes, it starts at 5:52pm replacing Little House on the Prairie, then an hour each of The Cosby Show and Roseanne. Married... with Children is doing well for TV Land and keeps getting extra airings. Don't forget the previously scheduled weekend marathon this week as well (Saturday 9:30am-8pm and Sunday 8am-2am).
Episodes for this Thursday's block are from season four with episodes 73-77 and 79, after Marcy gets divorced from Steve. After the end of this week, the show is currently not scheduled for TV Land but don't be surprised if TV Land makes changes and adds it in again. We'll let you know if they do of course!

The premiere of the original TV movie Mr. Troop Mom on Nick at Nite on Friday, June 19, 8-10pm ET/PT, was basic cable's number-one original TV program for the night, drawing 4 million total viewers. With kids and tweens, the two-hour telecast was number-one on both broadcast and cable on Friday, and placed as cable's number-one original TV program with adults 18-49, with it being the third highest-rated telecast in 18-49, behind only USA's NCIS and Nick at Nite's George Lopez (both aired at 10pm). It averaged a 0.9 A18-49 rating (1.1 million A18-49).
It was the number-two overall telecast with 4 million behind only USA's NCIS repeat at 10pm which did 4.42 million. The two-hour premiere set a new record as the Nick's highest-rated and most-watched original TV movie (not based on an existing series) with total viewers and Adults 18-49.
Mr. Troop Mom — created in partnership with Warner Premiere and George Lopez Presents — stars George Lopez as ace attorney Eddie, who is M.I.A. for most events in his 13-year-old daughter Naomi's (Daniela Bobadilla) life. When Eddie volunteers for the Spring Action Classic — where Naomi goes up against mean-girl Skylar (Jianna Ballard) — treacherous rope courses, cutthroat canoe soccer and slippery slimeball wars are just the start of his introduction to the great outdoors and into his daughter's heart.
George Lopez can be seen weekdays at 10 p.m. on Nick at Nite on his self titled show George Lopez, which is the number-one rated series on Nick at Nite.

Finally, Bio TV will salute Ed McMahon this Saturday with a Biography Remembers episode of his Biography episode. Bio TV will air the Biography at 10am and 4am this Saturday (June 27). The episode is titled Ed McMahon: America's Sidekick, first aired in 1998 it has interviews with Ed, Dick Clark, Jay Leno, Jack Klugman, Sinbad, and Jerry Lewis. Harry Smith hosts and narrates.
Heeeere's Ed McMahon! Bio TV profiles his half-century in show business, which includes stints as dog-food pitchman, Johnny Carson's sidekick on The Tonight Show, and host of Star Search, where he helped the careers of Sharon Stone, Rosie O'Donnell, Dennis Miller, and Sinbad.

TV Land Schedule Changes Starting June 15; RTN Coming to Los Angeles and Louisville

We gave you the schedule changes that started on TV Land on June 1, but we also told you that was only for weeks of June 1 and 8. Now TV Land has announced the schedule for at least the weeks of June 15 and 22. So let's go through it! Weekdays from 9am-12pm is the same as the previous two weeks with '70s sitcoms. The changes begin at 12 noon. First, TV Land Goes West is not extended anymore on Mondays. Airing weekdays at 12 noon is an episode of Leave it to Beaver, followed by Beverly Hillbillies, both replacing back-to-back Andy Griffith episodes. At 1pm, we have another Beverly Hillbillies remaining, followed by TV Land Goes West intact from 1:30pm-7pm. Then in the 7pm hour we get back-to-back Cosby Show episodes instead of Andy Griffith, as this means Andy Griffith is off the weekday line-up--wow! Then primetime from 8-11pm is heavily changed with Married...with Children on Mondays, Roseanne on Tuesdays, The Cosby Show/She's Got the Look encore on Wednesdays, Roseanne/She's Got the Look premiere & encore on Thursdays, and Cosby Show/PRIME Movie on Fridays. The PRIME movie is now at a new time of Fridays at 9PM. And airing from 11pm-4am now is all Roseanne every weeknight. There are a few She's Got the Look encores mixed in, though. Still that's a lot of Roseanne in late night! But off the clock is still remaining, so all these times are approximate. An hour of Three's Company and M*A*S*H airs at 4am and 5am respectively.
As for weekends, they have only announced what is airing the weekend of June 20-21, as they have not given an update on the weekend of June 27-28. On Saturday, June 20 we have: 6-8am PRIME Movie, 9am-12pm Beverly Hillbillies, 12pm-10pm Andy Griffith Show, 10pm-12am The Cosby Show, 1am-4am Roseanne, 4-6am Three's Company. And on Sunday, June 21 we have: 6am-8am Gunsmoke, 8am-12pm Bonanza, 12pm-10pm Andy Griffith, 10pm-12am M*A*S*H, 12am-2am Married...with Children, 2-3am Roseanne, 4-6am Little House on the Prairie. Whatever hours that are missing here will be encores of She's Got the Look. If I were to guess, we will see something similar to this weekend schedule the following weekend as well. So it looks like Andy Griffith is removed from weekdays (except for a sighting on Tuesday, June 23 from 8-9pm) but will dominate on weekends, or at least for the weekend of June 20-21.
Technically this schedule is through Friday, June 26...so stay tuned for any updates as usual! View the schedule starting Monday, June 15 in a list form, and also join in on our discussion! And don't forget to tune into the Married...with Children marathon this weekend on both days from 8am-10pm!

RTN (Retro Television Network, now called RTV) announced that it will retrofit KHIZ in Los Angeles beginning TODAY (Friday, June 12). KHIZ is actually located in Barstow, CA. The station, part of the Multicultural group, will begin airing the Retro TV lineup on its digital as well as several hours a day on its primary. Retro Television has secured major markets in recent weeks, as it went live three weeks ago on the Multicultural station WMFP in Boston and announced last week a deal to bring Retro TV to New York via WSAH TV on July 1.
Retro Television celebrates four years on the air on July 1 and now reports a national clearance of 80% of the US, with the Los Angeles market now included. Retro TV's Neal Ardman said "we are thrilled with our growth these last few months. What better market to launch concurrent with the digital switch then Los Angeles. Everyone at Multicultural has been a pleasure to work with and we look forward to a long prosperous relationship."
Also, Retro TV is coming to Louisville, KY! WBNA-DT in Louisville will now also join the Retro TV family. Originally supposed to go on-air on July 1, now WBNA-DT will go on the air as early as this coming Monday, sources say. WBNA, an ION affiliate, is owned by Evangel World Prayer Center (Word Broadcasting Network, Inc.). Retro TV is reportedly going to air on channel 21.2 or 21.4, so check it out on Monday.
If you still don't know by now, Retro TV airs great shows from the past like Adam 12, Leave it to Beaver, Night Gallery and rarely seen shows like Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew and Voyagers. Retro TV now provides both custom local feeds for its affiliates or a typical national network type feed at the stations choice.

And don't forget television makes the switch to digital today at 12:30pm ET! Hope you made the switch!

Nick at Nite Adds More Nanny; Cosby Show Celebrates 25th Anniversary; More RTN Stations

Nick at Nite, which introduced The Nanny to its line-up on Mother's Day, is going to add more slots for the show. Last weekend, they expanded on the late night airings on weekends for The Nanny, expanding the one-hour slots to two-hours (Saturdays 3-5am and Sundays 2-4am). Now Nick at Nite is doing more. First, they will have an all-night marathon this Sunday (May 24) from 10am-2am (encores 2am-6am) ET/PT. Then The Nanny moves from midnight to 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays starting tonight (May 22), bumping Home Improvement. Family Matters takes over the 12 midnight slot on both nights. 1am-3am on Saturday nights will now be two-hours of Home Improvement. This may sound confusing, but the schedule is actually easier to follow a bit now with these changes, as now The Nanny airs every night in the 11pm hour and Family Matters in the 12am hour. View the full updated schedule for Nick at Nite. I don't have anything official yet, but it seems The Nanny is a surprise hit for the network.

The Cosby Show premiered on NBC on Sept. 20, 1984, nearly 25 years ago. This week some of the cast reunited on NBC's Today show. Bill Cosby (Cliff Huxtable), Phylicia Rashad (Clair Huxtable), Earle Hyman (Cliff's dad), Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable), Geoffrey Owens (Elvin Tibideaux), Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy Huxtable), and Raven Symoné (Olivia Kendall) were together again. On Tuesday, they were heavily featured on the Today show. They spoke to both Matt Lauer and Al Roker. Roker was even in a Cosby sweater! If you missed it, not to worry, we have all the clips for you:
It's the Huxtables!
Behind the Scenes
25 Years Later
Cast Answering Viewer Questions

RTN is coming to more Ohio stations! WAX Channel 35 in Cleveland and WAOH Channel 29in Akron, starting Monday, June 1 will carry RTN. Old favorites such as Magnum P.I., Kojak, Night Gallery and The Incredible Hulk will air between 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week.
Speaking of RTN, it seems like they are changing their name to RTV, according to their website.

So we finished upfront this week, stay tuned tomorrow as we give a full preview to all the new sitcoms on the broadcast networks from Modern Family to The Middle to Accidentally on Purpose. We have about 10 new sitcoms coming in 09-10!

SitcomsOnline.com 2009-10 Upfront Preview: The CW; ION and TV Land Start 'Whisperer' and 'Roseanne' Early

The CW is dropping Sundays this fall, so they will only program Mon-Fri. With only 10 hours a week of programming, space is limited. And to make things worse, they have 0 sitcom pilots in development, so all of their new series pick-ups will be dramas.
Here is the SitcomsOnline.com The CW 2009-10 preview:

New Series Already Picked-Up: None.
New Series We Think That Are Almost Good To Go: Melrose Place (drama), The Beautiful Life (drama), and Vampire Diaries (drama).
New Series Perhaps Picked-Up for Mid-Season: Body Politics (drama) and Gossip Girl: Lily (drama).

OUR FALL 2009 PREDICTION:

Mondays
8:00PM Gossip Girl
9:00PM Vampire Diaries (NEW!)

Tuesdays
8:00PM 90210
9:00PM Melrose Place (NEW!)

Wednesdays
8:00PM America's Next Top Model
9:00PM The Beautiful Life (NEW!)

Thursdays
8:00PM Smallville
9:00PM Supernatural

Fridays
8:00PM The Game OR One Tree Hill
9:00PM One Tree Hill OR Privileged

Comments: The CW needs help and they need to improve ratings. With zero comedy, they are not a balanced network and have similar types of shows. For Mondays, Gossip Girl will likely continue to be leading off Mondays and they can try new drama Vampire Diaries at 9pm, as One Tree Hill can help another night. This block needs to do more than 3 million. Tuesdays should have the classic remake with 90210 and now Melrose Place. Melrose needs to do much better than 90210, which hasn't done too well, especially this spring. Wednesday will of course have America's Next Top Model followed possibly by a drama that is focused on models called The Beautiful Life, a new series from Ashton Kutcher. That could be the fit The CW was looking for, instead of wasting the timeslot with repeats of 90210. Thursday is The CW's best night I think...with Smallville and Supernatural, nothing needs to change here. Fridays will have to change, though. They need to be more aggressive. The CW could redevelop sitcom The Game into a one-hour comedy, as they have mulled the idea. I think they should go for that and it would be a nice way to start off the night. At 9pm instead of the Top Model repeats, how about being more aggressive and airing One Tree Hill? I'm not sure if that goes well with The Game, but nothing on the schedule with The Game goes with it but Top Model. The CW is not likely to bring back Everybody Hates Chris for a fifth season. Look for that in syndication next fall with repeats on Nick at Nite and BET. Reaper is the only other on the bubble show with a shot, but I don't see it returning. It is said ABC Studios is shopping the series for first-run syndication, and perhaps it would air on CW stations on Sundays with new episodes, since affiliates are now going to program Sundays this fall. A long shot of happening, though. People keep saying Privileged has a shot...why? With those terrible numbers it had, it has no shot I think unless Fridays is an option instead of The Game. Which come to think of it, that makes sense and could go well with One Tree Hill.
For midseason, they should for sure pick-up The Body Politic. It sounds actually good and has a nice cast including Gabrielle Union, Tim Matheson, Jay Hernandez, and Brian Austin Green. It is said the Gossip Girl spinoff called Lily starring the gorgeous Brittany Snow is being passed, but I think they will need it come midseason, so they should order 6 episodes. If not, they will order another drama like Light Years to fill the void.
You can say goodbye to the following shows Stylista, Reaper, Privileged, Everybody Hates Chris, 13: Fear is Real, 4Real, Easy Money, In Harm's Way, Valentine.
The CW needs help for sure, I think they should start each weeknight with a proven show (Gossip Girl, 90210, Top Model, Smallville, The Game/One Tree Hill). It baffles me why they had no sitcoms in development. Too many dramas that are centered for female teenagers is too much.
Discuss your thoughts on our prediction and feel free to make suggestions of your own.

Remember, next Thursday (May 21) is the actual date when we will find out The CW's plans for the 2000-10 season. So, come on back next Thursday and we will let you know the details and you can see how much we were right (or wrong). Stay tuned on Saturday for our annual "weekend before upfronts rumbling."
And as a reminder, stay tuned next week for all the final schedules released by all the networks! We will put them up as soon as they are released by the networks, so this will be your home to see them first!


We have some schedule news! First, ION Television will launch Ghost Whisperer in June! It was slated to begin in the fall, but will start earlier than expected. The show will air Mondays at 8pm starting Monday, June 1, 2009. It will replace two Reba episodes. Reba will continue to air weeknights in the 7pm hour and at times in the 8pm hour Wed-Fri, depending on the movies. For fans of Ghost Whisperer, or if you want to watch the show for the first time, the first five episodes will air in June (June 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29). So this is an update to the ION Television June 2009 schedule we previously announced.
Ghost Whisperer will lead into two episodes of NCIS at 9 and 10pm on Monday nights.

Elsewhere, TV Land made a very last minute schedule change YESTERDAY that was in effect immediately! Some of you probably saw Roseanne airing from 9-10pm and 12-1am, airing between The Cougar. Roseanne was not set to launch on TV Land until June 5, so it started on May 13--three weeks earlier than planned. Roseanne will leave Nick at Nite effective immediately because of the change. It was only airing late nights on weekends anyway. Family Matters takes over the Roseanne slots on Nick at Nite. View the updated Nick at Nite May 2009 schedule.
Back to TV Land, we also told you before that a second Married...with Children marathon was set for Thursday, May 14 (tonight) from 10pm-1am, and now TV Land has made that a weekly thing. So look for The Bundys every Thursday night in TV Land PRIME. Also, starting tomorrow the 6pm weekday hour will now be The Beverly Hillbillies, replacing Hogan's Heroes and Green Acres, which are leaving a few weeks earlier than planned. In the 7pm hour will be The Andy Griffith Show, as that show will air 7-9pm now. Though on Mondays it will still air its 7pm-12am marathons. Roseanne will air Tues-Fri in the 9pm hour and 12-1:30am on most nights. On Fridays, Roseanne will air from 9pm-2:30am, which means the TV Land PRIME Movie is gone. Will it remain in June? That still remains to be seen.
On weekends, Roseanne is airing 1am-4am on Saturday nights and 1-3am on Sunday nights. Hogan's Heroes gets a half hour airing a week now, airing Sundays at 10am. The Cosby Show seems to be airing with Roseanne a lot, and gains the 11pm-1am slot on Saturday nights. And Three's Company moves from 1am-4am to 4am-6am on Saturday nights. Looks like 3rd Rock from the Sun is totally gone on this schedule!
View the FULL new schedule that is in place now! Couple of points, TV Land will be going "off the clock" starting tomorrow...so the timings of shows will be way off. Just giving you a heads up, if you're taping something. And we're not sure what this means for June, as we already announced a schedule for that. As of now, these new changes are through the end of May. We will update you on any updates to the TV Land June schedule as soon as we get it. Stay tuned!

Come on back tomorrow for news on a sitcom coming to Lifetime in June!

TV Land May 2009 Highlights, TV Land Awards Honorees; George Lopez Talk Show Coming to TBS in November

For May 2009 on TV Land we really don't get any schedule changes, but the schedule seems more consistent, especially from 10pm-6am now. Airing from 10pm-12am will be The Andy Griffith Show (Mon); The Cosby Show (Tues); The Cougar (Wed); The Jeffersons (Thurs) and TV Land PRIME Movie (Fri). Usually from 12-6am we will get back-to-back episodes of sitcoms 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Cosby Show, Sanford & Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and M*A*S*H. Nothing else really is different.
As for stunts, viewers get to spend some time with Mom and "The Cos" just in time for Mother's Day when TV Land PRIME gives moms everywhere the nite off on Thursday, May 7 from 9pm-1am! PRIME presents a special Cosby Show marathon salute to Mom with episodes that feature Cliff struggling to entertain the kids and keep the household in order as he indulges his wife Clair with some well deserved time away from Huxtable family mayhem.
The eight-episode original series The Cougar starring Stacey Anderson, a stunning 40-year-old successful realtor from Scottsdale, Arizona, continues Wednesdays at 10pm on TV Land PRIME.
On Memorial Day (Monday, May 25), it's been six weeks since single sophisticated cougar Stacey embarked on her prowl to find her perfect cub. Prior to the season finale and Stacey's final pick on Wednesday, June 3, come relive all of the romance, laughs, tears and heartbreaks with a marathon of the first six episodes of The Cougar. Tune in to see additional footage and dramatic deleted scenes as well as get an inside scoop on what everyone from Stacey to Vivica to the guys were really thinking.
TV Land PRIME movies for the month are Witches of Eastwick, Patriot Games, The Fugitive, and The Twilight Zone. Risky Business gets some weekend place and on Memorial Day.
View the full TV Land May 2009 schedule (with a generic schedule and also adjustments).
As for the honorees for this year's TV Land Awards, TV Land announced today that it will pay tribute to M*A*S*H, Married with Children, Home Improvement, Magnum P.I., Knots Landing and Two and a Half Men at the 7th Annual TV Land Awards. Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the two-hour show will tape on Sunday, April 19, at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City and will air on TV Land during a special presentation of TV Land PRIME on Sunday, April 26th at 8PM ET/PT.
All of this year's honorees are cultural icons representing a cross-section of classic and modern television that viewers love. The Legacy of Laughter Award will be presented to television actress and Seinfeld alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus. M*A*S*H will be honored with the Impact Award. The Innovator Award will be given to the unconventional Fox sitcom Married with Children, as we mentioned yesterday TV Land will showcase six classic episodes in honor of this on Thursday, April 23 from 9pm-12am. The classic CBS primetime soap opera Knots Landing celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and will be recognized for its place in television history. The Fan Favorite Award will be presented to Home Improvement, and the action drama Magnum P.I., which launched the career of Tom Selleck as a leading actor, will be bestowed with the Hero Award. Finally, the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men will be awarded the Future Classic Award.
View more details on this year's honorees!

The late-night landscape is about to shift when comedian and actor George Lopez headlines a new talk show for TBS. The program, from 2.2 Productions, paraMedia Inc. and Telepictures Productions, in association with Warner Horizon Television, will bring the excitement back to late night with an outdoor street-party atmosphere and a high-energy crowd. The fun will include visits from celebrity guests, live music and comedy acts and the benefit of George's own flair and personality. Lopez and Jim Paratore (Warner's The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Bonnie Hunt Show) serve as the executive producers for the not-yet-titled series, which will air on TBS Mondays-Thursdays at 11 p.m. (ET/PT), beginning in November 2009.
While high-energy, Lopez's new series will feature a casual environment that invites guests to engage fully with the crowd, giving audience members the chance to interact with the guests, ask questions and walk away feeling as though they've experienced something new. The new talk show represents Lopez's return to series television after co-creating, writing, producing and starring in Warner Bros. Television's groundbreaking hit sitcom George Lopez, which ran for six seasons on ABC. George Lopez remains a hit with viewers in syndication on both broadcast stations and cable's Nick at Nite, ranking as one of the top-rated shows on the network and among the top five comedies and top 20 weekly programs in syndication. George Lopez is one of only four off-net comedies to post weekly ratings gains among households from the 2007–08 to 2008–09 season.
Lopez continues to work steadily and his most recent film credits include the box-office hit Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Swing Vote, Henry Poole Is Here and Balls of Fury. He will next be seen starring opposite Jackie Chan in The Spy Next Door and Mr. Troop Mom, with Jane Lynch. In August, Lopez will film his second HBO Comedy Special, Tall, Dark and Chicano.

TV Land April 2009 Highlights, Includes 7th TV Land Awards; JustMyShow.com Interviews Cliff Huxtable's Father

It will be a busy April for TV Land this April, 2009. They will conclude the eight-episode season of High School Reunion, with the finale on Wednesday, April 8 at 10pm. If you missed any, you can catch all 7 episodes from 9am-4pm on April 8 leading up to the eighth and final episode at 10pm of the Chandler High School Class of 1988. Then a week later, TV Land launches another eight-episode original series, The Cougar, on April 15. Stacey Anderson, a stunning 40-year-old successful realtor from Scottsdale, Arizona, is the "Cougar" in TV Land's new original series The Cougar. The eight-episode series is hosted by Vivica A. Fox and follows Anderson as she searches for love among a pool of 20 eligible twenty-something men.
As for reruns and movies, realize your action-movie dreams the weekend of April 3-5, with TV Land PRIME's "Truth, Justice & the Harrison Ford Way." The bankable box-office star Harrison Ford and American movie icon, hit the cinematic trifecta three years in a row with Patriot Games in 1992, The Fugitive in 1993, and Clear and Present Danger in 1994. For three nights in a row beginning Friday, April 3, TV Land PRIME delivers Harrison Ford to viewers in each of these heart-stopping thrillers: On Sunday, April 3, from 10pm-1am, Harrison Ford teams up with Tommy Lee Jones in the mother of all manhunts, The Fugitive. On Saturday, April 4 from 10pm-12:30am, Harrison Ford brings Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan to life as the American hero who foils an assassination attempt on a member of the British Royal Family by the IRA which proves to have very personal consequences in Patriot Games. Finally, Harrison Ford reprises his role as Jack Ryan on Sunday, April 5 from 10pm-1am in Clear and Present Danger. Jack Ryan finds himself entwined in an illegal covert operation against a Columbian drug cartel and faces off against some surprising political adversaries. Don't miss Harrison Ford in his "Prime"--no pun intended!
Then we take some time to do some spring cleaning--Cosby Show style! Raising children is not only hard work, it can be messy too, and the Huxtable kids prove to be no exception to that rule. From Theo's kitchen floor 'surfing' to Rudy and Peter's showdown with "The Juicer" to Olivia's crayon cleaning caper, the kids keep Cliff & Claire on their toes and flush with cleaning products that will tackle whatever the clean-up job requires. Let the clean-u begin on Thursday, April 9 from 9pm-1am!
The 7th Annual TV Land Awards show rolls out the red carpet on Sunday, April 26 at 9pm. Watch TV Land PRIME spread our wings further as the 2009 awards embraces and recognizes "more than television" with a star-studded night featuring a list of who's who in television and film. And, to deliver the most viewers possible and build excitement leading up to the awards show, at 2pm, TV Land will kick off the fun with a 7-hour marathon of perennial favorite The Andy Griffith Show featuring red-carpet interstitials from the award show. Still the host for the awards has not been announced along with major honorees, so check back with us!
Besides the Harrison Ford movies, other TV Land PRIME movies for the month include Tom Cruise in Risky Business and Jack Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick. Movie encores for the month include The Twilight Zone and and Cocktail.
There are no regular schedule changes as of now, so expect the same stuff as February and March. View the full TV Land April 2009 highlights!

Eric of JustMyShow.com is back after a year to do a new interview for his podcast! This time it is Earle Hyman, who played Russell Huxtable (Cliff's dad) on The Cosby Show. He also did the voice of Panthro in the hit '80s animated series Thundercats! Feel the magic, feel the roar!
Tony and Emmy nominated actor Earle Hyman has been acting on the stage and screen for over sixty years. While highly respected in classical theatre, he is perhaps best known for the role of Bill Cosby's father, Russell on The Cosby Show.
Among the topics you'll hear Earle talk about is a place near and dear to him, The Classical Theatre of Harlem, and him in Three Sisters alongside his former Cosby castmate Sabrina LaBeauf through March 8, 2009 in Harlem.
So without further adieu, head on over to JustMyShow.com to listen to this podcast! Get that James Brown song stuck in your head that the Cosby Show family sang to Grandpa and Grandma Huxtable and that catchy Thundercats theme in your head as you listen to Earle!

TV Land February 2009 Highlights; The PJs and King of the Hill Come to Adult Swim

This February on TV Land will see the return of High School Reunion on TV Land, with its second season on TV Land! High School Reunion is back for an unforgettable second season airing Wednesdays at 10pm starting February 18. This year friends will be reunited, enemies will confront each other, and a secret will be revealed that could forever change the legacy of the Chandler High School Class of 1988. But first...counting down to that big February 18 second season premiere, TV Land PRIME will bring you all of the action from season one every Wednesday at 10p starting on January 7 through February 11. A marathon of the entire first season will also air in a President's Day event on Monday, February 16th.
The weekend of February 12-15, TV Land will celebrate Valentine's Day and President's Weekend with a marathon of The Cosby Show! Tough teachers, school projects, homework, getting your driver's license, dating, parties, Prom, graduation, etc... Going to class wasn't all bad and TV Land PRIME is taking viewers back to school during the "Cosby Show Old School Marathon" from Feb. 12-15, 8pm-2am each night. Walk down memory lane as Denise, Theo, Vanessa and Rudy experience the growing pains of approaching adulthood and give Cliff and Clair more than one reason to look forward to an empty nest. Your assignment is to tune in each night at 8pm all Presidents Day Weekend on TV Land, and then go online to test your Cosby family skills with the Cosby Show trivia game. Class dismissed!
Other TV Land February 2009 highlights include a couple of overnight marathons of Three's Company on a few Saturdays (Feb. 14, 2am-6am and Feb. 21, 12-5am). TV Land PRIME movies for Friday nights include the premieres of Broadcast News and Revenge of the Nerds, along with an encore of Jewel of the Nile.
There will be no regular schedule changes, as of now, so the schedule in effect for January will remain. View the complete TV Land February 2009 highlights.

The other day we told you Adult Swim (late night block on Cartoon Network) has picked up a live-action British comedy for Sunday nights, now we have more Adult Swim news. Adult Swim has picked-up the rights to two animated series...The PJs (short lived Fox/The WB series starring the voice of Eddie Murphy) and King of the Hill. The PJs will premiere tonight (Monday, December 29) and will air in the 10pm hour (encores in 2am hour) for the next three nights before the long-running series King of the Hill takes over the slot starting January 1 everynight. The PJs will then will move to Saturday nights at 12 midnight starting January 3. And I know I will get asked this, so I will say it...yes, The PJs will remain on TV One and King of the Hill will NOT remain on FX but will remain on local stations. Both deals for Adult Swim are not exclusive, but King of the Hill is exclusive for cable. King of the Hill's last airing on FX is Wednesday at 4:30pm.
King of the Hill will lead-into episodes of Family Guy five nights a week at 11pm. Now all Adult Swim needs to acquire is The Simpsons! It is amazing how that series has still not gotten a cable home. Even American Dad! (Fridays 11pm & 3am) is on Adult Swim for crying out loud. Other acquired series on Adult Swim are The Oblongs (1:30am) and Clerks: The Animated Series (Fridays 12am and 4am).

WGN America January 2009 Changes, Includes Star Trek: TNG; Wipeout Encores To Air Weekend Afternoons on ABC In January

Effective Monday, January 19, 2009, WGN America will have many new changes to its line-up! But before that, a minor temporary change will happen. For the weeks of January 5 and January 12, weeknights at 4:00am ET will be another airing of Canadian comedy Corner Gas, replacing the 4am half-hour of Sister, Sister. Sister, Sister will remain at 4:30am ET these two weeks, while Corner Gas will also remain at 1:30am ET these two weeks.
Then the new winter schedule starts on Monday, January 19! Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie have been airing on weekdays in the 9am ET hour, with single episodes a day. Now they are on the move to afternoons and double airings! Bewitched will air weekdays at 2:00pm & 2:30pm ET, and I Dream of Jeannie will follow at 3:00pm & 3:30pm ET! The shows will still air on Sunday nights, too! On weekdays, the shows are replacing Homicide: Life on the Street at 2pm ET and two Cosby Show episodes in the 3:00pm hour. The Cosby Show will move into the 4:00pm hour as a result, followed by an hour of Scrubs at 5pm ET and Becker at 6pm ET, giving the network their strong sitcoms from 2pm-7pm ET. So, the entire daytime lineup has been altered. 7th Heaven moves from 6pm and 7pm ET to weekday mornings at 9am ET. Looks like it hasn't performed as well as they would have liked after returning this past fall. Airing at 7pm ET will now be America's Funniest Home Videos weeknights, except Tuesdays.
On Tuesdays, WGN America will add the '80s hit Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 7pm ET hour and also in primetime at 8 and 9pm ET for a nice three-hour block! The primetime block replaces a block of Nash Bridges, which will still remain weekdays at 12pm ET. Primetime will also change on Wednesday nights as now we get back-to-back episodes of sitcoms Coach at 8pm ET and Becker at 9pm ET replacing AFV and Legend of the Seeker encores. Coach will leave the Sunday night block, though, replaced by Cosby Show Sundays at 5pm et. Mondays in primetime will remain two AFV episodes and Thursdays & Fridays we have movies still.
In late night, after The Bob & Tom Show at midnight ET, we now have a rotating wheel in the 1am ET hour instead of a strip of Reno 911/Corner Gas. Mondays in the 1am ET hour will be another America's Funniest Home Videos, while on Tuesdays we get another helping of Star Trek: The Next Generation...makes sense as both air in primetime on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays it is a different story though! We get another hour of '80s sitcom ALF! ALF will still remain Sundays in the 6pm ET hour as well! Thursdays and Fridays in the 1am hour will be back-to-back episodes of Reno 911. The show has to air 5 times a week, so four episodes will air there. The fifth episode will air late night on Sundays at 5am, so technically Monday mornings. Reno 911 on Sunday nights will follow Homicide: Life on the Street at 3am and 4am ET, as Homicide is now relegated to just two airings a week and only on Sunday nights.
Back to weeknight late nights, Steve Wilkos Show still remains in the 2am ET hour (Chappelle's Show on Friday nights) and Paid Programming is in the 3am ET hour still. But then...4am-5:30am ET will now be a rotating block instead of just Corner Gas, Sister Sister and Moesha from 4am-5:30am ET. On Monday nights (Tuesday mornings), we get three episodes of Corner Gas, its only airings now on the line-up. WGN America says it has a loyal audience but unfortunately it's too small and they couldn't get the numbers they needed to sustain it...but at least it is still on, even though it will be just three airings a week. Tuesday nights (Wednesday mornings) will be three episodes of Moesha, while on on Wednesday nights (Thursday mornings) will be three episodes of Sister, Sister. We get more Moesha on Thursday nights (Friday mornings) from 4am-5:30am ET and finally on Friday nights (Saturday mornings) we get three episodes of Funniest Pets & People, which is off the weekday afternoon line-up now.
Finally, the only other changes we have not mentioned are on Saturdays. Saturdays at 12 noon ET will be another Star Trek: The Next Generation airing, replacing one of the two Bob & Tom Show encores, Bob & Tom will remain at 1pm ET. And finally, Becker primetime has been moved to Wednesdays 9pm ET, so replacing Becker on Saturdays at 6pm ET will be another AFV leading into Boston Legal.
All in all, not bad changes, unless you loved Corner Gas, 7th Heaven, Funniest Pets & People, Sister Sister and Homicide: Life on the Street...they were lessened, but not removed at least. In fact, they didn't remove anything totally! Good programming!
View the full WGN America January 2009 line-up, in case you missed anything.

Before "Wipeout Superball Sunday" airs on Sunday, February 1, 2009 on ABC during the same time as the 10-15 minute Super Bowl halftime show and following the game from approx. 10-11pm, ABC Sports will schedule repeats of Wipeout in select weekend afternoon sports slots in January on ABC and on Super Bowl Sunday leading up to the "Superball" event on ABC.

The scheduled repeats of Wipeout will air on the following dates during ABC Sports:
Saturday, January 10: 5:00PM ET (4:00PM CT/3:00PM MT/2:00PM PT)
Sunday, January 11: 5:00PM ET (4:00PM CT/3:00PM MT/2:00PM PT)
Sunday, January 18: 5:00PM ET (4:00PM CT/3:00PM MT/2:00PM PT)
Sunday, February 1: 5:00PM ET (4:00PM CT/3:00PM MT/2:00PM PT)
NOTE: Wipeout will be preempted on Sunday, Jan. 25 due to the launch of NBA on ABC Sunday telecasts--Dallas @ Boston 1:00 pm ET and San Antonio @ L.A. Lakers 3:30 pm ET. On Super Bowl Sunday, the NBA match-up between Cleveland @ Detroit at 2:30 pm ET will lead into Wipeout at 5:00 pm ET.
Don't forget, "Wipeout Superball Sunday" kicks off on Sunday, Feb. 1 at approx. 8pm ET (5pm PT) during the 10-15 min. halftime show followed by two one-hour repeats and a new one-hour episode at approx. 10pm ET (7pm pt).
Wipeout had a solid run this summer on ABC, proving to be a ratings winner with men, and it is important for ABC to keep this key hilarious show in the minds of viewers before it launches its second season this summer! Tune in for this hilarious show both for the repeats and the new specials on Super Bowl Sunday. This series is actually funnier than some of the sitcoms today! Goodnight and big balls!

WGN America's 2008 Holiday Programming; NBC Announces More Midseason 2009 Changes; ABC Update

WGN America has announced its holiday schedule for 2008! They are airing holiday movies all month long such as the 1985 movie Santa Claus: The Movie on Saturday night, I'll Be Home for Christmas starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas & Jessica Biel, and It's a Very Muppet Christmas Movie. But what about their stunt on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day itself? On Christmas Eve, you can catch Christmas episodes of regularly scheduled timeslot series Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Matlock, In the Heat of the Night, and Nash Bridges from 8am to 1pm ET. Then after the WGN News at 1pm ET, Christmas episodes of The Cosby Show will air at a special time of 2-3pm ET (instead of the usual Homicide) followed by the classic 1977 Christmas special A Flintstone Christmas from 3-4pm ET and the 1980 Yogi Bear classic Yogi's First Christmas from 4-6pm ET. A Flintstone Christmas will also air Monday, Dec. 22 in primetime from 8-9pm ET, while Yogi's First Christmas will also air in primetime on Friday, Dec. 19 from 8-10pm ET. Back to Christmas Eve, WGN America will then reair the movie Santa Claus: The Movie from 6-8pm ET. Then in primetime, WGN America will spend the holidays with The Honeymooners from 8-9pm ET, includes the classic Christmas episode, leading into the Yule Log from 9pm-6am! Who needs a fireplace when you have the classic Yule Log playing classic Christmas songs from the Golden Age of Radio!
On Christmas Day itself, WGN America will air Midnight Mass from Chicago at 8am ET and Midnight Mass from New York at 9:30am ET, with Feed the Children at 11am ET before regular programming starts at 12pm ET with a holiday movie marathon until 10:30pm ET, with stars in movies such as Peter Falk, William H. Macy, Don Rickles, Patricia Heaton, Valerie Bertinelli, and Katey Sagal. At 10:30pm ET WGN will air a half-hour special called WGN News Holiday Special.
Now originally the plan was for some sitcom holiday episodes during the day on both days, but that is not happening. It was supposed to be from 2pm-6pm ET on Christmas Eve with holiday showings of Cosby Show, Coach, Becker, NewsRadio, Bewitched, WKRP and two episodes of Beverly Hillbillies leading into A Flintstone Christmas and Yogi's Fist Christmas. The Yule Log was originally slated for Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning from 1:30am-6am and again 8am-11am ET followed by a sitcom marathon from 11am-4pm ET of Beverly Hillbillies, Coach, Sister Sister, Cosby Show, Becker, NewsRadio, WKRP, Bewitched and more Coach & Hillbillies leading into three movies. It is too bad this isn't happening, but still WGN is giving us some goodies at least with the animated classic specials. NewsRadio fans might be happy though, as that series is airing as a filler now at times on Fridays at 10:30pm ET, and its holiday episode will air on Dec. 26! Make note of it!
So what does WGN America have in store for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day? We can tell you it is a sitcom marathon! We will announce it next week...so stay tuned! Come on back!

NBC has announced its plans for their post Super Bowl schedule starting Feb. 2. We gave you their January schedule, now they have announced their February and March plans. Immediately following Super Bowl XLIII on Sunday, February 1, NBC will broadcast an original, hour-long episode of The Office from approx. 10:30-11:30 p.m. ET (airing simultaneously to all time zones). Then starting the next day, February 2, Monday nights will feature the returns of Chuck (8-9 p.m. ET), the latest volume of Heroes (9-10 p.m. ET) and the season premiere of Medium (10-11 p.m. ET), back in its old slot. Tuesdays will remain the same as they did in January with The Biggest Loser: Couples and Law & Order: SVU. Wednesdays will have the return of Life starting Feb. 4 in between Knight Rider and Law & Order. Speaking of Knight Rider, NBC has cut its episode for the series from the full 22 episodes to 17 episodes due to declining ratings. Knight Rider will now have its season finale on Feb. 25, with a new show launching March 4, but NBC has not announced what yet. Thursdays will stay the same until mid-March, when ER has its two-hour series finale on March 12 from 9-11pm. NBC has ordered an extra ER episode, giving it 20 for this final season. The following week NBC will launch new series Kings with a two-hour premiere on March 19 from 9-11pm, before settling to its new timeslot of 10pm on March 26. I just don't get why NBC is not launching this earlier when they have the Super Bowl platform. Kings is a riveting new drama about a modern-day monarchy. It is a contemporary retelling of the timeless tale of David and Goliath. This series is an epic story of greed and power, war and romance, forbidden loves and secret alliances -- and a young hero who rises to power in a modern-day kingdom. I don't know if the ER audience will stick for something like this. Anyway, Fridays will remain the same in February & March as January with Howdie Do It, Friday Night Lights, and Dateline. Saturdays will continue to have more Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU encores. While Sundays will continue the event specials with the new miniseries XIII airing a week after the Super Bowl from 9-11pm on Feb. 8 and concluding on the week after on Feb. 15 from 9-11pm. XIII is a high-stakes cat-and-mouse thriller starring Val Kilmer, Stephen Dorff, Stephen McHattie and Jessalyn Gilsig, as the first female U.S. president is shot dead by a sniper during her Veterans Day speech. Three months later, a wounded man is found tattered in a forest with no memory of his identity. The only clue is a tattoo on his neck -- XIII. NBC has not announced what will air 7-9pm on Sundays, but it will likely be Dateline or possibly the missing Deal or No Deal. NBC has not announced what special is airing on Feb. 22, but starting March 1, Celebrity Apprentice will air Sundays from 9-11pm.
NBC says premieres for additional midseason shows such as The Untitled Amy Poehler Comedy and The Philanthropist, will be announced at a future date.
View the NBC Feb-March 2009 press release for more details on these shows.

Yesterday we mentioned we thought ABC would air the docudrama Border Security USA as a lead-in to Lost starting Jan. 28. Now ABC has announced it has renamed the series to Homeland Security USA and will launch it instead on Tuesdays at 8pm starting Jan. 6 as a lead-in to the ABC premiere of Scrubs, a week before Idol comes. So this means According to Jim will not move to that slot on that date. Promos for Homeland started airing last night. However, it seems ABC is only airing 5 of the 11 episodes right now for Homeland Security USA as According to Jim is listed in returning on Feb. 10, though that could change. Looks like ABC wants to do better vs. Idol and give Scrubs a better lead-in. ABC still has not announced what will air as a lead-in to Lost...could it possibly be repeats of Lost? We will keep you up to date on this. But it seems the According to Jim holiday episodes in December will be it for awhile, so watch it all this month Tuesdays 9-10pm! Meanwhile, ABC has cut the episode order for upcoming new series Cupid from 13 to 9 episodes, as it is launching pretty late in the season...on March 24. ABC already cut The Unusuals and Castle from 13 to 10 episodes due to so many series, so this is nothing against Cupid.

Happy Thanksgiving; Marathons on TV This Holiday Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! We thank you for visiting us on this special day and every other day. We also are very thankful that you all continue to visit every single day and making this blog a huge success. We get thousands of visitors every day (even on weekends). So, we thank you for the growth each year! It is simply amazing.

Before we let you all go back to your families, we want to let you know the marathons on TV you and your family might want to watch during the day and after Thanksgiving dinner.
We have told you about many of the sitcom related marathons already. We were the first ones to tell you about them, too. WGN America has a Newhart marathon on Thanksgiving Day from 2pm-3am. TV Land has its annual Overstuffed Weekend with I Love Lucy and The Cosby Show on Thanksgiving Day and Night, with many other sitcoms from Friday-Sunday. TBS has a marathon of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 9am-3pm today, while tomorrow (Friday) Sci Fi offers up an all-day event of the classic Robin Williams sitcom Mork & Mindy from 8am-6am! BET has a holiday weekend filled with marathons of One on One, The Parkers and Steve Harvey Show starting on Friday. So yeah we told you about all these already many moons ago. But there are of course more!
Other sitcom related marathons include The N's all Drake & Josh weekend starting at 3pm, you can eat bananas while watching G4's Arrested Development marathon starting at 9am, FX will give us a marathon of the late Bernie Mac on his sitcom Bernie Mac on Friday, and Disney Channel will have marathon blocks of their sitcoms all this weekend of The Suite Life, Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place.
Non-sitcom wise, of course you will have CSI marathons all over the place. CSI: NY gets the full day treatment on Thanksgiving Day on Spike TV, A&E will have a CSI: Miami marathon on Friday, while Spike TV offers up a CSI vs. CSI: NY marathon. What no James Bond movie marathons on Spike this year? Not to fret, Sci Fi Channel will have some today, before they air Mork & Mindy on Friday. Other notable marathons on Thanksgiving Day include Goof Troop on Toon Disney, The Closer on TNT, House on USA Network and Rocky movies on Versus. Friday's notables include Beverly Hills 90210 on SOAPnet, The Starter Wife on USA Network, and Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC America. And it seems like Fox Reality is airing Hell's Kitchen all weekend and the same goes true for Fox Movie Channel with Planet of the Apes movies. Sorry no Law & Order series, except for Criminal Intent on Sunday.
And don't forget my pick of the night, tonight at 8pm on ABC the holiday classic A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I watched it Tuesday and will watch it again tonight. Can't get enough of old Chuck! If you haven't see it already, view our 2008 Network TV Holiday Specials and Movies Guide, so you don't miss anything on network TV. Also our ABC Family 25 Days of Christmas schedule, because that is the place to be this holiday season with classics like Mickey's Christmas Carol, A Garfield Christmas and Winnie the Pooh & Christmas Too!
And for more marathons this weekend we did not list, head on over to the Interesting Pile blog.

Hallmark and TV Land Make Schedule Changes; ABC and Fox January News

Hallmark Channel has made a schedule change that will start this coming Monday (November 10). Cheers will leave the line-up from 4-5pm and be replaced with more Little House on the Prairie. So, this means Cheers only lasted two weeks in its weekday slot with a second Little House returning to the hour. As of now, Cheers is totally off the line-up, because if you all recall when Cheers started on weekdays, its weekend airings were removed.
We will keep you up to date if anything else comes out of this, but as of now, no more Cheers on Hallmark. If I were to guess, it could return in January when they launch I Love Lucy. This network has had trouble launching sitcoms besides M*A*S*H, which is a shame because they have two coming in 2009 (I Love Lucy, Golden Girls).

As for TV Land, we already told you about the late afternoon change that started this past Monday (Nov. 3) with Hogan's Heroes at 4pm and Leave it to Beaver at 5pm, now more changes are happening next week. Originally we stated, Scrubs was set to move Nov. 10 from 9-10pm to 10-11pm, but it seems that is not happening. Now on that week, we will get a week-long Cosby Show marathon! The Cosby Show Marathon airs Monday, November 10 through Thursday, November 13 form 8pm-2am and Friday, November 14 from 8pm-10pm and 12am-4am (it is preempted Wednesday, Nov. 12 from 10p-10:30p for Myths & Legends).
A few changes are also coming starting that week for at least the rest of November. In the 7am hour, back-to-back episodes of Scrubs will replace two episodes of M*A*S*H. So, Scrubs is out of primetime. In the weekdays at 1pm hour, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition will replace Beverly Hillbillies for the rest of the month at least. And in late nights, for the week of November 10 from 2-3am will be Sanford & Son replacing Extreme Makeover: Home Edition encore (weeks of Nov. 17 and 24 it will be more Cosby Show in the hour). Finally, Three's Company is back regularly starting Nov. 10, at least for the rest of November, airing weeknights from 3-4am ET/PT!
So what will happen to TV Land PRIME after Cosby Show's marathon week? Cosby Show will now air 8-10pm from Mon-Sat for at least through the end of November, with 3rd Rock from the Sun now staying in its 10-11pm Mon-Thurs slot. Replacing Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 11pm will be ... CSI, from sister station Spike TV (which airs it at 3pm and 8pm weekdays)! CSI will also air at 12 midnight, replacing M*A*S*H. This is for at least the rest of November (weeks of Nov. 17 and 24), we do not know yet if CSI will still be airing in December. For the final two weeks in November at least, this is how TV Land PRIME looks: 9PM Cosby Show, 10PM 3rd Rock from the Sun, 11PM CSI. With more Cosby Show leading in at 8PM and more CSI leading out at 12AM, as Scrubs and Home Edition are relegated to daytime...again for at least the end of the month.
So it seems M*A*S*H is not airing AT ALL the final two weeks of November and Beverly Hillbillies has been reduced to weekend blocks and in the Thanksgiving marathon. I don't expect CSI to air beyond these two weeks, but we'll see. Will these changes be in effect in December? We shall soon find out!
For now, view the full updated TV Land November 2008 schedule, so you don't get confused.

ABC has released part of their January plans. They have released Mondays. Originally it was supposed to be True Beauty (new Ashton Kutcher/Tyra Banks produced reality show) from 8pm-9:30pm followed by The Bachelor from 9:30-11pm. Now it will be The Bachelor from 8-9:30pm, followed by sitcom Samantha Who? staying put at 9:30pm despite no Dancing and True Beauty in the 10pm hour. This new night will launch Monday, January 5. On that date The Bachelor will have a two-hour premiere leading into the premiere of True Beauty. So, Samantha Who? will air in between those two starting Jan. 12. No other ABC January details are in yet, but we could expect Lost, as last night we saw promos saying "two-hour premiere in January." If I were to guess, Lost will air on Wednesdays. Also, last night promos for unscripted docudrama series Border Security USA started playing, and we could expect that in January as well, perhaps with Lost. ABC premiere of Scrubs and animated comedy The Goode Family are among the other items that could launch in January on ABC, with on the bubble shows like Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies perhaps benched. I want to clarify, that Scrubs is not coming Dec. 2 as I mentioned earlier in the week, the original plan of According to Jim remains starting Dec. 2.
As for Fox, they have announced they will launch 24 with its usual two-night/four-hour event on Sunday, January 11 and Monday, January 12 from 8-10pm. Then starting January 19, it will air in its 9-10pm slot. No word on what will air at 8pm, it could be new series Dollhouse though. American Idol obviously will return in January as well, perhaps Tuesday, Jan. 20. We will keep you up to date.

ABC Family's 10th Annual 13 Days of Halloween for 2008; Television's Most Memorable Moments Down to Top 20 Finalists

For the tenth year in a row, ABC Family brings viewers fright-full evenings during its "13 Nights of Halloween" programming event. The ABC Family movie premieres of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and The Addams Family will join other Halloween themed programming airing the 13 nights leading up to Halloween (October 19-October 31).
Other movies and specials airing include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, The Witches, Gremlins, The Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice, Addams Family Values, Casper Meets Wendy, Teen Witch, Hocus Pocus, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Scooby-Doo Movie, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Clue, Godzilla, Scariest Places on Earth and on Halloween night the classic Poltergeist. You can also catch Halloween episodes of ABC Family's sitcoms such as 8 Simple Rules, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Full House, and others in their respective timeslots.
Read the full press release.

Last month we announced that the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards (Sept. 21 on ABC) will honor television with the most memorable television moments! Top 40 moments (20 comedy and 20 drama) were posted for viewers to vote on and now it is down to 20! With more than 100,000 votes posted already, television fans have selected their Top 10 Comedic and Top 10 Dramatic moments in the Television Academy's first ever public vote to determine America's number one moment in each category. The voting continues at emmys.abc.com through September 15, and the results will be announced in a special segment on this year's 60th Primetime Emmy® Awards airing live on Sunday, September 21, 8-11pm ET on ABC.
From the original list of 40 moments as selected by representatives from the Academy, the media and the production company, the list now includes many of television's highest rated moments, as well as some of its most emotional, funny and dramatic scenes.
From The Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show to the entire Cosby Show family singing a Ray Charles song, from hearing the Goodnights on The Waltons to the disappearance of the island on Lost, fans have been able to narrow 40 of "Television’s Most Memorable Moments" down to 20, and finally to viewers' favorite comedic and dramatic moment. The original 40 clips to vote on were chosen by Ken Ehrlich Productions (producers of this year's Emmy Awards), Television Academy leadership and a select group of the nation's top television journalists. Among the shows in the top 20 now are top moments from Ellen, Friends, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, The Cosby Show, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Dallas, and Roots.
Vote today if you haven't already!

WGN America Edits Sunday Schedule; Network Notes

Nearly three weeks ago we gave you WGN America's Fall 2008 schedule, but now there has been a slight change, nothing drastic but they are changing the schedule a bit on Sundays.
Originally there were no schedule changes in September on Sundays, but now WGN America will change Sundays starting Sept. 14 and a little bit more on Oct. 5, which was the original date of changes happening on Sundays. On Sept. 14 Whacked Out Sports will air at 1pm ET for an hour leading into Cubs baseball games at 2pm ET. After the game ends, Funniest Pets & People will now air in the 5pm ET hour leading into The Cosby Show now in the 6pm ET hour. The Outta Sight Retro Night will continue to air from 7-10pm ET (with WKRP, Newhart, and Honeymooners hours) followed by the WGN News at 9 at 10pm ET. Then more classic TV will be added as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie will join the Sunday line-up earlier than planned and in a better slot too, Sundays in the 11pm ET hour for Bewitched and 12am ET hour for I Dream of Jeannie sliding Scrubs to 1am ET. Remember this is just Sundays. The weekday line-up starting Sept. 8 will remain the same as we previously announced, such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie in the 9am ET hour weekdays.
There will be no changes to Saturdays in September as we previously said. Saturdays will still change starting Oct. 4 as we originally mentioned, with changes such as Bewitched airing at 12 noon ET, I Dream of Jeannie at 1pm ET, NewsRadio at 6pm ET and Coach at 7pm ET. So nothing changed there. However, Sundays starting Oct. 5 will be altered just a tad now because of the changes on Sept. 14. Originally this is where the Sunday overhaul was going to take place, but now the changes will just be Whacked Out Sports kicking it off at 11am ET followed by a double dose now of The Beverly Hillbillies at 12 noon ET. The rest of the Sunday line-up is generally the same as the one that will start Sept. 14.
We will have much more on WGN America in the near future as they have classic TV marathons planned for all upcoming holidays starting with Halloween, so stay tuned!
For now, view the entire WGN America Fall 2008 Schedule so you see the new Sunday schedule and the rest of the schedule as well if you missed it!

Two-time Golden Globe winner Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time) is returning to the world of sitcoms. She has just signed to star in a new comedy pilot for TBS from writer/executive producer Dave Caplan, whose credits include TBS's highly popular sitcom The Bill Engvall Show, as well as past ABC sitcoms George Lopez and The Drew Carey Show. The as-yet-untitled sitcom centers on a single mother trying to run a business while raising two children. The premise of the show is inspired by events in Caplan's own life. Caplan wrote the pilot script and will serve as executive producer along with Original Film's Neal Moritz and Vivian Cannon. Bertinelli will also serve as producer. The project comes to TBS from Sony Pictures Television.
The Caplan project follows the life of a woman (Bertinelli) who manages to get through the day with surprisingly good humor despite very difficult circumstances: Her husband walks out, leaving her with two kids and a struggling lumberyard. It will take every ounce of energy she has to keep both her household and her business afloat, while facing obstacles at every turn. Stay tuned for more news on this!
Fox has announced the series premiere of new J.J. Abrams drama Fringe will premiere from 8pm-9:35pm now instead of 8-10pm on Tuesday, September 9. The 8pm-9:35pm premiere will still have very limited commercials. Airing for the last 25 minutes from 9:35-10pm will now be a special sneak peek of the new Fox reality series Hole in the Wall. Hole in the Wall is still scheduled to air in its regular Thursday night slot at 8-9pm starting on Sept. 11. Fox will encore the premiere of Fringe on Sunday, September 14 as well from 8pm-9:35pm, but the time slot after that is still to be determined, but it is likely Fox will show a Fall Preview Special there.
ABC is moving forward with its plans for a male-based Supernanny spinoff called Supermanny. The network will air a pilot episode of Supermanny in the fall. The spinoff's format will remain similar to the original, with a child-development expert lending a family in crisis some tough-love guidance. But instead of professional nanny Jo Frost leading the living-room intervention, gruff Chicago child therapist Mike Ruggles will step in.
Supernanny moves to Fridays at 9pm ET this fall on ABC and it is likely the Supermanny pilot will air in that slot sometime this season as a backdoor pilot.

TV Land September 2008 Schedule...Again; BET Schedule Updates

OK so we gave you TV Land September details two other times already. The latest one was exactly a week ago and the first one was last month, with a few updates in between those. Now a third major update is done! Could three be the charm?
TV Land has not touched its weekday line-up starting Sept. 2. It will remain the same as it was previously, with Scrubs joining weeknights at 9 & 9:30pm. However, TV Land has touched the Saturday and Sunday line-up a bit starting Sept. 6. For Saturdays, the biggest changes are Andy Griffith in the 9am hour, Scrubs airing 9-10pm and 12-1am, The Cosby Show 10-11pm, with M*A*S*H 1-2am and various marathons from 2-6am. As for Sundays, they will have a two-hour block of M*A*S*H, Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Little House on the Prairie from 8pm-6am. So the regular overnight (1-6am) will now only be weeknights.
In that schedule we announced last month, we stated that there would be changes to the morning line-up starting Sept. 15 with Cheers removed, that will not be the case now. The Sept. 2 schedule will last through Sept. 19. Then on Saturday, Sept. 20, there will be a minor change as The Munsters and The Addams Family are expiring, as we knew already. Then on Monday, Sept. 22 more changes are happening to weekdays. The weekday morning block will be altered a bit. M*A*S*H comes into the weekday 7am hour replacing Night Court/Mad About You. Night Court will shift to 8am, replacing Designing Women followed by Cheers at 8:30am, which is still on (for now)! Now TV Land's October schedule starts the following week on Sept. 29, so Cheers will not be on that as the contract is expiring and the show is moving to The Hallmark Channel on Sundays as we stated yesterday. Back to Sept. 22, an extra Sanford & Son will replace All in the Family at 9am, so Designing Women, Mad About You and All in the Family are gone. They join the previously booted Just Shoot Me! and Murphy Brown, which will leave the line-up in late August.
I really urge you to view the entire line-up for the TV Land September 2008 schedule, so you do not get confused. So is this the Fall schedule? Not quite, as two more series will join the daily line-up in October...3rd Rock from the Sun (as we exclusively announced) and daily plays of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. So we will have the TV Land Fall 2008 line-up (October) in the coming days!
Come back tomorrow for our Canada cable networks fall 2008 line-ups--DejaView, TV Land Canada, CTS, and more!

Now let's move on to BET. We don't have their Fall line-up yet, but before the fall starts they will be doing some notable things. First, just to remind you that this Sunday (Sunday, August 17) from 3pm-7pm ET they will have a farewell marathon for the short-lived sitcom Sanford (1980, starring Redd Foxx). All the Sony Pictures sitcoms they have are all expiring at the end of August and they will not be renewing them, unfortunately. So you will not see Diff'rent Strokes, Thea, Sanford, and Malcolm & Eddie in September. Yes, The Steve Harvey Show is from Sony but that is not part of that package and thus Harvey is not expiring.
Diff'rent Strokes (weekdays 9-11am) will have a missing episode finally aired on BET. The episode "Bulimia" has never aired on BET because the tape they had was damaged...but now BET has gotten a new one and will air it on Thursday, Aug. 21 at 9:30am, so get those VCRs/DVRs ready! Speaking of Diff'rent Strokes, it will have a five-episode block in primetime on Saturday, August 23 from 8pm-10:30pm, followed by a five-episode block of A Different World from 10:30pm-1am. The episodes will be multiple-part storylines. View the episode info for this stunt.
That's not all for Diff'rent Strokes! On its last day of airing, BET will give it a proper send-off with an all-day marathon on Friday, August 29 from 9am-6pm. We don't have episode info yet for that stunt, but should by next week, so keep checking our Diff'rent Strokes message board.
Fans of A Different World will be pleased that all week of August 25, the show will air at 11pm and 11:30pm, as BET has a movie stunt all week at midnight.
As for early September, replacing Diff'rent Strokes starting Sept. 1 from 9-11am will be the sitcom Girlfriends, and Hell Date will air weekdays 3-4pm full time and not share it with any other original.
As for the fall, all we know is new syndicated series Judge Karen is coming to BET on Sept. 22 along with court favorite Judge Hatchett. Judge Karen will actually launch in syndication on Sept. 8, check local listings or JudgeKarenTV.com. Hopefully another sitcom or two come as well, we will let you know.

Spike TV Fall 2008 Schedule; TV Land Edits September Sked; Network Notes

We gave you a little taste of Spike TV Fall over a month ago, but now we have full details! This Labor Day, catch a Labor Day CSI Marathon on Monday, Sept. 1 from 9a-10p, including a whole new season of CSI episodes, for the first time on Spike. Then, spin-off CSI: NY will air 5 days a week! Because one hour a week wasn't enough, CSI: New York moves to a Monday-Friday strip, a prime-time block, and a late night strip, all beginning the week of Sept. 22. Spike TV is kicking it off with a week- long, all-day marathon the week of Sept. 22 (Monday-Friday that week from 9a-9p, Tuesday from 9p-12am, and Mon-Fri at 12m) including 2 new seasons of CSI: New York episodes for the first time on Spike. Starting week of Sept. 29, CSI: NY will be regularly scheduled Mon-Fri at 8pm, Tuesdays from 9p-12am, and Mon-Wed at 12am.
Married with...Children comes to Spike TV, beginning Saturday, September 27! Spend some time with Al, Peg, Kelly and Bud all-week long during Spike TV's "Monday thru Bundy" marathon! Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28 from 9am-11am and 1a-2am! The marathon kicks into full gear on Monday, September 29 through Friday, October 3 from 9am-3pm each day! Also on Thursday, October 2 you can catch it in the late night from 12a-2a and the same goes for on Friday, October 3 from 12a-1a. Married...with Children will settle into its regular time periods of Mon-Fri 11am-1pm & Thursdays 1a-2a starting October 6 and Saturday and Sunday mornings 9am-11am beginning right after the marathon ends on Saturday, Oct. 4.
Then in October another new show is coming! Unsolved Mysteries explores unsolved cases in which you, the viewer, can help solve a case. The show includes cases from a variety of categories: Murder, Missing Persons, Wanted Fugitives, UFOs, Ghosts, Fraud, Legends, Science/Medicine, among others. The new Unsolved Mysteries programs will consist of re-creations of the events, along with interviews with the subjects, participants and authorities, documentary footage and news footage. Entirely new graphics, special effects, music and title sequences were created for the Spike broadcasts, along with new narration and host stand-ups by Dennis Farina. The show will air Monday-Friday from 5pm-7pm starting Monday, October 13 and Sundays from 1pm-6pm!
Check out the full Spike TV Fall 2008 schedule.

More fall schedules will return Monday as I am headed for a short vacation. Todd will take over the next few days with mini-DVD reviews from our review team. See you all Monday and come back this weekend as well to see those reviews and our Sunday ratings wrap-up! Off to the Catskills I go!

TV Land has made a chance to its line-up starting Aug. 25. The 9-11PM marathons will be removed starting Aug. 25, thus the evening line-up from 4pm-1am will be altered a bit. And the late night line-up that started this week, will remain intact this week and hereafter in September. This new 4pm-1am line-up will also carry over into September. Hogan's Heroes, Beverly Hillbillies, and Andy Griffith all move an hour earlier from 5-9pm to 4-8pm, as The Cosby Show moves into 8-9pm earlier than planned...as it was slated for mid-September. The Jeffersons follows from 9-10pm that week, but that will change to Scrubs starting a week later when Scrubs joins. From 10pm-12am it is a block of M*A*S*H and more Cosby Show in the midnight hour. Everything else will remain the same as the changes that happened Aug. 4. To view the full list of changes starting Aug. 25, click HERE. Also, you might want to see how TV Land September 2008 schedule looks now with these new changes. It seems Just Shoot Me and Murphy Brown will be totally gone in September with these new changes that happened Aug. 4 and Aug. 25. At least Three's Company and Brady Bunch will air every morning in the 4am hour!

Fox has announced a slight change to its fall line-up on Thursdays. Hole in the Wall, the body-bending, mind-twisting, global game show phenomenon from American Idol producers FremantleMedia North America, will now air Thursdays at 8PM ET/PT starting Thursday, Sept. 11 on Fox. The show was previously not scheduled in a slot, but was likely coming mid-season. The game show The Moment of Truth which was previously scheduled in the Thursday 8:00 PM time slot, will now premiere mid-season for its second season.
ABC's wildly popular new hilarious competition series, Wipeout, has been picked up for a second season. Twenty-four thrill-seekers will compete in the world's largest extreme obstacle course designed to provide the most spills, face plants and wipeouts ever seen on television. A hit summer series for ABC, Wipeout dominates Tuesday's 8:00 PM hour in Total Viewers and across each of the key Adult demographics (AD18-34/AD18-49/AD25-54). In its six telecasts to date, Wipeout has consistently ranked as the No. 2 show of the week in both Total Viewers and Adults 18-49. Four new episodes remain in the first season and they will air starting Tuesday, Aug. 26 once the Olympics are over. The first season concludes on Sept. 16. There is no word yet how many episodes were ordered for season two and when we can expect them to air...possibly in mid-season or next summer, if I were to guess! Big Balls and Jill Wagner!
In other ABC news, game show Wanna Bet? is scheduled to move from its Mondays at 9PM slot to Tuesdays at 9PM on Tuesdays, August 12, 19, 26 and September 2, 2008 at 9:00 PM ET/PT following Wipeout (which returns with new episodes on Aug. 26). Thus, Samantha Who? encores will now air move to Mondays at 9:00 & 9:30 PM ET/PT for the rest of the summer. Though, on August 18, the movie Bewitched will air from 9-11PM ET/PT.
Finally, America United: In Support Of Our Troops is scheduled to air on Sunday, September 7, 2008 from 9:00-11:00 PM ET/PT on ABC. A star-studded "Bob Hope USO" style variety show featuring heart-warming profiles of families overcoming obstacles, top-tier performances, sexy celebrity cameos, hilarious comedy and touching acts of wish-fulfillment all with the positive, non-controversial message of "thanks" for our troops and their families.

TV One September 2008 Schedule and Highlights; TV Rebels: Bill Cosby

Our look at the fall 2008 season on cable continues with TV One's September 2008 line-up. This September TV One will be adding the hit '90s sitcom Living Single to its African-American line-up. Living Single premieres on TV One in a week-long marathon event that airs each weeknight from 7pm-12am ET/PT (encores 3-6am ET/PT). Each character will be showcased on various nights -- Khadijah on Monday, Synclaire on Tuesday, Regine on Wednesday, Max on Thursday, and The Boys (Overton and Kyle) on Friday. Living Single was a situation comedy that centered on the lives of a group of six African American friends living in (or near) a Brooklyn brownstone. The series focused on the personal and professional lives of each character, as well as their relationships with one another.
After the marathon, Living Single settles into its regular time-slot weeknights at 8:30pm & 9pm starting Monday, September 29, with an encore from 3-4am ET/PT.
Other changes include the fall 10am-4pm block. Beginning on Monday September 8 and continuing until further notice, the TV One daytime marathons which air weekdays from 10am to 4pm will have a steady schedule consisting of the following: Eve (Mondays), Movies (Tuesdays), Wanda At Large/Divorce Court/Between Brothers rotate (Wednesdays), TV One on One/Roc rotate (Thursdays) and All of Us (Fridays).
On Monday, September 29, the TV One fall schedule settles into place with changes taking place after 5pm. View the full TV One September 2008 line-up for complete details.
Moving on to other highlights, on Saturday September 20 beginning at 1pm, it's girl power time as TV One presents the "Eve-Sisters Doin' It For Themselves-Marathon" that showcases episodes of the sitcom Eve that feature the women taking charge while resolving their own problems and issues that will keep viewers laughing as well as fired up with emotion as Shelly (Eve) and her crew prove that new millennium women have it all together.
Future Outlook: TV One has also acquired the sitcom Half & Half for later in the fall...we will have details on that at a later date!
So, don't forget to view and discuss the TV One September Line-Up!


It's time for another edition of TV Rebels. We originally had special permission to publish the first 6 essays on TV shows and actors that will be featured in the upcoming book TV Rebels: 100 People and Programs That Shaped the Medium by authors Lou Orfanella and Oscar De Los Santos...and as we mentioned in April, we have now gotten rights to 6 additional essays (for a total of 12!), so we will be bringing you one each month until at least November! Upcoming TV Rebel columns coming soon are about Rod Serling and Desi Arnaz. The book is in the works and will be released in 2009.

So without further adieu, we bring you the eighth essay of TV Rebels:

Bill Cosby: Double Rebel
by Lou Orfanella

In 1965 standup comic Bill Cosby earned critical praise and the first of three consecutive Emmy Awards as outstanding lead actor in a dramatic series as he began his three year run as globetrotting government agent Alexander Scott on the NBC drama I Spy. More significant and media changing than his triple Emmy feat was that this was the first instance of a major dramatic starring role by a black actor on a network television series. The groundbreaking weekly adventure costarred white actor Robert Culp as Scott's partner Kelly Robinson. "Coinciding with the crest of the civil rights movements, the series' light touch was 'balm for the jangled American psyche of the time,' said the New York Times. It was a historic moment in casting when a black man was placed along side a white man as his equal and it created international interest in the show" ("Biography").
After I Spy ended in 1968, Cosby headlined the sitcom The Bill Cosby Show on NBC ffrom 1969-1971 as well as the variety shows The New Bill Cosby Show (CBS) and Cos (ABC) in 1972 and 1976 respectively. He entered the Saturday morning children's shows arena from 1972-1977 with the message filled animated offering Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. It was in 1984 however, that Cosby would achieve his greatest success and become a double TV rebel.
In 1984 with the situation comedy genre mostly left for dead by network executives, Cosby returned to weekly series duty as the unflappable dad Cliff Huxtable on NBC's The Cosby Show, a light hearted family sitcom that skyrocketed to the top of the ratings and rejuvenated the genre during its eight year run. In the process it became the anchor of what was to become NBC's Thursday night lineup of "Must See TV." The Cosby Show was the most watched show on the air for five of its seasons and is credited with reviving the viability and profitability of the situation comedy genre.
In many ways The Cosby Show allowed its star to extend the social changes he had been a part of with I Spy. Two decades after Alexander Scott showed that blacks and whites could be equal partners, The Cosby Show depicted the black family on equal footing with middle and upper class white families, rather than as low income ghetto dwellers such as in previous shows as Good Times and Sanford and Son. "The Cosby Show discontinued familiar sitcom formulas filled with disrespectful children and generational conflict and presented instead a two-parent family in which both partners worked as professionals. In the Huxtable household, viewers were exposed to the existence and culture of historically black colleges and universities" ("Cosby"). Black art and music as well as black history were all apparent in the Huxtable universe expanding the traditional and often stereotypical view of black families television had presented.
During the 1990s the man known widely as simply "Cos" would star in three additional series. First came the revival of the comedic quiz show You Bet Your Life with Cosby filling the legendary shoes of Groucho Marx. The Cosby Mysteries followed, and the Cosby (CBS, 1996-2000) sitcom closed the decade. He also hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for CBS. While none of those efforts made an indelible mark on television history, Cosby's legacy had long been secured with I Spy and The Cosby Show, two series that helped change the face of television.

Works Cited
Biography of Bill Cosby. The Kennedy Center. 7 August 2007 http://www.kennedy-center.org.
Cosby, Bill. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. 7 August 2007 http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/humlC/cosbybill/cosbybill.htm.

WGN America Fall 2008 Schedule Sees Lots of New Shows; TV Land Changes for August

Today we will reveal WGN America's Fall 2008 schedule! They will be adding a lot of new and returning series, but there will be a few series expiring/leaving as well. The other day we mentioned Coach marathons on August 29 and August 30, and we hinted the series would also join the line-up this fall. We will get to Coach's slots in a bit, but first we want to tell you all the new or returning series! You'll see Moesha, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, In The Heat of The Night, 7th Heaven, Jury Duty, NewsRadio, Coach, The Bob and Tom Show, and the new syndicated weekend series Legend of the Seeker! Of course, since new stuff is coming or returning, there will be shows leaving and expiring as well. Those departing are Happy Days, Even Stevens, Lizzie McGuire, 24, American Idol Rewind, Soul Train, and DaVinci's InQuest.
Now let's get to the schedule. The new weekday line-up primarily will start Monday, September 8. The first change will occur September 1 though, with Happy Days' contract expiring, so its slot of 4:30am and 5am ET will be replaced by Sister, Sister and Moesha, which returns after a year off on hiatus. Then starting Sept. 8, the bulk of the changes are happening on weekdays, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie join the WGN America line-up airing weekdays at 9 and 9:30am ET, as Matlock will slide to 10am ET. The 11am ET slot will be Nash Bridges, but it will change a week later on Sept. 15, as WGN America brings back In The Heat of the Night after a three year absence, as the show is reacquired. Nash Bridges will air at 12 noon starting Sept. 8, followed by the WGN News at Noon at 1pm ET. Homicide: Life on the Street will slide to 2pm ET starting Sept. 8, followed by back-to-back The Cosby Show episodes at 3pm and Funniest Pets & People from 4-5pm. America's Funniest Home Videos will move to 5pm ET replacing Sister, Sister which will now be airing in the overnight from 4-5am ET, as we mentioned (more on this a bit later). At 6pm and 7pm, WGN America brings back family drama 7th Heaven for two back-to-back hours a night as WGN America welcomes back the Camdens! Primetime will remain the same as it is now until later in the month when Tuesdays from 8-10pm will be Nash Bridges starting Sept. 30 instead of a block of Funniest Pets & People. In the late nights, we mentioned already the Sister, Sister and Moesha slots starting Sept. 1, but Even Stevens/Lizzie McGuire was sharing the 4am slot, and now it will be another Sister, Sister starting Sept. 15, as those series are expiring.
Weekends will not see any real changes until after baseball season is over. So, starting Saturday, October 4, weekends will get a major overhaul--for the good, too! Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie will also air on weekends now. Bewitched will air Saturdays 12-1pm and Sundays 11am-12pm, while I Dream of Jeannie will air from 1-2pm on Saturdays and 12-1pm on Sundays. Great to see classic TV! After two movies on Saturdays, we head to the new 6-8pm Saturday block, where you'll see two new sitcoms! Back-to-back episodes of NewsRadio from 6-7pm on Saturdays followed by the aforementioned Coach from 7-8pm on Saturdays, starting Oct. 4. The rest of Saturday is basically intact, but 24 will be leaving and will be replaced by a movie and Matlock will be added to late night. On Sundays after Bewitched and Jeannie, there aren't many changes. The Outta Sight Retro Night featuring WKRP, Newhart and The Honeymooners will remain intact from 7-10pm ET. In the late nights, some shows are expiring like American Idol Rewind and DaVinci's Inquest, so two Matlock episodes will replace them at 3am and 4am.
Then the week of October 6, WGN America will change their weeknight late night line-up a bit. Corner Gas and Becker will slide to 1-2am ET on Sun-Thurs starting Oct. 6. The Friday late night line-up will be back-to-back Reno 911 at 1am ET and back-to-back Chappelle's Show at 2am ET. Reno 911 will also air Saturdays from 11pm-12:30am ET.
Finally, the last change for the fall is the first-run new syndicated series from Disney/ABC Television Group called Legend of the Seeker. WGN America will air it Saturdays at 4 and 5pm starting November 1 and also Wednesdays at 9pm ET starting Nov. 5, replacing Corner Gas/Becker.
Wow, that is A LOT of changes! I think many will be happier than before with these changes. I advise you to see the full WGN America Fall 2008 line-up on our message boards, where you can also discuss the line-up. Remember this is the national WGN schedule, and not the Chicago local line-up.
Future Outlook: You can expect Classic TV marathons on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve/Day, and New Year's Eve/Day. We will tell you more about that in the coming months, as it is way too early to talk about that. It is not even August yet!

TV Land has made some last minute changes for August starting Monday, August 4. First off, the primetime marathons will now be 9-11pm rather than 9pm-12am. The Tuesday marathon of The Beverly Hillbillies will now be The Jeffersons from 9-11pm, leading into two encores of Family Foreman at midnight. And as we told you yesterday about The Cosby Show being used to be wrapped around Family Foreman, now TV Land has confirmed it will air The Cosby Show every Wednesday from 8-10pm and 11pm-1am ET/PT leading in and leading out of Family Formeman. Because the primetime marathons are now 9-11pm, M*A*S*H moves from 12-2am to 11pm-1am weeknights (well except Wednesdays and Fridays). TV Land has removed the 2-5am marathons, thus we get more variety in the late nights. From Sun-Fri, TV Land will now air back-to-back episodes of Sanford & Son, The Jeffersons and The Beverly Hillbillies from 1-4am, and at 4am Three's Company returns followed by another returnee in The Brady Bunch at 4:30am! So nice to see those two return!
Check out our TV Land August 2008 thread for updates and to discuss this.

Lifetime Fall 2008 Schedule; Last Minute Updates for TV Land and BET

It's time for another fall 2008 schedule! Today we will give you Lifetime's Fall 2008 line-up, which begins Tuesday, September 2. They will be adding Desperate Housewives repeats to the weekday line-up! The series up until then was airing once a week on weekends. Desperate Housewives also will be coming to local syndication this fall starting weekend of Sept. 20 in a two-year deal for weekend play, look for it on Fox-owned MyNetwork TV stations. On Lifetime, the series will air weekdays at 8:00am & 12pm ET/PT. The 8am airing will replace two episodes of The Nanny, while the 12 noon airing will replace the start of the movie, which slides to 1-3pm. The Nanny will now only air at 2am. Starting in October, Lifetime will repurpose the latest episode aired of Desperate Housewives on ABC about a week or two later on Lifetime. We don't have information on October yet, so we will let you know if it is in a slot other than 8am or 12pm.
Also, coming to Lifetime this September is the ABC reality series Wife Swap. Wife Swap will air weekdays at 3:00pm & 4:00pm ET/PT. At 3pm it will replace a movie and the 4pm airing will replace an hour of The Golden Girls. Golden Girls will still remain in the 9am hour and 1am hour. It was originally announced for October, but it will air earlier. There will be an Army Wives marathon on Labor Day from 11am-9pm. There are no other real changes, but I adivse you to view the full Lifetime September 2008 line-up!
Stay tuned tomorrow for another Fall line-up!

TV Land has made some one-time changes for this week, for more promotion for the original series Family Foreman. They will wraparound the series with The Cosby Show tonight from 8-10pm and again from 2-4am. Then on the weekend, Family Foreman encores will get a boost from The Jeffersons on Saturday from 1pm-4:30pm, while The Cosby Show will air out of the encores from 6pm-8:30pm and again from 1am-6am. Finally, this Sunday Cosby Show will be used from 11pm-6am following encores of Family Foreman. Check our TV Land July thread, for details. We'll keep you up to date, if TV Land does something similar for next week.
We mentioned before that BET now has a rotating sitcom wheel from 9-11am each weekday morning beginning this week, with Thea, Diff'rent Strokes, The Parkers, Girlfriends, and Sanford airing each day. BET aired Thea on Monday and Diff'rent Strokes on Tuesday this week, but now they have made a change. Diff'rent Strokes will air Wed-Fri mornings this week instead of the other three shows. No reason was given for the change. So what about next week? As of now, Thea is slated for Monday and Friday and Diff'rent Strokes Tuesday through Thursday. So it seems they are not going to air Girlfriends, The Parkers and Sanford in this wheel afterall. Check out the episode information for the remainder of this week and next week, if you want to know the episodes.

Schedules Galore - TV Land September '08, WGN Golden Oldies Week, BET Schedule Changes; Summer 2008 TCA Press Tour: CBS, Day 1

It is a very big Friday today here at SitcomsOnline.com. We have many schedules and the CBS portion of the summer 2008 TCA press tour. So let's begin with the TV schedules ... TV Land, WGN America and BET.
First up, as promised the TV Land September 2008 schedule. It's a funny bone emergency as TV Land welcomes the Emmy winning sitcom Scrubs to its roster with an 7-hour Labor Day marathon from 4pm-11pm. Then the show will air Mon-Sat back-to-back at 9:00pm & 9:30pm ET/PT starting September 2. The other changes starting Sept. 2 include M*A*S*H moving to 10pm-12am and the late night marathons are now from 1am-6am.
Then starting September 15, TV Land celebrates the arrival of The Cosby Show to the network with a week-long marathon featuring the best of Cosby wit and wisdom each night starting at 8pm thru 11pm (with an encore from 1-3am). The marathon shifts into high gear that weekend when TV Land programs 20 hours of fan favorite episodes giving viewers even more quality time with the Cos from 8pm-3am both nights. Then starting Sept. 22, Cosby Show will air Mon-Sat from 8-9pm and 12-1am ET/PT. More changes will come as Cheers, The Addams Family and The Munsters are expiring and will leave starting the week of Sept. 15. Other changes include time shifting, such as Andy Griffith Show going from 7-9pm to 6-8pm, and Hogan's Heroes and Hillbillies move up an hour to 4-5pm and 5-6pm. Hogan's and Hillbillies will also still air in the late night 1-2am and 2-3am, which means the late night marathons will be now down to 3-6am.
I suggest you see our TV Land September 2008 thread for the complete schedule. There is a Three's Company sighting as well, three airings back-to-back-to-back from 3:30am-5am on late Thursday, Sept. 11. It was originally planned for every Thursday late night. Also, Just Shoot Me and Murphy Brown will now be just weekend late nights, and not weeknight late nights, like originally planned. The Brady Bunch is off the line-up completely.
Other TV Land September highlights include many movie premieres such as Back to School, Sister Act 2, Overboard, The Right Stuff, and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Again see our September 2008 thread for complete details and you can also ask questions and make comments there.

Next up is WGN America! For the past two months they have aired an Outta Sight Retro Nights marathon. In June they had a '70s week and earlier this month we had an '80s marathon. Now they will move to the Golden Oldies era! It's the Outta Sight Retro Nights Marathon: The Golden Oldies! The marathon will be a four night look at the '50s and '60s. The marathon will be from Monday, August 4 through Thursday, August 7, 2008 from 8-10pm ET (5-7pm PT) on WGN America (not in Chicago, sorry!). Up first is the all-time '50s hit The Honeymooners on that Monday with four classic episodes. Then we move to the '60s as we strike it rich with The Beverly Hillbillies, ya here? Then the next two nights will be two shows that don't regular air on WGN America! On that Wednesday we twitch our way to Samantha and Darrin's house in Bewitched! Finally, on that Thursday we make a wish for I Dream of Jeannie with four wishful episodes. What a week that will be for fans of the golden oldies era. Four classics indeed! For episode info visit our WGN America Golden Oldies episode listing.

We end our schedules galore with BET. BET will be making some sitcom changes. Next week (week of July 21), BET will have Diff'rent Strokes for four episodes in a row in the mornings. Its current 9-10am slot and 10-11am, replacing Malcolm & Eddie. Diff'rent Strokes has been preempted in its afternoon 3-4pm slot for weeks now and it will not be returning there now. It seems this morning change will be for the week of July 21 only. Because starting July 28, BET will turn the 9-11am block into rotating sitcoms. Mondays starting July 28 will be the short lived '90s sitcom Thea! Then Tuesdays starting the 29th it will be Diff'rent Strokes Tuesdays. On Wednesdays BET will showcase the UPN hit The Parkers. Thursdays spend mornings with your girlfriends while watching Girlfriends from 9-11am. And finally on Friday, end the work week with the hardest working man Fred Sanford in Sanford! So Thea and Sanford will return (remember they have a marathon this Sunday, July 20, too from 3-8pm), while Malcolm & Eddie gets the boot for now. We will keep you up to date if any more changes occur!
Future Outlook: This September BET has acquired reruns of Judge Hatchett and also repurposing rights to the upcoming new court series Judge Karen. More info will come soon.

Today is day one for the CBS portion of the summer 2008 TCA press tour. All of the CBS shows that are planned for the panel are actually all going today on the panel, with CW/CBS syndication for tomorrow. After the Executive Session this morning (details on that below after the summary), up at the panel were the CBS News division, followed by rookie sitcom Worst Week and new drama Eleventh Hour. Then after lunch, the afternoon sessions had all rookies again, new drama The Mentalist, and new Friday drama The Ex-List. Weird that no returning show was at the panel for CBS. New sitcom Gary Unmarried (previously known as Project Gary) was supposed to be doing a panel today in the afternoon, but star Jay Mohr is out of the country. Following CBS shows, CBS had premium cable network Showtime go up next late in the afternoon. They had their Executive Session followed by their Sho Stoppers Showcase session. Finally, in the evening CBS, Showtime, The CW and CBS Television Distribution presented their Stars Party with executives, talent and executive producers from CBS, Showtime, The CW and CBS Television Distribution.
From the CBS executive session we learned that William Petersen is indeed leaving CSI but they have planned new additions such as a serial killer type. Nina Tassler says CBS doesn't regret canceling Moonlight (ouch!). She also said Britney didn't save How I Met Your Mother and Sarah Chalke will return for multiple episodes next season.
From the CBS News session, Katie Couric said she will stay on with CBS Evening News despite the low ratings. There were rumors that CBS would give her the boot after the Election.
Moving on to Showtime, Edie Falco will return to television with the series Nurse Jackie. It will follow Falco's day-to-day life as a nurse with a drug problem. The series will begin production in the fall for a spring/early summer 2009 debut. The network also said it is developing a spin-off of The L Word, which is entering its final season. Meanwhile, comedy Weeds will get two more seasons for a total of 26 episodes. They also ordered six episodes of documentary series Lock 'N Load and a seventh season of Penn & Teller: Bull****! for 6 episodes, the longest-running series on the channel.
It seems we learned more about Showtime, than CBS today. Coming up tomorrow its CBS Day 2, but it will feature The CW and CBS Television Distribution (that's their syndication series).

TV Land Schedule Changes; Summer 2008 TCA Press Tour: Cable Day 3

We will start today with some changes to the TV Land regular schedule. The changes will start Monday (July 14) and will be for weekday mornings and primetime/late night. There will be minor changes in the mornings between 7:30am-12pm. Just Shoot Me will be leaving the morning line-up and will be relegated to just weekend airings in the late night, and most of the time it will be preempted then for original series encores or sitcom marathons. In the mornings, Mad About You will join the morning line-up at 7:30am, followed by Designing Women & Cheers, both of which will be shifted a half-hour later. In the 9am hour, Sanford & Son and All in the Family will swap slots, so All in the Family will be at 9am followed by Sanford & Son at 9:30am. The Jeffersons remains at 10am, but the 10:30am episode will be replaced by Good Times. The 11am Good Times remains, but the 11:30am Good Times will be replaced by Leave it to Beaver, which is not going to air 1-2pm anymore, as The Beverly Hillbillies will take that slot. Gunsmoke will move to 2pm, followed by a double shot of Bonanza at 3pm & 4pm.
Then the schedule doesn't change until 9pm. Weekdays from 9pm-12am and 2-5am they will have marathons. Hogan's Heroes (Mon), The Beverly Hillbillies (Tues), Sanford & Son (Wed), The Andy Griffith Show (Thurs) and I Love Lucy (Fri). Lucy will be 8-10pm actually on Fridays and the late night marathon will be 2-6am. So Murphy Brown will be off the line-up, but will air sometimes on weekends, like Just Shoot Me. The Brady Bunch will just air weekends at 4:30am. M*A*S*H block will be 12-2am weeknights.
So, the changes that were happening before, with the summer marathons will not happen and these new marathon slots are the summer marathons.
These changes will be in effect until the end of August. In September, there will be more changes coming as Scrubs joins the line-up on September 1 and The Cosby Show on Sept. 15. Fans of Just Shoot Me and Murphy Brown take note that these shows will be back on the regular schedule airing late nights. The same goes for Designing Women and Mad About You, and those two will retain its current morning slots, as well. Unfortunately for Brady Bunch fans, the show will be off the line-up completely come September. Three's Company is returning, but it will just air once a week in he late night...but it will be three episodes in a row! We will have more on September in the next week or so. So stay tuned for that!
But anyway, for now look at the TV Land changes happening July 14 by clicking HERE!

Moving on to day three of the cable portion of the summer 2008 TCA press tour. Up first today were the Discovery Networks.
Animal Planet talked about its new series Whale Wars, which premieres in November. This new, thrilling and adrenaline-fueled mini-series follows the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which uses unconventional and radical methods to eradicate alleged illegal whaling operations.
The Discovery Channel talked about series such as Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy, which launches in September. A team of amateur fossil hunters exploring the Montana badlands uncovered what many are calling the "Holy Grail" of paleontology -- the first fully intact dinosaur cadaver, with 90 percent of its body covered in skin. They also have a series coming in August titled Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein. It's a thrill ride filled with adventure and mystery, ancient riddles and modern day issues as international explorer Josh Bernstein travels the world on an epic quest of discovery.
The network Planet Green has hired Bob Woodruff for a series called Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff. The series launches this Saturday. As the definitive weekly eco-newscast, this series features seasoned ABC News journalist Bob Woodruff as he guides viewers on the green headlines of the week and provides them with a variety of hard-hitting, late-breaking, and top-of-mind issues facing the world today. Planet Green will also launch Battleground Earth: Ludacris v. Tommy Lee on August 3. Battleground Earth brings together hip hop superstar Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and rock god Tommy Lee to battle against the toxic forces destroying Mother Earth as they travel across the country on a 10-episode tour.
TLC President Angela Shapiro-Mathes gave an overview of TLC and the upcoming programming as well as the rebranding of the network. Two new Real Estate series are in the works and will launch in August. One of them will be hosted by Kirsten Kemp Becker and the other will be called Over Designed.

ESPN was also up today at the press tour. They have quite a few films and documentaries in the works. Spike Lee and Steve Nash are producing the documentary 30/30. Branch Rickey III, grandson of Jackie Robinson, is producing the Jackie Robinson/Branch Rickey project.

Sundance Channel was touting Architecture School, a new series launching August 20. This six-part series follows the students in the URBANbuild program at Tulane University's highly celebrated School of Architecture as they submit competing designs and build the winning design in the devastated city of New Orleans. Sundance/IFC will also premiere Spectacle: Elvis Costello with... in December. A series of 13 one-hour programs hosted by legendary singer/songwriter Elvis Costello and executive produced by Sir Elton John, this show is conceived to provide a forum for in-depth discussion and musical performance with a variety of musicians, artists and personalities.

HBO was next and they were talking about the special Ricky Gervais Comedy Special, coming this Fall. They also talked about Generation Kill, a mini-series launching this Sunday. Executive produced and co-written by David Simon and Ed Burns, the team behind the critically acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, this seven-part miniseries tells the true story of young U.S. Marines of the elite First Reconnaissance Battalion whose unit was part of the first wave of the American military assault on Baghdad in 2003. On August 18, they will air Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House. Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House profiles iconic journalist Helen Thomas, a tour de force in political reporting, who has covered the White House and every president since John F. Kennedy. In September, HBO will launch a new comedy series, Little Britain USA. Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the stars of the smash-hit BBC comedy Little Britain headline this new HBO comedy series set in contemporary America. This series will feature favorite Little Britain characters in new sketches, as well as brand-new American characters, and was shot on location in North Carolina and Los Angeles before a live audience. HBO will also launch a new drama series called True Blood on September 7. Based on the popular Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood is created by Alan Ball, creator of HBO's Emmy-winning series, Six Feet Under. This series takes place in the not-too-distant future, when, thanks to the invention of synthetic blood, vampires no longer need humans for their fix, and can walk freely, if not yet comfortably, among their living counterparts.

Finally, GSN was promoting its new original game show Catch 21, which launches July 21 with a 40-episode order. Created by executive producer Merrill Heatter, Catch 21 melds pop trivia with the excitement of the classic card game, 21. Built from GSN.com's online game "Catch 21," the show, hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), will showcase three contestants competing to win larger-than-life playing cards and trying to build the closest hand to 21. With every card they are dealt, contestants gain the power to make their opponents hand worse by passing their card.

Nick at Nite Overnight Change, 2nd Quarter Ratings, Family Matters Doing Well; Remembering Henry Beckman

Starting Monday (July 7), Nick at Nite will change their overnight schedule a bit. Mon-Thurs nights at 3:00am & 3:30am will now be The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, replacing Cosby Show (Mon/Wed) and Roseanne (Tues/Thurs). Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was already airing at 3:00am & 3:30am on Friday nights, and will continue. Fresh will still also air 2-3am from Mon-Thurs. And Mon-Wed 4:00am & 4:30am will now be encores of the 8:30pm and 11pm Family Matters airings! So yes that means starting next week the 8:30pm and 11pm Family Matters airings will be two new episodes, so the 8:30pm episodes will not be an encore from the previous night's 11pm airing. Tape both now! To see upcoming episodes for Family Matters, I have made a list for you all. Great news! The 4-5am encores will replace Roseanne. Roseanne is still slated to air Thursdays 4-5am and its other slots still. To view the full schedule and to see where everything stands I advise you to view our Nick at Nite July 2008 thread.

Nick at Nite has issued their second quarter ratings. With its strongest showing in more than two years, Nick at Nite is total day's number-one basic cable network with Adults 18-49 (tied with TNT) and ranks second only to sister-channel Nickelodeon among total viewers in the just-completed second quarter 2008 (NMR: 3/31/08-6/29/08). Driven by George Lopez and Home Improvement, Nick at Nite has soared this quarter with high double-digit gains among its A18-49 and total viewer (P2+) audience.
With A18-49 this quarter in total day, Nick at Nite is ranked number one, averaging a 0.6 rating (676,000 viewers) and up 50% over last year. Among total viewers, the network delivered 1.5 million total viewers, up 22%.
Nick at Nite also ranks as the number-one basic cable network for W18-49 in total day this quarter. (0.8 rating (426,000 viewers), up 33% over last year). In prime time, Nick at Nite averaged a 0.7 rating (1.7 million viewers) in W18-49 -- up 40% over last year.
- George Lopez is the network's highest-rated program, and the network has experienced ratings growth each month since the show launched in October 2007. George Lopez averaged a 0.7 rating (773,000 viewers) A18-49 at 10 p.m. this quarter, up 75% over last year's time period. Launch to date, the program has grown 34% in the demo. George Lopez ratings have grown significantly since joining the Nick at Nite schedule in September 2007, and launch to date the show has grown +40%.
- Home Improvement also is a growth engine, averaging a 0.6 rating (683,000 viewers) A18-49 total day rating, and program ratings have grown 20% since it joined Nick at Nite in September 2007. In Prime, Home Improvement ratings are up 33% this quarter vs. last year.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air continues to earn strong ratings for Nick at Nite. For the quarter, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air averaged a 0.6 rating (716,000 viewers) A18-49 total day rating, up 20% over last year.
- Original programming coming to Nick at Nite this year include the original TV family movie Gym Teacher, premiering Friday, Sept. 12 and starring Christopher Meloni; My Family's Got Guts, a family game show airing Monday, Sept. 15; Worldwide Fido Awards, a canine competition in October. Also coming in 2009 is the hit comedy Everybody Hates Chris, from co-creator and narrator Chris Rock and inspired by his real-life childhood experiences.

Although they haven't released a press release yet, Family Matters has done very well on the network since launching on Sunday. The launch marathon on Sunday from 9pm-4am did pretty well, especially from 10pm-3am, with big growths from the 9pm hour. The marathon delivered a full family audience averaging 1.9 million total viewers.
Then in the first two night in its regular timeslot of 11pm, it did a 0.7 rating in A18-49 on Monday and a 0.6 A18-49 on Tuesday, on par with its top guns George Lopez, Fresh Prince and Home Improvement. The Monday airing was one of the best for Nick at Nite for the night overall, if not the best, in households it did a 1.9 rating (which probably comes out to around 2.5 million viewers)! The 1.9 household rating for Monday's airing also beat the highest rating from the Sunday launch marathon which was a 1.7 household rating at 10:30pm. The Tuesday 11pm airing also did a solid 1.6 household rating. It looks like Urkel is here to stay!

Character actor Henry Beckman died Tuesday, June 17 in Barcelona, Spain. Beckman appeared in hundreds of TV shows, films and commercials in the U.S. and Canada, often playing heavies or roles requiring accents or foreign languages. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he served in the Canadian military during WWII and survived the Normandy invasion.
He guest starred in just about every show during the 1960s including Dennis the Menace, Hennesey, Dr. Kildare, Father of the Bride, My Favorite Martian, My Living Doll, The Jack Benny Program, The Munsters, Perry Mason, Adam-12, Flying Nun, Andy Griffith Show, The Monkees, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Twilight Zone. He had larger roles as George Anderson on Peyton Place and Colonel Harridan in McHale's Navy. He was also known for his recurring role as Captain Clancy in Here Come the Brides.
Beckman later appeared in shows including The Rockford Files, Bonanza, Here's Lucy, Mannix, Gunsmoke, Marcus Welby, Ironside, Barney Miller, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, Fantasy Island, Quincy ME, Check It Out, MacGyver, The Commish, Columbo, and MANY more. More recently, he played Detective Briggs on The X-Files and on the syndicated series Cold Squad.
You all have seen him in something probably. What a great resume! He will be missed. He was 86.

WGN America Schedules '80s Week; Remembering Mark Tuttle

As we previously posted about WGN America doing a '70s week a few weeks ago and adding a weekly Sunday night block, we also hinted at a planned '80s week in July. Now we have full details on WGN America's Outta Sight Retro Nights Week: A Flashback to the '80s. The week-long event airs Monday, July 7 through Friday, July 11, 2008 from 8-10pm ET (5-7pm PT) each night that week.
Kicking it off on Monday that week is the '80s hit ALF featuring the loveable alien. On Tuesday of that week, Michael J. Fox brings his classic '80s sitcom Family Ties to WGN that week...sha la la la! On Wednesday of that week, WGN America goes to the movies with two showings of the '80s blockbuster hit E.T. The Extra Terrestrial from 8-10:30pm ET and again from 10:30pm-1am ET. On Thursday the 10th, WGN America will show off one of its own regular shows, the all-time classic The Cosby Show starring the legendary Bill Cosby. Finally, the Friday airing that week will be more four episodes of the Tanner family and ALF. These shows are not going to air in the regular line-up on WGN America, except for of course The Cosby Show, which has been airing for some years now.
For episode info for this week and to discuss this '80s week (July 7-11), head on over to our message boards!

Mark Tuttle passed away near his greater Los Angeles-area home on June 2, 2008. He will be missed by all who knew him. Mark's active and successful career as a screenwriter, producer and actor spanned more than 50 years after his start at Filmways in 1957. He wrote and co-produced during six years with The Beverly Hillbillies, and also was on the staff for shows such as the Three's Company, The Facts of Life, Private Benjamin, and Three's a Crowd. Tuttle also wrote an episode or two of series such as 227, What's Happening Now!!, The Practice (NBC), Oh Madeline, What a Country, The Harvey Korman Show, Petticoat Junction and The Tim Conway Show. He wrote over 200 episodes of series television.
He will be certainly missed by fans of The Beverly Hillbillies and his other writing work such the fourth season of Three's Company. A tribute website was created by his family, check it out at marktuttle.info. Mark was 73.

Lifetime Picks-Up Original Sitcom; Three Original Bill Cosby Sweaters Up for Auction; Remembering Bill Dial

Marking a significant expansion of original programming, Lifetime Television has ordered 13 episodes of the half-hour comedy, Rita Rocks, from Media Rights Capital (MRC). Premiering this fall, the series stars all comedy veterans Nicole Sullivan (The King of Queens, MADtv), Richard Ruccolo (Joey, Two Guys and a Girl) and Tisha Campbell-Martin (My Wife and Kids, Martin).
In the series, Sullivan stars as Rita Clements, unfulfilled by her harried life as a married working mom, regains her identity by recreating her glory days as a musician in a garage band. The series will premiere this fall as part of a one-hour comedy block with the top-rated Reba repeats. Rita Rocks is Lifetime's first original sitcom in a decade.
Rita Rocks joins an array of original programming airing on Lifetime this fall, broadening its leadership in all genres, including Original Movies, Original Series and Reality Series. Lifetime Original Movies are the #1 rated among women. Beginning in September, the star-studded slate of original movies includes: Sex & Lies in Sin City starring Mena Suvari and Matthew Modine; Coco Chanel"starring Shirley MacLaine, Barbara Bobulova and Malcolm McDowell; Living Proof executive produced by Neil Meron, Craig Zadan and Renee Zellweger, and starring Harry Connick, Jr.; Killing Mr. Kissel starring John Stamos and Flirting with 40 starring Heather Locklear.
Lifetime's most-watched series in its history (which is airing originals currently), Army Wives, will return with more original episodes in November, including a special two-hour season finale. And premiering this November, the hit reality competition series Project Runway with Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn moves to Lifetime.

You have a chance to own three popular sweaters Bill Cosby wore on The Cosby Show as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable! Mr. Cosby is auctioning them on eBay for a good cause. These three sweaters were worn on The Cosby Show by Bill Cosby between seasons 3-8. It will come with a dated and hand signed letter from Mr. Cosby himself authenticating this. It will also come with a separate letter from the sweater designer, Koos Van Den Akker, indicating that he made this sweater for Bill Cosby for The Cosby Show.
Bill Cosby's sweaters have never before been made available to the public. The sweaters were custom made by Koos Van Den Akker, and only his designer label appears with no size marking indicated. They are approximately size large. The one-of-a-kind sweaters were specifically designed for Bill Cosby and are collages primarily composed of woolens and cottons.
All proceeds from the sale of these legendary Heathcliff Huxtable sweaters will benefit the Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation. The non-profit educational organization was established in 1997 by the Cosby family to continue the legacy and life's work of Ennis Cosby, who was about to begin his doctoral studies in education at the time of his death.
Jimmy Kimmel is promoting the sweaters by wearing each of the three sweaters on three nights, last night, tonight and tomorrow night on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, late nights on ABC. He wore sweater #2 from the auction last night. Check Jimmy modeling them out, as he wears them for the entire show! To bid on these items, head on over to eBay:
Sweater #1
Sweater #2
Sweater #3
This is your chance to own a piece of Cosby Show history and help out a good cause at the same time! The Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation is dedicated to fulfilling the goals and dreams of Ennis Cosby. The Foundation equips teachers, parents and students with the practical information and educational tools needed to understand and address the needs of all learners before they experience the corrosive effects of frustration and failure. The Foundation was established in 1997 by Bill and Camille Cosby as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

Finally we leave you today with news that Bill Dial has passed away. He died of a heart attack on Monday, June 2 in South Carolina, where he moved to after retiring from the business in 2001. Bill was most known as a writer, producer, and actor on the hit sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. He wrote five episodes for this series during its first season (1978-79), the most famous of which was his first, entitled "Turkeys Away." He guest starred on the series even for a few episodes playing the station's beer-drinking engineer, Bucky Dornster.
After WKRP, he wrote and/or produced series such as Harper Valley P.T.A., Legmen, Simon & Simon, E.A.R.T.H. Force, Evening Shade, and some TV movies. In 1991, Dial returned to his claim to fame as an executive producer and writer on The New WKRP in Cincinnati, a follow-up series to the 1970s sitcom. The New WKRP aired in first-run syndication for two seasons. His later credits included writing and producing Time Trax, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Team Knight Rider, Sliders, Legend, and Spike TV's 18 Wheels of Justice. He will be missed, especially by WKRP fans. WKRP in Cincinnati can be seen nationally on cable Sunday evenings on WGN America and Monday nights on AmericanLife TV. Mr. Dial was 66.

Some Late Night Nick at Nite Schedule Changes; Fox Picks-Up Sarah Connor for 2008-09 Season

Nick at Nite has announced it has edited their late night marathons for Wednesday nights and Saturday nights (that's early Thursday mornings and Sunday mornings). Currently it was Full House on both of those nights, 3-6am on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, but now Nick at Nite is pulling that starting this week. Cosby Show will air 3-4am on Wednesday nights followed by Roseanne from 4-6am. On Saturday nights it will be Roseanne from 3-6am. So, now Full House will just be late Friday nights (early Saturday morning) from 5-6am. If you're confused on what air late nights on Nick at Nite, click HERE. Late nights are considered everything after the Home Improvement, George Lopez and Fresh Prince airings...which usually air two hours each before the late nights start. Roseanne is getting a lot of late night play now...every night but Friday nights.
Also, for the million of you who are wondering, Family Matters is coming to Nick at Nite this summer...we will let you know when it is official, as we don't want to give more tentative dates, as you all know it changes a lot. I didn't mention this, but it was being planned for May even...and now that was decided it wasn't for the best. My bet is June or July...but it will air for sure, I assure you.

Fox has picked up 13 episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles for the 2008-2009 season. Brian Austin Green will now also join the cast as a series regular. No idea yet if it will air in the fall or winter, but we will know for sure by next month when Fox has its annual upfront presentation.
The explosive, season-ending cliffhanger left Cameron (Summer Glau) rocked by a car bomb and Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) close to locating an important Skynet component. Viewers were left with unanswered questions regarding Derek's (Brian Austin Green) true intentions and John's (Thomas Dekker) fate as the savior of mankind. These questions and more will be answered in season two.

Star-Studded Marathon for Diff'rent Strokes on BET; TV One May 2008 Highlights

We gave you highlights of BET's schedule changes and upcoming marathons in April a few days back, but now we have full details on one of the marathons! The Diff'rent Strokes marathon that is airing next Sunday (Sunday, April 6) will be a star-studded marathon! Join Arnold and Willis and the rest of the family as they welcome in special guests such as LaWanda Page and Whitman Mayo (Aunt Esther and Grady of Sanford & Son), Janet Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Forest Whitaker, Robin Givens, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Mr. T! The marathons starts at 1pm and will end at 9pm on that Sunday. Fans will be happy to see an assortment of episodes from all seasons (well none from season 7, but we do get a few season 8 ones). There will be 6 Janet Jackson episodes! Whatchya talkin' about Wills, indeed. To see the marathon episodes with the times, click HERE. And discuss this episode selection with other Diff'rent Strokes fans by clicking here.

TV One in May will see lots of marathons, including a Mother's Day stunt filled with motherly episodes. Throughout the month, TV One is going to get the weekends pumping with a series of true 'marathons' – 24 hour May Mega-Marathons, which will each start on Friday evening and run through Saturday evening.
On Friday, May 9 beginning at 7pm, TV One offers a "Mothers Day Weekend" 24-hour marathon saluting favorite sitcom moms from TV One sitcom favorites Martin, All of Us, The Parent'hood, Good Times, Amen, and The Hughleys.
On Friday, May 16 beginning at 9pm, TV One offers its annual birthday tribute to superstar Janet Jackson (she turns 42 on May 16) with a 24-hour marathon of Good Times: "The Janet Years," featuring episodes when a young Janet played the Evans' neighbor, Penny. Directly preceding the marathon at 8pm on Friday, a special TV One Access, hosted by former Cosby Show Kid Keshia Knight Pulliam, takes a look at "Our Favorite Child Stars: All Grown Up."
On Friday, May 23 beginning at 11pm, TV One kicks off the long Memorial Day weekend with a trip to the 'projects' of The PJs – featuring all the episodes of the series during the course of the 24 hour marathon.
Finally, on Memorial Day itself (Monday, May 26), TV One takes a "Memorial Day Break" beginning at 8am, TV One presents a full day marathon of the first 11 episodes of the action crime-drama series Day Break starring Taye Diggs. The show airs weekly every Sunday at 10pm.
Schedule changes include more Amen as it will also air 5 and 5:30pm weekdays starting May 5 replacing For Your Love and Eve, which will both be off the line-up totally. Amen will also air in the mornings as well still at 6am & 6:30am. Eve will be replaced in the early mornings as well, weekdays at 4am will be another Parent'hood instead. And the 1am airing of NY Undercover will be replaced by two more Divorce Court episodes. NY Undercover will still air in its other slots.

Day 95: WGA's Strike; Family Ties Reunion on Today; Nick at Nite News; RTN Adds Maryland Affiliate

Well today is day 95 of the strike. Some shows are actually getting ready to go back into production, which a sure sign the strike will end soon for sure. The big hits like Grey's Anatomy, House, Desperate Housewives, CSI will all for sure return to the air, but some new shows like Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies, Moonlight could be held back until the fall for more promotional push. Traditional sitcoms like Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory and Back to You could be back on the air the earliest, as it doesn't take much time for them to get back to work...we could see them back on-air in mid-late March.
As far as single camera sitcoms go, The Office has scripts ready already, so it can get on the air as fast as the traditional sitcoms. Samantha Who has three episodes left, it is a question mark though if ABC will hold on to those until the fall or get back into production right away and get in more episodes for this season. With Dancing with the Stars returning, it makes sense to get Samantha back in production ASAP for this season.
We will certainly know much more when the strike officially ends, on what will return and what won't.

The cast of NBC's Family Ties all gathered for the first time in 18 years on Thursday on NBC's Today show to help promote a new memoir, titled "Sit, Ubu, Sit," by the creator of the iconic 1980's television sitcom, Gary David Goldberg. Joining Gary David Goldberg were Michael J. Fox, Michael Gross, Meredith Baxter, Justine Batemen and Tina Yothers.
"Had it not been for this book, we would not have had this reunion. This is the first time in about 18 years that we have all been on the same piece of real estate at the same time," said Michael Gross.
You can read more about this reunion that took place this morning, and watch the entire video of it by clicking HERE!
And don't forget the third season is on DVD next week. See our review for details on it and how to order! Sha la la la!

Updating our story from yesterday on Nick at Nite's overnight changes, they will indeed make these changes for the rest of the month at least rather than just this week. So, we will see a pattern of Full House, Roseanne and Cosby Show in the overnights. So Fresh Prince will be just 11pm-12am, joining Home Improvement and George Lopez in primetime, while the other three shows are for late owls.
For the schedule of the overnights, click HERE!

Yet more RTN news! Retro Television Network (RTN) announced today that it will launch an RTN affiliate in Salisbury, MD. The network will begin airing on WRDE in the 4th quarter of this year on the station's digital channel. The station is currently being acquired by XBC Broadcasting, LLC, pending FCC approval.

Day 94: WGA's Strike; New Sitcom Pick-Ups; Nick at Nite Overnight Changes

Today is the 94th day of the strike. No news to report, but there are some sitcom news to report.
MyNetworkTV has ordered 13 episodes of C To The B Productions and Qtopia Entertainment's new half-hour comedy, Under One Roof. Starring Flavor Flav, the series is scheduled to debut in the Spring of 2008.
Flav plays Calvster Hill, an ex-convict that moves in with his wealthy, conservative brother, Walter (Kelly Perine). Calvster subsequently turns the Hill family's life upside down, parading his old prison cronies through the house; teaching his nephew Walter Jr. to be a gangsta rapper; and butting heads with Walter's snooty wife, Ashley. The series is currently in production in Toronto, Canada and licensed by C To The B Productions and Qtopia Entertainment to MyNetworkTV.
Since the series is written by Canadian writers, this show will have no effect from the strike.
Meanwhile, NBC has announced a series pickup of the American adaptation of the Australian hit comedy series Kath & Kim, starring Molly Shannon (NBC's Saturday Night Live) and Selma Blair (Legally Blonde).
6 episodes have been picked-up, but not word when it could start airing. I would guess the fall. It is a series adapted from Australia's hit comedy of the same title, is a look into the minutiae of middle-class suburbia that digs deep into the daily lives of Kath, a cheerful, forty-something divorcee, and her self-absorbed daughter, Kim. It's the love and hate, push and pull, of the dysfunctional relationship only a mother and daughter could share.

It finally looks like the every night marathon of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on Nick at Nite in the late nights could be gone...at least for this week. Last night Full House aired from 2-6am, and it appears at least for this week, there will be no Fresh in the overnights. In addition to Full House on Tuesday night, we get Roseanne tonight from 2-5:30am, The Cosby Show on Thursday night from 2-6am, more Full House on Friday night from 3-6am, more Roseanne on Saturday night from 2-6am, and more The Cosby Show on Sunday night from 1:30am-6am.
I will let you know as soon as I do what will happen next week...but my guess is it will be the same as this week, with Fresh Prince on Monday nights from 2-6am. No schedule changes will be made from 9pm-2am.

Day 40: WGA's Strike; ABC's Strike Schedule; NCIS Reruns to USA Network; Nick at Nite Holiday Changes; RTN Coming to the Tri-Cities Area in Tennessee

We are now on the big 4-0 of the strike...that's day 40. We have some bad news. The WGA has filed a complaint against the AMPTP. It is getting ugly and I don't think we will get this straighten out anytime soon. Hopefully a Christmas miracle can happen. Anyway, here is more on the complaint. The WGA says: Today the WGA filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the AMPTP for its refusal to bargain in good faith with the WGA. It is a clear violation of federal law for the AMPTP to issue an ultimatum and break off negotiations if we fail to cave to their illegal demands.
We are in the midst of the holiday season, with thousands of our members and the membership of other unions out of work. It is the height of irresponsibility and intransigence for the AMPTP to refuse to negotiate a fair agreement with the WGA. We reiterate our demand that the AMPTP immediately return to the negotiations, rather than going on vacation, so that this town can be put back to work.
The DGA announced today that it may commence negotiations with the AMPTP in January. The DGA has to do what is best for its membership, and we will do what is best for ours. We wish them well, but they do not represent writers. Our strike will end when the companies return to negotiations and make a fair deal with the WGA.
The AMPTP responded to the WGA complaint by saying: The WGA's filing of a complaint with the NLRB reminds us of the old lawyers' adage: When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. And when you don't have either the law or the facts on your side, you pound the table. The WGA has now been reduced to pounding the table, and this baseless, desperate NLRB complaint is just the latest indication that the WGA's negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers.
It is getting very ugly. Not good.

ABC's strike schedule (AKA January schedule, AKA mid-season schedule) is out! ABC will premiere four new series between Jan-Mar, Cashmere Mafia, Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, Eli Stone and Oprah's Big Give, in addition to the premiere of the much anticipated fourth season of Lost on Thursday, January 31 at 9:00 p.m. Just for Laughs, According to Jim and Carpoolers return to Tuesday in January. Wife Swap and Supernanny return, this time on Wednesdays. The megahit Dancing with the Stars returns March 17 on Mondays and Tuesdays. Off the line-up because of the strike are Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, and Dirty Sexy Money. Cavemen is not returning. Men in Trees will take a break and not come back until Feb. 27, and move to Wednesdays at 10 when Cashmere Mafia's run completes. For a full list of the schedule, look below:
MONDAY (JAN)
8:00 p.m. Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann
9:30 p.m. Notes from the Underbelly
10:00 p.m. October Road
MONDAY (FEB)
8:00 p.m. Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann
9:00 p.m. Samantha Who?
9:30 p.m. Notes from the Underbelly
10:00 p.m. October Road
MONDAY (MAR)
8:00 p.m. Dancing with the Stars
9:30 p.m. Samantha Who?
10:00 p.m. The Bachelor

TUESDAY
8:00 p.m. Just for Laughs
8:30 p.m. Just for Laughs
9:00 p.m. According to Jim
9:30 p.m. Carpoolers
10:00 p.m. Boston Legal
TUESDAY (MAR)
8:00 p.m. Just for Laughs
8:30 p.m. Just for Laughs
9:00 p.m. Dancing with the Stars the Results Show
10:00 p.m. Boston Legal

WEDNESDAY
8:00 p.m. Wife Swap
9:00 p.m. Supernanny
10:00 p.m. Cashmere Mafia - MEN IN TREES beginning Feb 27

THURSDAY (JAN)
8:00 p.m. Ugly Betty
9:00 p.m. Grey's Anatomy
10:00 p.m. Big Shots (after special premiere of Cashmere Mafia on Jan 3)
THURSDAY (FEB)
8:00 p.m. Ugly Betty
9:00 p.m. Lost
10:00 p.m. Eli Stone

FRIDAY
8:00 p.m. Drama encores
9:00 p.m. Drama encores
10:00 p.m. 20/20

SUNDAY (MAR)
7:00 p.m. America’s Funniest Home Videos
8:00 p.m. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
9:00 p.m. Oprah's Big Give
10:00 p.m. Desperate Housewives
For MUCH more info click HERE!!

USA Network has announced it will start airing reruns of the CBS drama NCIS starting in January. It was announced a few years ago that USA Network had bought the off-network rights of the show starting in 2008. USA will air it Wednesday nights at 9:00pm and 10:00pm starting Jan. 2. It won't air as a daily strip for awhile, since it is just starting. Maybe in the fall at earliest. NCIS is replacing Law & Order: SVU on Wednesday nights. SVU will still air in its other slots.
From Donald P. Bellisario, an acclaimed producer, comes NCIS, a hit spin-off of JAG (which airs on USA Network 6-8am weekday mornings), that brings us the inner workings of the government agency that investigates all crimes involving Navy and Marine Corps personnel, regardless of rank or position. Starring: Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette.

In other news, Nick at Nite has edited their Christmas marathon for this Sunday a bit. They removed the holiday episodes of Roseanne and Cosby Show. They will air holiday episodes from 9pm-12am of their usual line-up of Home Improvement, George Lopez, and Fresh Prince instead. In addition, the holiday hour of 11pm next week will now be back to just Fresh Prince...so again Roseanne and Cosby Show get snubbed. For more details, click on our December highlights by clicking HERE.

RTN has announced a new affiliate...our friend Greg Brobeck (aka snowpeck) is very happy, because this is his market. Retro Television Network (RTN) announced today that it will partner with Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation to launch RTN programming on a digital stream of WKPT-TV, Tri-Cities' ABC affiliate. The new affiliate will begin airing RTN programming on December 21 on WKPT-DT, Tennessee's first digital television station, and will also be available over-the-air on WOPI-CA, Channel 9.
Greg found out that we can look for Matlock, Hawaii 5-0, Magnum, P.I. in primetime with the following in daytime and late night: Perry Mason, Ironside, Rockford Files, Get Smart, Kojak, The Untouchables, Mission Impossible, The Fugitive, Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Happy Days, Love American Style. And on weekends: Bonanza, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wild Wild West, Emergency, Knight Rider, A-Team, Afred Hitchcock.

Day 22: WGA's Strike; Nick at Nite December Highlights; Sitcom Reminders for Tonight

Well it is day 22 is the writers' strike and this could be the last day! Both sides went back into the bargaining table and let's hope they work things out. The buzz is they have worked out a deal! We will know soon I guess. For now, check out the rumor mill. And at TV Guide.

Nick at Nite this December will give us a lot of Christmas episodes. Spend the 11 p.m. hour each day the week of Dec. 3 with classic Christmas episodes! Home Improvement holiday episodes air all-week at 11pm. 11:30pm will be Fresh Prince on Monday, Roseanne on Tuesday, another Fresh Prince on Wednesday, another Roseanne on Thursday and Cosby Show on Friday!
Then on Sunday, December 16, Nick at Nite gives a four hour event with holiday episodes of Home Improvement, George Lopez, Fresh Prince, Cosby Show and Roseanne from 9pm-1am.
Then the week of Dec. 17 it is more 11pm hour time! Spend the 11 p.m. hour each day the week of Dec. 17 with classic Christmas episodes! Roseanne holiday episodes air all-week at 11pm. 11:30pm will be Home Improvement on Monday, Fresh Prince on Tuesday, Cosby Show on Wednesday, another Fresh Prince on Thursday and another Home Improvement on Friday!
And if that is not all, Nick at Nite will give us one last chance to watch holiday episodes on Christmas night from 9pm-12am of their best shows...Home Improvement, George Lopez, Fresh Prince and Cosby Show.
Finally, spend New Year's Eve with Nickelodeon, as Nick at Nite hands over the night to them. Tune in and catch some of your favorite Nick movies and specials as they count down the clock, all the way to midnight!
Click HERE for more details and to discuss this. Keep checking back there for constant updates.

Don't forget to catch the season premiere of sitcom Notes from the Underbelly at 9:30 ET/PT after an all-new Samantha Who at 9/8 central at a new time following part one of the season finale of Dancing with the Stars!
The CW and CBS will also have sitcoms tonight starting at 8/7 central, but CBS's Big Bang Theory and Rules of Engagement will be encores until the strike is resolved.

Nick at Nite Adds Halloween Stunts; CBS Pulls Viva Laughlin

Nick at Nite is getting ready for Halloween this week! They have added Home Improvement Halloween episodes all this week from 9-10pm. The 11pm hour this week will be like a Halloween Candy Bag, you'll never know what you'll find. They will be all Halloween episodes, though. Catch episodes of Home Improvement, Roseanne, Full House, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The Cosby Show.
Also, Nick at Nite doesn't want you to be watching horror movies late at night, so instead, all this week from 3-6am find yourself watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Many viewers are probably scared by the overplaying of that show, though.
They will have some more Halloween stunts, which we will detail later on. This is just for Mon-Thurs of this week. Come on back!

New CBS musical drama Viva Laughlin didn't live long. The network announced Monday that it was canceling the show after it garnered a most unimpressive 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demo with its premiere Thursday night and a 1.2 overnight rating in what was to be its regular time slot Sunday at 8 p.m.
In its place, CBS said The Amazing Race will start its engine Nov. 4. On Oct. 28, Laughlin will be replaced by a repeat episode of CSI.

Tonight is sitcoms galore on three networks--CBS, The CW and ABC. CBS and The CW have their four comedies each tonight starting at 8/7 central and on ABC it is the #1 comedy on television after one week, Christina Applegate in Samantha Who. The addictive new comedy airs at 9:30/8:30 central on ABC!

TitanTV Acquires Jury Duty, New Series that Features Classic TV Jurors; WTBS Peachtree TV News; Alyssa Milano Goes Baseball!

TitanTV Network, the first of its kind digital media platform designed to connect local media affiliates and their advertisers to the digital world, has acquired the exclusive broadband rights to Radar Entertainment's new daily syndicated strip series, Jury Duty. The series, featuring famed defense attorney Bruce Cutler and premiering on stations around the country on September 17, will be given free to its affiliate stations' Web sites delivered through the TitanCast player, which provides territorial exclusivity through its patented technology. The broadband version of the series will also be available on TitanTV.com.
Jury Duty, which is presided over by high-profile attorney Bruce Cutler, features a jury of rotating celebrities and classic TV stars including Phyllis Diller, Ed Begley Jr., Bruce Vilanch, Paula Poundstone, Kevin Sorbo, Scott Hamilton, Dick Van Patten and Tiffany, among others. The series is cleared in over 85% of the U.S., including New York City (WPIX, weeknights at 4:30am).

As we mentioned previously, WTBS, TBS's local broadcast platform in Atlanta, is about to undergo an extensive re-branding initiative and line-up change that will result in an entirely new local, independent station, completely separate from the national cable network. The newly re-branded Peachtree TV will launch on Monday, Oct. 1.
Driven by an Atlanta-centric, hyper-local sensibility, Peachtree TV will feature nightly blockbuster prime-time movies and a daytime line-up packed with popular sitcoms targeted to Atlanta's local audience. In addition, Peachtree TV will bring local viewers 45 regular-season Atlanta Braves baseball games in 2008.
While Peachtree TV takes over the local broadcaster position currently held by WTBS, TBS's national cable feed will become available to Atlanta's local cable and satellite customers, offering the network's signature comedy programming. On Oct. 1, TBS will move to Comcast channel 39 and Direct TV channel 247. TBS will remain on Dish Network channel 139.
The channel's daytime line-up will feature a stable of sitcom hits, including the Atlanta syndication premieres of Family Guy and Still Standing, as well as such series as The King of Queens, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends and Frasier.
In Fall 2008, Peachtree TV's line-up will feature two shows that are currently attracting large audiences in the Atlanta market. The long-running and extremely popular talk show Montel, hosted by Montel Williams, will join the daytime line-up as a Peachtree TV exclusive in Atlanta. Also next year, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, which premiered this past summer on TBS and set an ad-supported cable record for the #1 sitcom telecast of all time, will premiere in local syndication in Atlanta on Peachtree TV. In 2009, The Office and My Name is Earl will join the line-up as Atlanta syndication premieres.

Moving on to the national TBS, Alyssa Milano is coming to TBS...sort of. She will be covering baseball online for TBS Hot Corner on MLB.com
TBS Hot Corner is a new broadband channel from Turner Broadcasting's TBS, which will be broadcasting the major league division series and the National League Championship Series for the first time this season.
She will have a recurring role on the NBC sitcom My Name is Earl this fall and already has a popular blog on MLB.com and this year launched a baseball-themed clothing line.
Beginning Sept. 17, Milano will contribute regular reports and features from major league stadia as teams race to make the playoffs. The reports will range from interviews with players, coaches and fans, to features on calorie counting at the park and the best in baseball attire.
Baseball just got a bit hotter!

Important Nick at Nite and TV Land Schedule Changes; RTN in Reno in January

Well it's not that important. Nick at Nite's changes are a bit important though. We gave you the September fall schedule a few days back. Nick at Nite has since altered that just a bit. They will air America's Funniest Home Videos after all. Every night at 4:30am, replacing one of the Home Improvement encores. The other changes are really on Fri-Sat. Fridays will get a little bit of a change from 10pm-1am. Originally it was back-to-back Home Improvement, George Lopez, and Fresh Prince. Now it will be one Home Improvement, one George Lopez, back-to-back Home Improvement at 11, Fresh Prince at 12 and another George at 12:30am. Weird...because Saturdays 10pm-1am it is not like that. Fresh Prince encores were slated Fri-Sat nights 3-4am, now it will be the same as Sun-Thurs, which is Roseanne and Cosby Show.
So, let's go back to the September schedule to see the fully updated schedule that will start Sept. 10.
In other Nick at Nite news, the movie Grease will air again tonight pre-empting programming from 9pm-11:30pm.
Moving on to TV Land, not many changes really, it is just minor stuff. The Saturday line-up for this Saturday only, September 1, will be changed a bit. We get a Sanford & Son afternoon-thon from 1-4pm, followed by three movies until 10pm, then Andy Griffith mini-marathon will air until 1:10am. I guess this is for Labor Day weekend. Click here to view this change.
The week of Sept. 17, What's Happening Now!! will return for a week at 7am. I guess because M*A*S*H will be airing a lot that week, with the anniversary marathon.

RTN is now coming to Reno, NV! They announced that it has entered into an agreement with COX Broadcasting to bring RTN programming to Reno, NV. The new affiliate will launch Jan. 7, 2008, on a digital channel of COX's KRXI-TV, a FOX affiliate that reaches more than 260,000 households in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area.
"RTN-Reno viewers will delight in seeing a young Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco, one of the original procedurals that spawned many of today's hit shows," said Mark Dvornik, Executive Vice President of RTN, "and they will enjoy hearing Robin Leach say 'champagne wishes and caviar dreams' in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on their very own 'Prime Time all the Time' schedule."

ME-TV Chicago Fall Schedule; Dancing with the Stars: The Announcement

ME-TV this fall will bring on new shows, return some favorites, and some shows unfortunately will have to be dropped as a result. The new schedule starts Sept. 17. Among the new shows is the classic sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show which will air everyday. Weekdays 7-8pm and 10:30pm and weekends 10-11pm. ME-TV is very happy they have acquired it and hope fans in Chicago will be pleased. The Cosby Show (6-7pm) and Cheers (8-9pm) will also join the Chicago local's weekday line-up. And Bonanza will join the weekday line-up at 1pm. Taxi will join the line-up on October 1 taking the 7:30pm weeknight slot. Shows leaving weekdays are Webster, Gimme a Break, All in the Family, Charlie's Angels, Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. All of those will still air weekends but Webster, Gimme a Break, All in the Family and Charlie's Angels...so those shows are gone. Weekends will have a lot of new shows! Coming Saturdays are TJ Hooker and 21 Jump Street, while shows like Phil Silvers, Batman and Starsky & Hutch will be off the weekend line-up and the line-up completely. Peter Gunn will move from weekends to weeknights! On Sundays, we get some sitcoms that are returning like Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, One Day at a Time, Patty Duke Show, The Flying Nun, and Mary Tyler Moore. Sitcoms like The Partridge Family, Monkees, Gidget, and My Three Sons will be leaving the line-up, as will The Rockford Files.
For the full COMPLETE schedule, I urge you to click HERE! You people in Chicago-land are lucky!!

Dancing with the Stars' fifth competition will start Sept. 24 on ABC and today they announced who will be in it! We had rumors of stars like Aaron Carter, Tori Spelling and Lou Ferigno coming on, but they didn't make it. Looks like some of TMZ's rumors were false. Rumors also swirled on stars like Mark Cuban, Wayne Newton and Jennie Garth, and those came true! Here is the announcement:
In a Dancing with the Stars first, twelve celebrities – six men and six women -- attempt to outshine one another on a fifth season of the hit series, which returns MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 (8:00-9:30 p.m., ET) on ABC. This marks the largest cast assembled to date. It includes an Emmy Award-winning actress, a Vegas icon, an Indy 500 champion, a Spice Girl, a daytime soap star, a Cheetah Girl and a former resident of 90210. As an added twist, viewers get a chance to size up the male vs. the female stars, as each gender hits the dance floor on separate nights during the first week of competition. The women will strut their stuff on Monday night, while the men show off their moves TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 (8:00-9:30 p.m., ET). One couple's fate will be determined the following night, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on Dancing with the Stars the Results Show. Can the women outperform the men, or will the men dance circles around the women?
As announced today on Good Morning America, the twelve stars making their ballroom dancing debut are:
MELANIE BROWN – "Mel B.," a.k.a. "Scary Spice," is best known as a member of the Spice Girls, the hit British music group that put "girl power" on the map and took the world by storm in 1996. She is partnered with MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIY, who returns for his fourth season.
SABRINA BRYAN – Actress and recording artist Sabrina Bryan starred as a member of an all-girl singing group in Disney Channel's original movie, The Cheetah Girls. She has also starred in The Bold and the Beautiful. Bryan is partnered with newcomer MARK BALLAS.
HELIO CASTRONEVES – The two-time Indianapolis 500 champion began the celebratory tradition of climbing the racetrack fence in 2001, racing for Team Penske. Castroneves teams with reigning champ JULIANNE HOUGH, who returns for her sophomore season.
MARK CUBAN – Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team. He is the highly successful entrepreneur who founded HDNet, Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions. He is partnered with KYM JOHNSON, who returns for her third season.
JENNIE GARTH – Garth rose to stardom in the popular television series Beverly Hills: 90210. She since starred in the sitcom What I Like About You for four seasons. Garth's partner is newcomer DEREK HOUGH, brother of Season Four winner Julianne Hough.
JOSIE MARAN – Model/actress Josie Maran has graced the pages of some of the biggest magazines, including multiple covers for Glamour and appearances in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue. Maran is paired with Season One winner ALEC MAZO, who makes his third appearance.
CAMERON MATHISON – Mathison joined the cast of All My Children in January 1989 as Ryan Lavery. His television credits also include The Drew Cary Show, CSI, JAG, What I Like About You, F/X: The Series. Mathison's partner is EDYTA SLIWINSKA, the only professional dancer to appear in all five seasons.
FLOYD MAYWEATHER -- "Pretty Boy" Floyd Mayweather is a six-time world champion in five different weight classes and the current RING and World Boxing Council Welterweight Champion of the World, with an astounding undefeated record of 38-0, with 24 knockouts. Mayweather teams with KARINA SMIRNOFF, who returns for her third season.
WAYNE NEWTON – The Legend, Mr. Las Vegas, is enjoying a career that few dare even dream about, having performed more live shows than any other single performer in Las Vegas history, with no signs of slowing down. He is partnered with two-time champ CHERYL BURKE.
MARIE OSMOND – Osmond won the hearts of fans as co-host of the popular variety program, The Donny & Marie Show. Osmond will be led by JONATHAN ROBERTS, who returns for his fourth season.
ALBERT REED – Model Albert Reed has been featured in national ad campaigns for Abercrombie & Fitch, Diesel Clothing, Arrow Clothing, Rayban and Reebok, to name a few. He teams up with ANNA TREBUNSKAYA, who returns for her second season.
JANE SEYMOUR - Actress/artist/author/activist/designer and Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning British born Jane Seymour is a star of motion pictures and television, including her six-season Western drama, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman. She recently made steamy appearances on the ABC sitcom In Case of Emergency. Seymour is paired with TONY DOVOLANI, who returns for his fourth season.

Nick at Nite's September Schedule; RTN in Albany Now

As promised, we will give you the Nick at Nite September schedule. The schedule is broken up into two periods, Sun-Thurs and Fri-Sat. Fri-Sat is really the same as Sun-Thurs but an hour later. Home Improvement, which will get a week-long marathon Sept. 3-9 (9p-5a each night), will kick-off the night by airing from 9-10pm starting Sept. 10. George Lopez will premiere after that airing 10-11pm. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air follows the two newcomers, which will both likely do very well, from 11pm-12am. From midnight to 3am, we get the same three shows again. Then at 3am we get Roseanne and at 3:30am The Cosby Show. Wow...both of those have been heavily reduced, especially Roseanne! At 4am we get Full House and 4:30am another slot of Home Improvement. 5am will be the wheel of shows again, with Mad About You being added to the wheel now. Finally, 5:30am will remain Full House. So, what about Fri-Sat? OK, Home Improvement, George Lopez, Fresh Prince will kick-it off from 10pm-1am, and again from 1am-4am. Then 4-5am we get yet another Home Improvement hour (its third hour!). 5-6am will be the same as Sun-Thurs. America's Funniest Home Videos will be gone. Confused? See our September schedule and you can share your thoughts there as well.

RTN has been added to another city now! If you live in these area and don't have digital cable, there this a good reason for you to get digital cable so you can watch RTN on the DT feeds of these channels. They announced today that it plans to launch a new affiliate on the digital channel of Albany's ABC station, adding more than 550,000 households to RTN's rapidly expanding footprint.
The new network will launch Oct. 1 on WTEN-TV, a Young Broadcasting station that serves upstate New York, western Massachusetts and southern Vermont. Shows like Matlock, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii 5-0 and Streets of San Francisco are expected.

The Full Updated TV Land September Schedule; More Details on TV Land Canada This Fall

It was just yesterday when we released the updated TV Land weekend schedule for September, now we have the fully updated schedule for the rest of the week! So continuing where we left off yesterday, the late night schedule in September will be the same for every night. Which means the schedule we gave yesterday from 12:05am-6am on weekends will ALSO be on weeknights. So we won't go over that. Let's start with weekday mornings, we are started off with Star Trek at 6am, followed by back to back M*A*S*H at 7am, then we have a sitcom block of Cheers, The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son and All in the Family until 10am. Knight Rider joins the lineup and will air at 10am (it was previously slated for weekdays at 3pm in the original September schedule). Then on Mondays only, we have a TV Land Goes West Monday block with Bonanza from 11am-2pm and Gunsmoke from 2-6pm. Tues-Fri in this time period we get Gunsmoke at 11am, back-to-back I Love Lucy at noon, back-to-back Green Acres at 1pm, the horror hour with Munsters & Addams Family at 2, back-to-back Leave it to Beaver at 3, Bonanza at 4pm and Gunsmoke at 5pm. Weeknights at 6 will remain Little House on the Prairie followed by back-to-back Andy Griffith Show episodes at 7. In primetime on weeknights we get back-to-back The Cosby Show at 8, followed by back-to-back The Jeffersons at 9, back-to-back Sanford & Son at 10, and back-to-back M*A*S*H at 11. There are some days when things get pre-empted, so I suggest you view our seven day a week schedule for September by clicking HERE!
Hopefully TV Land doesn't edit the September line-up again. We will have the October highlights very soon, so come on back for that. What to expect that month is a 50th Anniversary Marathon of Leave it to Beaver and Designing Women joins the line-up.

Moving up north of the border, we have some additional details for TV Land Canada's Fall schedule. We gave you the shows and details last month, but now we have some more info!
Among the highlights: TV Land Canada has 24-hour marathons of Remington Steele and Happy Days, and spends the Christmas holidays with Lassie and Dallas. Several stand-up comedy series hosted by comedian Ben Guyatt are also coming to the Canadian network. For complete details, click HERE you Canadians!

Schedule Updates for TV Land and Nick at Nite; Who's the Boss? Scores for ION!

Late on Friday both TV Land and Nick at Nite issued schedule changes. TV Land will make some changes effective Monday, August 20. The Summer Cocktail Party marathons will be ending. Changes include, M*A*S*H coming to mornings also now from 7-8am on weekdays but Wednesdays will be What's Happening Now!!, Cheers moves up a half-hour to 8am Tues-Fri, All in the Family at 8:30am Tues-Fri, The Jeffersons & Leave it to Beaver round out the morning schedule from 9-10am Tues-Fri. Mon-Thurs primetime will also change a bit: The Jeffersons from 9-10pm, Sanford & Son from 10-11pm, and M*A*S*H from 11p-12a (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition remains on Tues). Mon-Fri late night will now be Sanford & Son at 12:05am, back to back Three's Company, The Jeffersons, and Good Times from 12:35am-4am. On Tuesday nights, the times are on time, so the extra half-hour at 1:30am is The Munsters, its only slot now. Another Sanford & Son at 4am, All in the Family at 4:30am, and back to back I Love Lucy (Mon-Thurs, The Andy Griffith Show is on Fridays) from 5-6am. Weekend changes include Green Acres at 8am and back to back Leave it to Beaver episodes from 9-10am.
These changes are likely to spill over to September, but afternoons will be altered a bit as the Elvis movie will not be there in September. For now view these August 20 changes by clicking HERE!

Nick at Nite's change is for the week of Aug. 13. The wall to wall summer marathon that week is now The Cosby Show instead of Full House. We will have their September line-up shortly with new shows Home Improvement and George Lopez.

Tony Micelli and the gang have made their mark on ION Television...big time! ION Television scored a homerun for its launch of the 80s sitcom Who's the Boss? starring Tony Danza, Judith Light, and Alyssa Milano. Who cares about the Barry Bonds record, as Tony Micelli has been doing it longer than Barry.
Primetime airings of Who's the Boss? have delivered significant ratings increases among key adult demographics on ION Television. In the first two weeks following the popular program's July 9 debut, viewership in its 9-10 PM timeslot season-to-date increased 41 percent in women 25-54, and 33 percent in adults 25-54.
During the weeks of July 9 and 16, Who's the Boss? delivered 175,000 household impressions for women 25-54, and 259,000 impressions for adults 25-54, the highest weekly impressions performance in the 9-10 PM hour season-to-date.
Benefiting from a solid Who's the Boss? lead-in, Wonder Years enjoyed a six percent ratings increase in households and women 25-54 in its 10-11 PM timeslot during the weeks of July 9 and 16, representing a season-to-date increase of 22 percent.
We hope to have ION Television's September lineup this week...maybe by tomorrow. So come on back!

TBS September 2007 Schedule, The Office on Tuesdays, 'Sex' All Week-Long; My Boys Scores on TBS

TBS has released its September 2007 schedule and it will feature some changes. The week of September 3 has some minor changes, which are just filler until the new line-up that starts on September 10. Let's start with the filler stuff. Sept. 4, 5, 6 and 7 NewsRadio returns for 4 days in the noon slot followed by The Cosby Show at 12:30pm. The other filler stuff is very minor, and you can take a look at that in our link at the end of this story.
Let's move on to the September 10 line-up. The Steve Harvey Show is moving from its afternoon slots to 6 & 6:30am, replacing The Cosby Show which will now move to the dreaded approx. 5:30am slot, where it will not air everyday. Saved by the Bell continues to air its two-hour block from 7-9am. The morning movie will move from 10am-12pm to 9am-11am now. Dawson's Creek which was at 9am will move to the dreaded approx. 4:30am slot, which like Cosby Show, will not be everyday. Home Improvement will get a two-hour block from 11am-1pm. Yes, Dear moves from late afternoon to early afternoon at 1-2pm. Just Shoot Me, which premieres August 6, will move from 1-2pm to 2-3pm. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air moves to an hour later at 3-4pm. The King of Queens will take over the 4-5pm slot followed by an hour of Seinfeld at 5-6pm. Friends will air at 6pm followed by a triple shot of Everybody Loves Raymond from 6:30pm-8pm.
Primetime will also be changing. Friends will kick-off Mondays and Thursdays with back-to-back episodes from 8-9pm. On Mondays it will lead into Family Guy from 9-11pm and on Thursdays a movie from 9-11pm. Tuesdays will see a Family Guy block from 8-10pm and then starting September 18 The Office will air Tuesdays 10-11pm. Wednesdays will see a House of Payne marathon from 8-10pm followed by back-to-back Family Guy episodes 10-11pm. Finally, Fridays will have Everybody Loves Raymond kick-off the night leading into Dinner and a Movie.
Effective week of September 17, you can now catch Sex and the City five nights a week on TBS at 11 & 11:30PM! Seinfeld will get the late Tuesday slot of 11:59PM and 12:30AM, while movies will air the rest of the week. Other notes: Parent'hood is missing from the schedule because its contract has expired. Drew Carey Show has also expired, as we noted in the August changes.
No word yet if this is indeed the Fall schedule or not, as usually TBS launches its fall schedule in October. We shall find out and when we do, we will let you know. So for now click HERE to view a list of these changes!

Sticking with TBS, the season premiere of original sitcom My Boys scored well for TBS last night. Continuing to ride a wave of comedy success, TBS has triumphed once again on the original comedy series front. Last night's return of the critically acclaimed sitcom My Boys scored extremely well with young adults, garnering a median age of 29. The show also outdelivered the series' November 2006 series premiere among adults 18-34 and scored an extraordinary 43% growth in that demographic when compared to the show's 2006 13-episode average. Last night's episodes averaged more than 1.6 million viewers, nearly half of them among the key adults 18-34 demographic. My Boys airs Mondays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT), exclusively on TBS.
Other ratings highlights for the return of My Boys on TBS:
- Combined, last night’s back-to-back episodes averaged 801,000 adults 18-34, a 43% jump over last year's 559,000 premiere average for the first 13 episodes in that demographic. Last night's episodes also averaged 1,176,000 adults 18-49, up 12% vs. premiere telecasts of the show in 2006 (1,052,000).
- Demonstrating the successful strategy of stacking episodes to provide stronger flow, the 10:30 p.m. episode of My Boys last night showed growth over its lead-in 10 p.m. episode, with adults 18-34 up 4% and adults 18-49 up 6%.
- With My Boys joining the list, TBS now claims ad-supported cable's Top 8 sitcoms for the year to date among adults 18-49, with Tyler Perry's House of Payne ranking #1, The Bill Engvall Show ranking #2 and My Boys ranking #6. Rounding out the list are Friends (#3), Seinfeld (#4), Everybody Loves Raymond (#5), King of Queens (#7) and Sex and the City (#8).

TV Land August Schedule Changes; TCA 2007 Summer Tour: The CW; ABC August Change

Late on Friday, TV Land issued some schedule changes for August. The Summer Cocktail Party Marathons will continue now past August 3. It will likely go until the end of the month now. Some blocks of the marathons have changed along with some of the regular schedule. The changes start on August 4 with the weekends. Some minor changes here and there on weekends, such as double shot of Gunsmoke now from 6-8am rather than I Love Lucy and Green Acres, which were scheduled to start airing then. Green Acres will air 9am on weekends. Other changes on weekends include Gunsmoke from 5-8pm on Saturdays and Andy Griffith Show from 10pm-1:10am. TV Land Goes West on Sundays will be 12-6pm now, with more Andy Griffith from 6-8pm. Sundays will also have a M*A*S*H block from 10pm-12:05am. The late night block on both nights will also be altered a bit, with Three's Company (twice), The Jeffersons, Good Times (twice), Sanford & Son, All in the Family, and The Andy Griffith Show from 1:10am-6am.
That was just weekends, now let's go to weekdays. As we said before TV Land Goes West is also on Mondays, and that will not change. Bonanza from 8a-12p and Gunsmoke from 2-6p. Tues-Fri mornings and afternoons will get a bit of a makeover from the original August schedule. Cheers will return and air 8:30am. Sanford & Son will air 9-10am, Bonanza and Gunsmoke follow until noon leading into the Elvis movie, 2-5pm will see back-to-back episodes of Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. Gunsmoke will air at 5pm. In primetime, Cosby Show replaces Good Times from 8-9pm and Sanford & Son will air 9-10pm instead of The Jeffersons. Then we have the marathons from 10p-4:30a. Changes to the marathons are: Mondays from 10p-12:05a is now The Jeffersons instead of Cosby Show. Andy Griffith Show marathon will air Tuesdays from 8-11p leading into Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, so no M*A*S*H marathon. Wednesday nights from 2:20-4a is now Three's Company instead of All in the Family.
So these changes are last minute, so the September schedule we posted might change now. We will let you know when we do. Munsters, Addams Family, Green Acres are reduced to just weekends in August. For now, please click HERE to view the changes in a list form.

The CW was up today at the TCA Summer Press Tour. Up at the panel were the cast & crew of various series and an Executive Session. The show that had a panel were: Aliens in America, Life is Wild, CW Now/Online Nation, Gossip Girl, Reaper. They announced the fall premiere dates for their series:

MONDAY
8:00-8:30 PM EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS [October 1]
8:30-9:00 PM ALIENS IN AMERICA (New Series) [October 1]
9:00-9:30 PM GIRLFRIENDS [October 1]
9:30-10:00 PM THE GAME [October 1]

TUESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM BEAUTY AND THE GEEK [September 18]
9:00-10:00 PM REAPER (New Series) [September 25]

WEDNESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL [September 19]
9:00-10:00 PM GOSSIP GIRL (New Series) [September 26]

THURSDAY
8:00-9:00 PM SMALLVILLE [September 27]
9:00-10:00 PM SUPERNATURAL [October 4]

FRIDAY
8:00-10:00 PM FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN [September 21]

SUNDAY
7:00-7:30 PM CW NOW (New Series) [September 23]
7:30-8:00 PM ONLINE NATION (New Series) [September 23]
8:00-9:00 PM LIFE IS WILD (New Series) [October 7]
9:00-10:00 PM AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL (Encore Presentation)

ABC will alter its Monday and Tuesday schedules for August. Mondays will now be Wife Swap, Fat March, and Supernanny. It was supposed to be Wife Swap, Supernanny, and i-Caught. Fat March was originally for Tuesdays at 9. Tuesdays will be back-to-back Just for Laughs, which ABC renewed for an additional 13 episodes (making it 19 in all now), followed by Primetime: Crime and i-Caught. Primetime: Crime was originally for 10pm.

TCA 2007 Summer Tour: CBS Day 1; TBS Adds 'Just Shoot Me', Ratings News for New Sitcom; Our Emmy Picks

It is now CBS's turn at the TCA Summer Press Tour. The session panels for today were: Executive Session, Cane, Shark, How I Met Your Mother, Kid Nation, Moonlight, Big Bang Theory. They also have released their fall premiere dates. CBS today announced plans for the premieres of its new and returning series which includes the early debut of its freshman reality series Kid Nation, as well as Survivor: China and most of its Sunday lineup during the week of Sept. 17. The network will launch the remainder of its schedule beginning Monday, Sept. 24, the official start of the 2007-2008 season.
Viva Laughlin, the new mystery drama with music, will have a special preview on Thursday, Oct. 18 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) following CSI before moving to its regular Sunday (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) time period on Oct. 21 to take advantage of a two-week window in the schedule without football overruns.

CBS Fall Premiere Dates:

Wednesday, Sept. 19
8 p.m. Kid Nation

Thursday, Sept. 20
8 p.m. Survivor: China

Sunday, Sept. 23
7 p.m. 60 Minutes
9 p.m. Cold Case
10 p.m. Shark

Monday, Sept. 24
8 p.m. How I Met Your Mother
8:30 p.m. The Big Bang Theory
9 p.m. Two and a Half Men
9:30 p.m. Rules of Engagement
10 p.m. CSI: Miami

Tuesday, Sept. 25
8 p.m. NCIS
9 p.m. The Unit
10 p.m. Cane

Wednesday, Sept. 26
9 p.m. Criminal Minds
10 p.m. CSI: NY

Thursday, Sept. 27
9 p.m. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
10 p.m. Without a Trace

Friday, Sept. 28
8 p.m. Ghost Whisperer
9 p.m. Moonlight
10 p.m. NUMB3RS

Saturday, Sept. 29
8 p.m. Crimetime Saturday
9 p.m. Crimetime Saturday
10 p.m. 48 Hours Mystery

Thursday, Oct. 18
10 p.m. Viva Laughlin (special preview)

Sunday, Oct. 21
8 p.m. Viva Laughlin (time period premiere)

TBS will add the hit '90s sitcom Just Shoot Me to its afternoon line-up starting August 6. It will air weekdays at 1:00 & 1:30pm, shifting the Steve Harvey Show hour to 12 & 12:30pm. Thus, NewsRadio will be leaving the line-up. In addition, it looks like TBS will not renew the contract for The Drew Carey Show, because starting August 27, an extra Cosby Show episode will air at 6:30am weekday mornings. Anyway, I'm not sure how long TBS will run Just Shoot Me. It is coming to TV Land in January and then it will also come back to local channels next June. TBS could share it with TV Land, so who knows, Discuss these pre-fall schedule changes, by clicking HERE.
Sticking with TBS, last night's premiere of the new sitcom The Bill Engvall Show scored big. The series' debut telecast last night delivered 3.9 million viewers and 2.8 million households, securing a place among ad-supported cable's Top 3 sitcom telecasts (original or acquired) of all-time among households and Top 5 original sitcom telecasts of all-time among key adult demos and viewers. The premiere garnered a 3.0 coverage household rating/2.5 national rating. It ranked as ad-supported cable's top program for the entire day in delivery of adults 18-49, adults 25-54, viewers and households.
Set in a Denver suburb, The Bill Engvall Show casts the Blue Collar Comedy headliner as Bill Pearson, a family counselor whose own family is unpredictable, somewhat absurd and a little mixed up themselves. Nancy Travis plays his wife, Susan, who is trying to make sure their three children turn out all right. Filling out the rest of the family, Jennifer Lawrence plays Bill and Susan’s teenage daughter, Lauren, while their sons are played by Graham Patrick Martin as Trent, a sports and video game enthusiast, and Skyler Gisondo as Bryan, a musically talented neat freak with a pet snake. Tim Meadows and Steve Hytner co-star as Bill's best friends.

Today we will give our preview of what we think the nominations for the Emmy's will look like. The real nominations are tomorrow (Thursday) morning, so we will give you those then. But for now...here are our predictions for the main acting categories for the 59th Annual Emmy Awards:

BEST COMEDY SERIES
Desperate Housewives (ABC)
The Office (NBC)
Ugly Betty (ABC)
30 Rock (NBC)
Entourage (HBO)
MY THOUGHTS: Two and a Half Men, Weeds or Scrubs could sneak in. The winner will be Ugly Betty or The Office, I think.

BEST COMEDY ACTOR
Tony Shalhoub, Monk (USA Network)
Steve Carell, The Office (NBC)
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock (NBC)
Charlie Sheen, Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Zach Braff, Scrubs (NBC)
MY THOUGHTS: Braff could be left off again and maybe Jason Lee will be in. Eric Mabius is a long shot.

BEST COMEDY ACTRESS
America Ferrera, Ugly Betty (ABC)
Teri Hatcher, Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Mary Louise Parker, Weeds (Showtime)
Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Tina Fey, 30 Rock (NBC)
MY THOUGHTS: Marcia Cross could be in here. Look for this category to be almost totally different than last year. Ferrera will be the favorite.

BEST SUPPORTING COMEDY ACTOR
Kevin Dillion, Entourage (HBO)
John Cryer, Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Rainn Wilson, The Office (NBC)
Michael Urie, Ugly Betty (ABC)
Jeremy Piven, Entourage (HBO)
MY THOUGHTS: Tough category. HBO and NBC stars will rule this list. Urie will be the huge underdog.

BEST SUPPORTING COMEDY ACTRESS
Vanessa Williams, Ugly Betty (ABC)
Elizabeth Perkins, Weeds (Showtime)
Jamie Pressly, My Name is Earl (NBC)
Nicollette Sheridan, Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Jenna Fischer, The Office (NBC)
MY THOUGHTS: Nicollette better get nominated this year! She was great again. Other ladies who can get nods are Becki Newton, Conchata Ferrell and the great Kathryn Joosten.

BEST DRAMA SERIES
Lost (ABC)
Friday Night Lights (NBC)
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
The Sopranos (HBO)
Heroes (NBC)
MY THOUGHTS: Tough category. House could get snubbed this year. Brothers & Sisters could be in here over FNL. 24 had a bad year.

BEST DRAMA ACTOR
Hugh Laurie, House (FOX)
James Spader, Boston Legal (ABC)
James Gandolfini, The Sopranos (HBO)
Denis Leary, Rescue Me (FOX)
Michael C. Hall, Dexter (Showtime)
MY THOUGHTS: Kyle Chandler and Kiefer Sutherland would not be surprises if they get nominated. Patrick Dempsey and Matthew Fox are long shots.

BEST DRAMA ACTRESS
Edie Falco, The Sopranos (HBO)
Sally Field, Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer (TNT)
Minnie Driver, The Riches (FX)
Ellen Pompeo, Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
MY THOUGHTS: I think Pompeo will make it this year. Connie Britton, Calista Flockhart or Patricia Arquette could also sneak in.

BEST SUPPORTING DRAMA ACTOR
Terry O'Quinn, Lost (ABC)
William Shatner, Boston Legal (ABC)
Masi Oka, Heroes (NBC)
Michael Imperioli, The Sopranos (HBO)
Michael Emerson, Lost (ABC)
MY THOUGHTS: Please give the nomination and win to O'Quinn. He deserves it.

BEST SUPPORTING DRAMA ACTRESS
Rachel Griffiths, Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
Sandra Oh, Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Patricia Wettig, Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
Katherine Heigl, Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Lorraine Bracco, The Sopranos (HBO)
MY THOUGHTS: ABC will rule this category. Chandra Wilson and Elizabeth Mitchell could also be here.

Nominations are announced tomorrow morning. Come on back here and we will give you the official nominations and you can compare those to our picks!

I'm Back; TV Land September Highlights; TCA Summer Tour Cable Recap, NBC Day 1

I'm back! As Todd stated yesterday, I have returned from vacation. It was a nice 10 days off but when you love doing something, you tend to miss it. Anyway, Todd like usual did a wonderful job filling in when I was out relaxing in Jacksonville. He brought us nice bits of news and great features from skees53, Seth and of course Solomon's Weekly Rant.

TV Land released their September line-up to us early last week, but I was not home. I did check e-mail twice over there, but had way too much to go through, so I couldn't forward it to Todd in time. Anyway, to TV Land September, the schedule will indeed change a bit. There are no real new additions, but Knight Rider will return to the line-up and air Tues-Fri at 3 p.m. For those of you wondering, the contracts for mega TV Land hits Bonanza and Three's Company are expiring after August, but they have been renewed! So you will see both in September! I don't have full details on the contracts, but my Three's Company people tell me TV Land has rights "for years to come." There are minor changes here and there, some notable ones include Cosby Show off the regular line-up, but it will air in two weekly blocks (Fridays approx. 12-2am and Saturdays approx. 11pm-1am). Weekday mornings have changed a bit, M*A*S*H will also air in the mornings now from 7-8am, followed by What's Happening Now!! and The Jeffersons moving from 7-8am to 8-9am. All in the Family moves from 8-9am to 9-10am, Gunsmoke remains at 10am, followed by double shots of Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy and Green Acres from 11am-2pm. The Munsters/Addams Family hour is at 2-3pm.
Friday night movies this month include The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Crocodile Dundee II (1988), and The Longest Yard (1974).
Saturday, September 15 through Monday, September 17, starting at 8pm. 35 years and the 4077 gang is still going strong. Join us as TV Land celebrates the 35th anniversary of this groundbreaking landmark television series with 3 nights of quintessential and favorite M*A*S*H episodes as well as the highly successful reunion specials. Don't miss the pilot episode which will air 35 years to the day and time of the series premiere on September 17 at 8pm!
Having dinner with the family helps everyone reconnect at the end of the day. The family table is often a place where families catch up on their days, share stories and problems – and eat. Whether Andy Griffith ends up eating three dinners in one night or Hawkeye tries to fly in ribs from Chicago to Korea, our TV Land families are definitely sharing more than meals at their tables! CASA Family Night airs Sunday, September 23, 8pm-10pm.
For COMPLETE details of the schedule changes and details of the specials & marathons, click HERE.

Unfortunately I was on vacation when the TCA Summer Tour started on July 12. The cable portion was July 12-15. I'll do a little recap of each network's announcements today, that is notable for us at least, at the end of today's blog. But right now I will to cover the first day of NBC's summer press tour. NBC is up today and tomorrow. Then CBS the next 2 days (July 18-19), The CW follows on July 20, the 23rd Annual TCA Awards night is on July 21, Fox follows July 22-23 and ABC caps it off July 25-26.
OK, here is NBC Day 1's notes:
NBC launches its season premieres the week of September 24. The network will adjust its schedule by moving the new comedic spy thriller Chuck to Mondays at 8 p.m. ET followed by switching the popular Monday version of Deal or No Deal to Fridays 8 p.m. ET, and shifting Friday Night Lights to an earlier new time of 9 p.m. (ET) and Las Vegas to 10 p.m. (ET).
In addition, NBC will expand The Biggest Loser to 90 minutes on Tuesdays from 8-9:30 p.m. ET and will have a special two-hour premiere on Tuesday, Sept. 11. Summer's newest hit, The Singing Bee (which premiered earlier this month), will have its Fall premiere on Tuesday, September 25 in the 9:30 p.m. ET half-hour.
NBC's premiere week will also feature one-hour season premieres each of sitcoms My Name Is Earl (8-9 p.m. ET) and The Office (9-10 p.m. ET) on Thursday, September 27 and a two-hour season premiere of Las Vegas on Friday, September 28 (9-11 p.m. ET).
So, it looks like game show 1 vs. 100 is off the fall schedule for now.
NBC Fall Premiere Dates:

Tuesday, SEPTEMBER 11
The Biggest Loser (8-10 p.m.)

Monday, SEPTEMBER 17
Deal or No Deal (8-9 p.m.)

Monday, SEPTEMBER 24
Chuck (8-9 p.m.)
Heroes (9-10 p.m.)
Journeyman (10-11 p.m.)

Tuesday, SEPTEMBER 25
The Singing Bee (9:30-10 p.m.)
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (10-11 p.m.)

Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 26
Deal or No Deal Wednesday (8-9 p.m.)
Bionic Woman (9-10 p.m.)
Life (10-11 p.m.)

Thursday, SEPTEMBER 27
My Name Is Earl (8-9 p.m.)
The Office (9-10 p.m.)
ER (10-11 p.m.)

Friday, SEPTEMBER 28
Deal or No Deal Friday (8-9 p.m.)
Las Vegas (9-11 p.m.)

Thursday, OCTOBER 4
30 Rock (8-8:30 p.m.)

Friday, OCTOBER 5
Friday Night Lights (9-10 p.m.)

Thursday, OCTOBER 25
Scrubs (9:30-10 p.m.)

NBC press notes:
- Isaiah Washington (Grey's Anatomy) will play a mysterious person who is brought into the enigmatic scientific organization that is responsible for creating the bionics that turn Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan, EastEnders) into the Bionic Woman for 5 episodes at least.
- NBC has signed a series deal with legendary, Emmy Award-winning television producer Norman Lear (All in the Family) to join Reveille, Act III Productions, and Universal Media Studios in producing a one-hour dramedy focused on a mother who reenters the work force and is pitted against her late husband's ruthless partner in a money-charged battle of the sexes on Wall Street.
- NBC has renewed The Apprentice for mid-season with a creative twist. In a new celebrity version of the popular series, celebrity contestants will vie for Donald Trump's attention in what will be the highest-profile competition in the groundbreaking series' run. Celebrities will be announced at a later date.
- Jerry Seinfeld returns to NBC in a rare guest-star cameo when he appears as himself in the second-season premiere of NBC's critically acclaimed comedy 30 Rock on October 4 (Thursday, 8:30-9 p.m. ET).

As mentioned, the TCA Cable Summer Press Tour was July 12-15. On July 12 we had Lifetime, FX, Hallmark Channel, National Geographic Channel, HBO among the channels that went. July 13 was TV Guide, the MTV Networks, Travel Channel, BBC America, Discovery Networks, E!, style. On July 14 we had Disney Channel, SOAPnet, ESPN, Sundance Channel, GSN, and Showtime. The final day saw Turner Broadcasting, BET, Rainbow Networks, History Channel, NBC Universal Networks.
Among the programming Lifetime touted were the new series Side Order of Life and State of Mind, both of them debuted last night. The second season premiere of Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead will lead into the series premiere of the new reality competition show America's Psychic Challenge on Friday, October 12. Finally, 18 episodes of Army Wives have been ordered for the new season, which will premiere in the spring of 2008.
FX talked about a highly anticipated episode of nip/tuck titled "Gala Gallardo." They also talked about the new series Damages starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson.
The Hallmark Channel will create tons of TV movies with classic TV stars including Valerie Bertinelli, Dick Van Dyke, Tom Bosley, Dean Cain, Lea Thompson, Ernest Borgnine and Ernie Hudson.
HBO talked about some original series, movies, and documentaries. New original movie As You Like It premieres in August. A new drama series called Tell Me You Love Me premieres September 9. Also on that date a new documentary will premiere titled Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq. The huge night will also have the sixth season premiere of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Among the MTV Networks that went were TV Land and Spike TV. TV Land talked about its Elvis month this August as we have mentioned here many times. They also released details on a new special from EW. Oprah. Heather Locklear. Homer Simpson. Regardless of age, TV genre or life-form, there are select TV personalities whose work is timeless and whose popularity is endless due to the impact they have made through television. Entertainment Weekly and TV Land Present: The 50 Greatest TV Icons, a two-hour special premiering on TV Land on Friday, November 16 from 8-10pm ET/PT, counts down the iconic personalities who have made their indelible mark via the small screen. The list will also be revealed in the issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands that same day. TV Land Confidential launched its season season last week and TV Land will premiere Back to the Grind this Wednesday. High School Reunion launches in January.
Spike TV mentioned their new series The Kill Point launching July 22 and their unscripted crime drama series Murder coming July 31.
Nickelodeon will launch a new web cast type show for kids called iCarly and a new Chinese animated series called Ni Hao, Kai-lan coming October 22.
Salt-n-Pepa return with The Salt-n-Pepa Show on VH1 coming October 15. See VH1 follow their lives.
E! talked about their new series, Chelsea Lately, which premiered tonight. style Network will launch the first reality sitcom series, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane takes viewers inside the compelling life of Kimora Lee Simmons.
Disney Channel announced that Wizards of Waverly Place will come in October. Mark down August 17 for the premiere of the new movie High School Musical 2. A High School Musical Documentary is also in the works for the fall. SOAPnet talked about General Hospital: Night Shift, which premiered Thursday and is SOAPnet's first one-hour original scripted drama.
A team of award-winning ESPN correspondents will serve as the reporters of a new series called ESPN Reporters coming October 16. Signed on are Tom Farrey, Rachel Nichols, Lisa Salters, Jeremy Schaap and Michael Smith.
GSN announced details of the new game show Without Prejudice? coming tomorrow. Also, the new game show Grand Slam, hosted by Ken Jennings! It launches August 4. That's The Question a half-hour series that combines word scrambles with a test of world history and pop culture trivia knowledge, returns for a second season on Sept. 10.
Showtime will launch the new season of Weeds in August. One of the most buzzed-about shows on television, Weeds will continue to grow and blossom with inspired new storylines and notable guest starts. The series follows a suburban mother (Mary-Louise Parker) who deals marijuana in order to make ends meet after her husband dies unexpectedly. Brotherhood and Dexter will return for new seasons this fall. A new sitcom called The United States of Tara has been greenlighted. The half-hour single camera comedy pilot revolves around a mother who has multiple personality syndrome.
Court TV announced details for The Star Jones Show coming Aug. 20. CourtTV will be rebranded truTV on January 1. TBS and TNT continued to talk about its upcoming originals The Bill Engvall Show (July 17 on TBS), Saving Grace (July 23 on TNT) and The Company (Aug. 5 on TNT).
BET has put together two of the funniest guys in the business to create an animated sketch comedy show for BET. Orlando Jones and Ali LeRoi have teamed up to create BUFU, in the tradition of Saturday Night Live and SCTV.
USA Network announced details about a new movie title In Plain Sight. Original episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent will air Thursdays at 10pm on USA starting Oct. 4. Sci-Fi Channel will create a new animated series called Flash Gordon coming Aug. 10. Bravo's TelevisionWithoutPity.com will create a Fantasy TV game. The game will allow players to create, name and program their own fantasy television networks using both new fall shows and returning series from the five broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CW).

Nick at Nite July Sees Summer Marathons; Larroquette Heads Back to Court

Nick at Nite has announced its July plans and looks like they will be airing marathons. Stick with Nick at Nite all week long this summer to catch over 100 episodes of your favorite shows: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Roseanne, The Cosby Show and Full House!
These "wall to wall marathons" start at 9:30pm Mon-Thurs & Sun and at 10:30pm on Fri & Sat. Marathons end every night at 5am with the rotating trio of Designing Women, Hi-Jinks and Murphy Brown at 5am followed by Full House at 5:30am. AFV will still kick-off each night, leading into the marathons.
These marathons are probably going to continue in August as well. The marathons start June 25 with Fresh Prince week, then the week of July 2 it is more Fresh Prince, Roseanne gets the week of July 9, Full House gets week of July 16, Cosby Show gets week of July 23, and more Fresh Prince week of July 30.
For more details and to discuss this piece of news, click HERE.

Emmy Award-winning actor and sitcom legend John Larroquette (Night Court) is set to join the cast of ABC's Boston Legal next season as a senior partner from the New York offices of Crane Poole & Schmidt who transfers to the Boston office. The show will return for a fourth season on ABC next season.

Nick at Nite June Highlights; MyNetwork TV Upfront

Nick at Nite has finally released its plans for June. No regular changes will be made...at least not yet, of course. They will have a Father's Day marathon on Father's Day evening (June 18) from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. featuring TV dads such as Dr. Cliff Huxtable and Danny Tanner. Shows featured are The Cosby Show, Full House, Fresh Prince, Roseanne and even America's Funniest Home Videos.
And if you haven't had enough Fresh Prince yet, then think again because Nick at Nite will showcase another "wall to wall" marathon the week of June 25-July 1, featuring nothing but Fresh Prince from 9:30pm-5am. That is over 100 episodes! Nick at Nite will also premiere the classic movie Grease in early July. More details on that soon, but for now head on over to the June highlights thread to read more and to discuss your thoughts.

MyNetwork TV had their upfront (I'm serious), and they announced their fall schedule. They will be getting rid of their low rated dramas and replacing them with cheap reality series, which have faired much better for them. They will also bring back the specials they have produced along with more movies on Thursdays and Fridays, which also have done pretty well for them. IFL Battleground will return as well on Mondays. To see their line-up for the fall, click HERE. On that same link, on the second post in that thread, I have my opinions on what MyNetwork TV should do. I say ditch the reality (or at least make them once a week at most), and bring back classic programming that works. How about encores of The Simpsons, which is Fox owned or maybe one of the best shows on Fox ever in Married...with Children. They could even bring back classic 20th TV programming like The X-Files, Ally McBeal, 21 Jump Street, Doogie Howser, Mr. Belvedere, Small Wonder, the list goes on and on. They would do so much better. And why Fox shows, because MyNetwork TV is owned by Fox. corp. You can discuss your thoughts on what I think on that same thread. I would like to hear your thoughts!

SitcomsOnline.com 2007-08 Upfront Preview: NBC; TV Land June Change

For NBC it will be all about starting the night off with a reality/game show to set up the dramas. NBC's Thursday comedy block is not what it used to be, but it has a cult audience and maybe another one of those shows will be launched this fall. NBC is looking for a drama hit as some of the older series are running out of gas.
Here is the SitcomsOnline.com NBC 2007-08 preview:

New Series Already Picked-Up: None.
New Series We Think That Are Almost Good To Go: Lipstick Jungle (drama), Journeyman (drama), Fort Pit (drama), and The I.T. Crowd (sitcom).
New Series Perhaps Picked-Up for Mid-Season: The Mastersons of Manhattan (sitcom), Life (drama), and Bionic Woman (drama)

OUR FALL 2007 PREDICTION:

Sundays
7:00PM Football Night in America
8:00PM Sunday Night Football

Mondays
8:00PM Deal or No Deal
9:00PM Heroes
10:00PM Journeyman (NEW)

Tuesdays
8:00PM 1 vs. 100
9:00PM Fort Pit (NEW)
10:00PM Law & Order: SVU

Wednesdays
8:00PM Thank God You're Here
9:00PM Medium
10:00PM Lipstick Jungle (NEW)

Thursdays
8:00PM My Name is Earl
8:30PM The I.T. Crowd (NEW)
9:00PM The Office
9:30PM 30 Rock
10:00PM ER

Fridays
8:00PM Deal or No Deal
9:00PM Friday Night Lights
10:00PM Las Vegas

Saturdays
8:00PM Dateline NBC
9:00PM Drama Repeats
10:00PM Drama Repeats

Comments: So what about Crossing Jordan, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order? I say they will be benched until January after the NFL ends and they will bring them to Sundays for a repeat free season...but maybe one will be a goner. The Apprentice might not be back until next winter either...I wish that would just die already. The Black Donnellys, Studio 60, Kidnapped, Identity, Raines, 20 Good Years, Andy Barker, and Real Wedding Crashers are all (or will be) canceled or ended. I really think NBC will only go with one comedy night once again, as we saw what happened to Wednesdays 8-9pm last year. Scrubs is probably gone from NBC, and on the way to ABC for next winter. There is a good chance that The Office will be an anchor show on Thursdays at 9, but I don't think it will do as well as it did at 8:30, but they have to move it to 9pm to try and launch another similar sitcom, as 30 Rock is not a strong show to anchor an hour. So NBC will be multi-camera sitcom-less in the fall, but I have them picking up The Mastersons of Manhattan for mid-season. Life and Bionic Woman could get orders for mid-season. Maybe another drama called Chuck could get in. NBC only has a total of eight drama projects, so that means maybe 1/2 or more could get picked up. NBC had a dismal season once again, but Heroes was a bright spot, as the high power project Studio 60 was a bust. Friday Night Lights was not a good either, but I see them bringing it back to try again. They can use Deal or No Deal on Fridays again as Sundays will be Football, and have 1 vs. 100 on another night, say Tuesday. Will NBC revamp the schedule they released at upfront once again after releasing it, like it did last year? We shall see.

Remember, next Monday (May 14) is the actual date when we will find out NBC's plans for the 2007-08 season. So, come on back next Monday and we will let you know the details and you can see how much we were right (or wrong). Stay tuned tomorrow for a preview on ABC's upfront.

TV Land has announced that it has changed its late night schedule starting for June. Starting June 4, each weeknight starting at 10pm will have three nightly mini-marathons lasting until 4:30am. Each marathon will consist of four episodes. Mondays will be The Cosby Show, Three's Company & Good Times; Tuesdays will be M*A*S*H, Sanford & Son, & The Jeffersons; Wednesdays will be Sanford & Son, M*A*S*H, & All in the Family; Thursdays will be The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy & Leave it to Beaver; and Fridays will be the Friday Movie, M*A*S*H & Star Trek. Other changes include all Andy Griffith Saturday from 9pm-1:10am with a reairing on Sundays from 7-10pm. So, this means the current 10pm-4:30am line-up will only be on Sundays. The only other change is at 4:30am everynight with The Jeffersons taking over for Sanford & Son. There are no other changes in the daytime and will remain the same as it is now.
What's Happening Now!!, which is airing weekdays at 7am, will get more new episodes starting May 29, but we will let you know when we learn more.
For now click HERE for the list of changes for this nightly marathon changes.

We shall be back with more news, if any.

Schedule Change For ION and Yet More Changes for Nick at Nite; AmericanLife May Highlights

Yesterday we brought you the ION upfront presentation release. We still don't have any details if more new shows like Perfect Strangers and A-Team are coming but I think June or July look good for new shows. Yesterday we did mention a minor change for Saturdays at 6pm with Diagnosis Murder coming to that slot starting May 26, as Saturdays will add an extra hour now. Today ION released a last week of May change. For at least May 28-31, The Wonder Years will move from 10 & 10:30 to 9 & 9:30pm, replacing Diagnosis Murder. Replacing Wonder Years at 10 is Calvin Ayre Wild Card Poker. Yes, weird...it might be just for that week. Or maybe Calvin Ayre Wild Card Poker is just a special week stunt holding the slot for a new show in June? We'll find out soon when ION releases its June line-up! Stay tuned! For now view the changes and discuss them here.

As for Nick at Nite, yes more changes to the schedule! Now they have decided they will not encore AFV three-hours later. So, that means Sun-Thurs 12am and Fri-Sat 1am is no more. Cosby Show has been reinstated to Sun-Thurs 12am and now the nightly marathons will be from 1-5am, which means Growing Pains is totally gone! Let's hope ION bring it back soon! Another change is Roseanne and Fresh Prince switching hours. This all takes in effect on Monday (May 7). Click here to view these changes and to discuss this.

AmericanLife TV Network, the only independent network devoted to the Baby Boomer generation, celebrates spring with a line-up of star-studded programming, including Jodi Foster on Kung Fu, John Travolta on Welcome Back, Kotter and Don Rickles on I Spy. It's going to be a star studded May! Highlights for the month of May include:

Special Kung Fu episodes:
Thursday, May 3
* Kung Fu (8-9 p.m. ET/PT): an 11-year-old Jodi Foster plays the title role of “Althea” in this tale of human integrity and healing.

Thursday. May 31
* Kung Fu (8-9 p.m. ET/PT): Barney Miller and Sanford & Son regular Gregory Sierra guests with Moses Gunn.

Special 77 Sunset Strip episodes:
Monday, May 7
* 77 Sunset Strip (9-10 p.m. ET/PT): Silent screen star Doris Kenyon made her last dramatic appearance playing an aging silent screen star, in this first-season episode, “All Our Yesterdays.” The show, also featuring fellow silent star Francis X. Bushman, captured a 1959 Directors Guild of America Award for Richard L. Bare, who later directed 168 consecutive episodes of Green Acres.

Monday, May 28
* 77 Sunset Strip (9-10 p.m. ET/PT): George Tobias, best known for playing neighbor Abner Kravitz on Bewitched, guests on tonight’s episode.

Comedies dominate Saturday and Sunday evenings on AmericanLife TV Network, featuring such classic sitcoms as The Color Honeymooners (Saturday 8 p.m. ET/PT), Welcome Back, Kotter (Saturday 10:30 p.m. ET/PT) and Mayberry RFD (Sunday 8:30 p.m. ET/PT).

Saturday, May 12
* The Color Honeymooners (8 p.m. ET): In a wacky episode, Ralph Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason, meets Art Carney (playing himself), while Ed Norton, played by Art Carney, meets Jackie Gleason (playing himself).
* Welcome Back, Kotter (Saturday 10:30 p.m. ET/PT): John Travolta returned for the fourth and final two-part season premiere, playing his recurring role of Vinnie Barbarino. Part two airs on Saturday, May 19.

Sunday, May 20
* Mayberry RFD (8:30-9 p.m. ET/PT): See how Goober (George Lindsey) and other Mayberry folk deal with “Sensitivity Training” as an encounter group visits the Andy Griffith Show spinoff.

Saturday, May 26
* Our Gang Comedies (5-5:30 p.m. ET): In one of today’s two shorts, “Aladdin’s Lantern,” Buckwheat and Porky provide an off-key rendition of the song “Strolling Through the Park One Day.”

Sunday, May 27
* The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (8-8:30 p.m. ET/PT): Guest is Vic Tayback, later to achieve cult status as diner owner Mel on the Alice sitcom.

Secret Agents lurk Wednesdays on AmericanLife TV, with such series as I Spy (8-9 p.m. ET/PT) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (9-10 p.m. ET/PT).

I Spy (8-9 p.m. ET/PT):
* May 9: More than a decade before Fantasy Island, Ricardo Montalban guest stars in this episode.
* May 16: Talk about typecasting! Don Rickles plays an obnoxious American comic on a “Night Train to Madrid .”
* May 23: Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers, The Hollywood Squares, Underdog) guests as a government file clerk wooed by a beautiful secret agent in “Casanova from Canarsie.”
* May 30: In his second acting role, former football star Jim Brown guests on “Cops and Robbers.”

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (10-11 p.m. ET/PT):
* May 16: Pernell Roberts, in his first role after leaving Bonanza, guests in “The Little John Doe Affair.”
* May 30: Future sitcom icon Tom Bosley (Happy Days) and former movie star Raymond Massey appear together in “The Faustus Affair.”

More on This Week's 'Cosby' Marathon; Sony Continues to Release New Sitcom DVDs

Due to popular demand, people wanted to know what night each of the Cosby Show kids will be hosting in the Huxta-palooza marathon we announced last week. Lisa Bonet (Denise Huxtable) starts the event with "Denise Monday," which runs from 9 p.m. to midnight and encores immediately. Then it is "Rudy Tuesday" (mocking the restaurant Ruby Tuesday?) with Keisha Knight Pulliam (Rudy Huxtable) doing the honors from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. and encores immediately. "Vanessa Vednesday" lets Tempestt Bledsoe (Vanessa Huxtable) take center stage from 9 p.m. to midnight with an encore immediately following until 3 a.m. "Theo Thursday," is a showcase for Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable) from 9 p.m. to midnight with an encore immediately following. "Sondra Friday" lets Sabrina Le Beauf (Sondra) share her memories from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
And as we mentioned last week, the fun doesn't end there. The marathon will share never-before-seen interviews with the actors. Saturday and Sunday the gang all come together for the weekend.
"Saturday Night Dance Party" gathers the five episodes with the best dancing; they screen from 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. And "Guest-Star Sunday" on April 29, the actors recall their five favorite episodes with guest stars. Those installments will screen from 9 to 11:30 p.m. It should be a fun week with nice treats!

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has been pretty good in 2007 with new sitcom DVDs. We have gotten first season sets of Maude, One Day at a Time, Mary Hartman, and both What's Happening Now!! and Silver Spoons are coming in June. They are pretty slow to release second seasons or subsequent seasons still, though. But more new DVDs are on the way in July with the '80s classic Benson (July 24)! Bewitched returns with its fifth season DVD on July 10 and the police drama The Rookies comes to DVD for the first time on July 17.
They have been pretty quick with shows like Seinfeld, The Facts of Life Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and have finished series such as Sanford & Son, Good Times, Soap, and What's Happening!! but there are some series which they are so slow on such as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Partridge Family, The Nanny, and Diff'rent Strokes. And then there are the series that they seemed to have abandoned after just one set, such as 227, Who's the Boss?, Barney Miller, and Archie Bunker's Place. Let's hope the new sets of 2007 do not go that route.

It has been a good 2007 for new Sony sets, and let's hope we get some more as well in addition to the first sets. I personally am hoping for: Dennis the Menace, Father Knows Best, My Two Dads, Square Pegs and Designing Women. Most of my favorites came in 2007 or are coming (What's Happening Now!!, Silver Spoons, Benson, One Day at a Time), so I'm pumped! And as for series spin-offs, cross-over series, follow-up series, and shows like that, I'd like to see these come to DVD: Checking In (Jeffersons spin-off), Fernwood2Night (Mary Hartman spin-off), Fish (Barney Miller spin-off), Gloria (Archie Bunker's Place spin-off), Grady (Sanford & Son spin-off), Hello Larry (Diff'rent Strokes cross-over series), One in a Million (What's Happening!!'s Shirley Hemphill starred), Sanford (new show starring Redd Foxx from Sanford & Son), Sanford Arms (Sanford & Son spin-off). Some of those are long shots.
And of course it wouldn't hurt to get more sets of the shows they have already released...like Diff'rent Strokes Season 3!

'Cosby Show' Kids to Host Nick at Nite Marathon; CBS Summer Update

Nick at Nite will not make last second changes to its weekend line-up this week (at least not yet). Well, except the Murphy Brown Saturday night (early Sunday morning) airing at 5:30am has been replaced by Full House for this week. In addition, a rebroadcast of the TV Land Awards will air Sunday from 11pm-12:30am, but we knew that. A last minute Cosby Show stunt has been booked for all of next week. Nick at Nite invites viewers to spend a week with their favorite television family on Huxta-palooza, a week-long marathon hosted by the Huxtable children as they present their favorite episodes and moments from The Cosby Show. From Monday, April 23 – Sunday, April 29, actors Keisha Knight-Pulliam, Malcom Jamaal Warner, Tempestt Bledsoe, Lisa Bonet, and Sabrina Le Beauf will each host their own night featuring their favorite six episodes. Huxta-palooza will feature never-before-seen interviews with the Cosby kids as the stars comment on their characters’ greatest meltdowns, triumphs, best fashion moments and more.
Airs Sun-Thurs from 9-3am and Fri-Sat from 10pm-4am. Full House will air in the 3am hour, Growing Pains in the 4am hour, a rotation of Designing Women/Murphy Brown in the 5am half-hour and Full House at 5:30am. That is for next week ONLY.

CBS has announced premiere dates for two summer series. Pirate Master, the next epic adventure reality series from Emmy Award-winning producer Mark Burnett, will premiere Thursday, May 31 from 8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT on CBS.
Pirate Master will send 16 modern-day pirates on a high seas adventure where they will live as buccaneers and travel around the Caribbean island of Dominica in search of hidden treasure that will total $1 million. Over the course of 33 days, these pirates will live aboard a massive 179 foot, square-rigged barque which carries 12,500 square feet of sail.
Creature Comforts, the American version of the hit British television series will premiere Monday, June 4 from 8:00-8:30 PM, ET/PT on CBS. Based on the original Academy Award-winning short film of the same name created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations, Ltd., the half-hour stop-motion animated series employs a unique format that culls excerpts from real person interviews and places them in the mouths of a wide variety of animated animals to produce humorous, charming and insightful commentaries on everyday life.

TV Land Changes May 2007 Schedule; Nick at Nite Schedules AFV for May

TV Land has edited their May line-up and mostly everything is moving to new timeslots. The new schedule will start on April 30 and will bring back All in the Family and The Cosby Show to regular airings, and also What's Happening Now!! will finally air as a regular (weekdays at 7am). Among the changes include a sitcom block from 7-9am with What's Happening Now!!, Sanford & Son, All in the Family and The Jeffersons. A note on What's Happening Now!!, they seem to be airing the 12 episodes that they have already aired in a marathon. So once the 12 episodes finish, they start again with the same 12. I hope they decide to air every episode...maybe this is a test. Gunsmoke has been removed from the weekday line-up, but will still air on the weekends. Sunday's encores will however air Monday mornings. The other notable changes include: Andy Griffith Show's four airings are all in early evening now at 5-6pm and 7-8pm, rather than 8-9pm and 1-2am. Good Times coming back in prime-time (8-9pm Mon-Thurs, 9-10pm Fri-Sun). Instead of M*A*S*H from 9-10pm and 12-1am, TV Land has decided to air a M*A*S*H block from 10pm-12am, so there is no breaks. Thus, Sanford & Son which was at 10-11pm will slide to 9-10pm and Three's Company was 11p-12a will move to 12-1am. Late nights will have encores and also Cosby Show from 2-3am. Star Trek has been cut to just 4 times a week in its 5a and 6a slots. See the full schedule starting April 30 by clicking HERE.

As we reported already, the Bob Saget years of America's Funniest Home Videos is coming to Nick at Nite on April 30. The timeslot originally was weeknights at 8:30pm. That has been changed to Sun-Thurs at 9pm and Fri-Sat at 10pm, replacing one episode of Full House each day. Full House will still air immediately following AFV.
The first week though, April 30-May 6, you can catch the show back-to-back all week-long (Sun-Thurs 9-10pm and Fri-Sat 10-11pm) to celebrate the show joining the network.

'Fresh Prince' Comes to TBS in May, 'Sister, Sister' to WGN in the Fall; TV Land Awards Preview, Includes Spoof 'Ugly Betty...White'

If you think airing on Viacom stations Nick at Nite and The N were not enough, now starting May 1 you can catch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on TBS in the daytime. TBS will bring back the show and share the show with Nick at Nite/The N. TBS will air it weekdays at 2 & 2:30 p.m. ET starting May 1.
This means nearly all of Nick at Nite's shows are shared with other cable networks (Full House - ABC Family, Cosby Show - TBS/WGN, Roseanne - Oxygen). Even the shows that are not airing much like A Different World and Mad About You are shared (both with Oxygen). Murphy Brown and Designing Women are the only Nick at Nite shows that are not shared with another cable network (well, Growing Pains was on ION, but ION is really a broadcast channel, so it technically isn't shared).

Beginning this fall, Sister, Sister will join Superstation WGN. All six seasons of the half-hour comedy have been acquired for a three-year run.
It will air back-to-back episodes this fall on weekdays beginning at 5pm ET. Sister, Sister will be paired with The Cosby Show, leading into a comedy block of Funniest Pets & People, and America's Funniest Videos. No word yet on what will become of Moesha, but it will most likely air before Cosby Show.
Additionally, an episode of Sister, Sister is scheduled to air on Saturdays along with Even Stevens and Lizzie McGuire, which also appeal to young viewers.

The 5th TV Land Awards will premiere on April 22, but the awards show taped this past Saturday. It looks like it will be a fun-fest. Kelly Ripa was the host and I hear she did great. She might be the best host since the first awards host, which was the late John Ritter. It was an unforgettable evening as celebrities from television, music and film bestowed special tribute awards tonight to some of television's most iconic series and stars at the fifth annual TV Land Awards. The honorees included Lucille Ball (Legacy of Laughter Award), The Brady Bunch (Pop Culture Award), Roots (Anniversary Award), Hee Haw (Entertainer Award), Taxi (Medallion Award) and Heroes (Future Classic Award).
Some highlights:
Legendary actress and comedienne Carol Burnett and Emmy Award-winning actress Kirstie Alley presented Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. with the Legacy of Laughter Award in honor of their mother, Lucille Ball. Actresses Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips of One Day at a Time presented the cast of The Brady Bunch with the Pop Culture Award. Grammy Award-winning country superstar Willie Nelson performed hits "On The Road Again" and "City of New Orleans" in a tribute to Hee Haw. Academy Award-winning actors Forest Whitaker and Morgan Freeman presented the cast of Roots with the Anniversary Award celebrating the epic 30th Anniversary. The cast of Taxi -- Danny DeVito, Jeff Conaway, Tony Danza, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Randall Carver and creator James L. Brooks -- were presented with The Medallion Award by actress Sharon Stone. Actor Luke Wilson presented Heroes creator and executive producer Tim Kring with this year's Future Classic Award along with executive producers Dennis Hammer and Allan Arkush and cast members Masi Oka, Leonard Roberts, Noah Gray-Cabey, Zachary Quinto, Santiago Cabrera and Jack Coleman.
Other memorable moments included:
A hilarious videotaped intro where host Kelly Ripa reenacted the show opens to several memorable sitcoms including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, and Laverne & Shirley. The package ended with Kelly flying above the live audience and making her entrance as "Sister Bertrille" from The Flying Nun.
TV's most beloved TV stars spoofed one of television's most popular shows, Ugly Betty, in a parody entitled Ugly Betty - White. The parody starred Betty White with cameos by Erik Estrada, Joan Collins, George Hamilton, Charo and Peter Scolari.
And a performance at the end of the show by The Brady Bunch's "The Silver Platters," as Maureen McCormick and Barry Williams were joined by host Kelly Ripa -- singing the unforgettable songs "Keep On" and "It's A Sunshine Day."
For more highlights, click HERE. And don't forget to watch the awards on TV Land on Sunday, April 22 at 9 p.m. ET/PT