ABC Renews ‘Dancing’, Four More Realities
Posted on February 29, 2008
Reality shows Dancing with the Stars, Supernanny, Wife Swap, Extreme Makeover: Home Addition, and America’s Funniest Home Videos have been renewed for next season by ABC.
This comes after the network gave early pickups to Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Brothers and Sisters, Pushing Daisies, Private Practice, Samantha Who?, and Dirty Sexy Money earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the PaleyFest has added Bones, Moonlight, and Kyle XY to their line-up, with their new leg starting on March 28. Tickets will be available on March 14.
ABC Reveals Post-Strike Schedule
Posted on February 20, 2008
After Fox unveiled its post-strike schedule earlier today, ABC decided to follow suit and outline its spring schedule for the rest of this season. On April 24, Grey’s Anatomy returns to its familiar Thursday 9PM timeslot with Ugly Betty as its lead-in, while Lost is set to move one hour later to 10PM. All three shows have five original episodes planned. The network hasn’t decided when to air the remaining episodes Eli Stone, which currently holds the 10PM timeslot and averages a 3.3 rating.
Away from Thursdays, Desperate Housewives is back on April 13 with five fresh episodes, including a two-hour finale, while Brothers and Sisters comes back the following week with four. Dates for Samantha Who? (April 7) and Boston Legal (April 8) were also announced, both with six fresh episodes planned. ABC also confirmed that freshmen series Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, and Dirty Sexy Money will all be relaunched in the fall.
There was no word on whether Men in Trees or Women’s Murder Club will return or not.
Meanwhile, CBS has announced that How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, due back on March 17, will swap timeslots. Big Bang has consistently beaten Mother in the ratings this season and will now take the 8PM timeslot with Mother on half an hour later.
WGA Strike Over
Posted on February 13, 2008
After fourteen long and hard weeks, WGA members have voted to end the strike that started all the way back in November 5, with a resounding 92.5% for it (some 3,500 for and 283 against). This vote comes after the WGA announced that they had a tentative deal with the AMPTP over the weekend. The deal is set to be ratified within the next ten to twelve days.
“The strike is over”, said WGA West president Patric Verrone in an LA press conference. “Our membership has voted and writers can go back to work. This was not a strike we wanted but one we had to conduct in order to win jurisdiction and establish appropriate residuals for writing in new media and on the Internet.”
The deal will see specific residual rates in new media for the writers. They are set to receive 0.36% for the first 100,000 television show downloads for Internet sales, and 0.7% afterwards. And for episodes streamed on an ad-supported website, 2% of residuals will go towards the writers after the initial streaming window is closed.
Now that writers are going back to work as early as today, what does that mean for your favourite shows? Well, rejoice if you’re a Lost fan. Producer Carlton Cuse told Variety, “We’ll have to compress some of the storytelling we planned for this season, and that may not be a bad thing. Damon and I feel like we know how we can finish it off and still make it a really, really great story.” An extra five episodes are likely to be filmed, ending the fourth season with thirteen. Not too shabby.
Most of the veteran shows are set to be going back into production too, including the CSIs, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, House, Smallville, and Supernatural with an estimated four to six episodes for each. Heroes, however, will wait until the fall to launch its third volume entitled ”Villains”. Prison Break’s future has not yet been determined, while the seventh season of 24 looks like it’ll be launching on January 2009. Half-hour comedies like 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother have the advantage of being able to shoot potentially up to nine or ten episodes before the season ends.
A lot of the freshman programs, though, will be saved for a relaunch in the fall, Pushing Daisies (whose renewal for the second season was announced last week by ABC), Dirty Sexy Money, and Chuck being the main ones. Gossip Girl and half-hour long The Big Bang Theory are the two confirmed exceptions right now. Bionic Woman, Big Shots, and Journeyman amongst a few others aren’t expected to shoot any new episodes ever. In one word, “axed”.
With the time it takes to write, film, and produce, post-strike episodes will probably air during April and May — in time for the May sweeps.
Photo by Brad Herman