Wednesday, March 18, 2009

T Dog's Groovy Grab Bag

- CBS has re-upped Warner Bros.-produced Two and a Half Men for three more seasons and The Big Bang Theory for two. CBS and Warner Bros. also settled a pending lawsuit (so I guess CBS can go ahead and cancel Cold Case and Without A Trace...)

- Is it a good sign when a network shaves twenty minutes off your premiere episode? In an unusual move, Fox announced the premiere of Osbournes: Reloaded on March 31 has been trimmed to 40 minutes, with American Idol expanded to 80 minutes.

Osbournes: Reloaded is an attempt to bring back the variety show and the program features the wild reality-TV family in comedy sketches and man-on-the-street interviews, with audience-participation games and musical acts (and we all know how well it worked for Rosie...)

Fox plans to air the series as specials. Translation: When the show premieres on March 31, it's likely we'll never see it again. This show was a good idea... in 2003. Maybe Fox should trim some more minutes off Osbournes:Reloaded... like the remaining 40.

- Weigel Broadcasting has cut loose production manager Randy King, who was hired a year ago to oversee development of local programming at the company's television outlets. The move is not related to the economic slowdown, which has claimed a lot of jobs in the media industry over the last few months.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it was a good idea for CBS to renew both "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory," which are two of TV's funniest sitcoms. I am hoping CBS decides to renew "Cold Case" and "Without a Trace" as well since both are highly rated shows. I believe "Without a Trace" has given CBS its best performance in the Tuesday at 9 p.m. timeslot that CBS has had in as many years. Another suggestion might be for CBS to renew "Cold Case" and "Without a Trace" but move them to the CW Sunday nights. Since CBS has so many popular shows and may want to open up slots for new shows in the fall, CBS should take some of its shows and put them on sister network the CW's Sunday night. CBS could program the entire five hour block on the CW Sunday afternoon/evening. It makes sense to me! Not only would the CW probably benefit, but CBS would still have these programs available to them if needed to plug in the CBS schedule down the road.

Finally, I am very disappointed at WBBM-TV Channel 2. They ran their syndicated crime shows after college basketball late night Saturday night in their entirety except for the second-part episode of "Without a Trace." For whatever reason, Channel 2 showed only the final half hour of that two-part conclusion--a huge disservice to fans who stayed up late to watch the show! Shame on Channel 2!!!