Skip to main content

Dancing with the Upfronts: CBS Axes Seven Series, CW Renews Two, Kills Melrose Place, Orders Nikita and Hellcats

A day ahead of its official upfront presentation, CBS announced that it had canceled seven series, including The New Adventures of Old Christine, Ghost Whisperer, Cold Case, Miami Medical, NUMB3RS, Gary Unmarried and Accidentally on Purpose and had issued reprieves for Medium and Rules of Engagement.

CBS is expected to announce orders for new dramas Hawaii Five-O, Defenders, and Blue Blood, comedies Bleep My Dad Says and Mike & Molly, and the untitled Criminal Minds spinoff.

It's still possible that the Warner Bros. Television-produced Old Christine could turn up on ABC as Steve McPherson has previously indicated his desire to acquire the Julia Louis-Dreyfus-led comedy should CBS opt not to renew it... and the same fate could hold true for supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer, which could be saved by ABC as well.

Charlie Sheen, meanwhile, has successfully concluded a contract renegotiation that will see him return to CBS' Two and a Half Men for two additional seasons. "To put a fitting end on the two and one-half months of whirlwind speculation, I'm looking forward to returning to my CBS home on Monday nights," said Sheen via a statement released by his publicist. "I want to thank (CBS Corp. president and CEO) Les Moonves for his support."

Over at the CW, the netlet announced that the axe had fallen on Melrose Place, finally ending months of certainty that the DOA series would be cancelled. However, the CW team did opt to renew on-the-bubble series Life Unexpected and One Tree Hill.

The netlet is expected to pickup two new dramas for next season: espionage actioner Nikita from Warner Bros. Television and college drama Hellcats, from CBS Television Studios and WBTV.

CBS will announce its fall schedule tomorrow, with the CW wrapping up upfronts week on Thursday.
Labels:

Comments

The Flaming Nose TV Blog said…
Let's hope that somebody does pick up "The New Adventures of Old Christine" -- this is a terrific old-style comedy with much solid physical comedy and a terrific cast. We hate to see a talented comedienne like Julia Louis-Dreyfus lose her showcase. She and Tina Fey are the funniest women on television.

Biggest mistake CBS made with TNAoOC -- it doesn't belong at 8pm.
5/18/2010
cory said…
I hope that ABC will pick up both Old Christine and Ghost Whisperer. And I hope GW gets a fall slot and not a half season.
5/18/2010
steve paris said…
A reprieve for Rules of Engagement?

Why can't this show get any love? The most recent ratings show it doing better than HIMYM and I believe it outperforms that show regularly, despite getting no promotion.
5/19/2010
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.
253 comments
Continue reading full story...

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...
135 comments
Continue reading full story...

See You in Another Life: Thoughts on The Series Finale of Lost

"No one can tell you why you're here." I'm of two minds (and two hearts) about the two-and-a-half hour series finale of Lost ("The End"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, which brought a finality to the story of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 and the characters with which we've spent six years. At its heart, Lost has been about the two bookends of the human existence, birth and death, and the choices we make in between. Do we choose to live together or die alone? Can we let go of our past traumas to become better people? When we have nothing else left to give, can we make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good? In that sense, the series finale of Lost brought to a close the stories of the crash survivors and those who joined them among the wreckage over the course of more than 100 days on the island (and their return), offering up a coda to their lives and their deaths, a sort of purgatory for found, r...
82 comments
Continue reading full story...