[Televisionary]

Could the fall season already have claimed its first victim? Sure appears that way over at FOX. FOX has announced that it has benched reality series Nashville, effective immediately, and will instead air repeats of new drama K-Ville in its Fridays at 9 pm timeslot for the next two weeks. After that, the broadcaster will fill the slot with Major League Baseball on October 12th and the launch of reality series The Next Great American Band on October 19th. According to The Futon Critic , FOX did not confirm that the series bad been canceled and would instead "be rescheduled at a later date." Which, come on, has become shorthand for don't hold your breath. But given the low numbers for viewership which Nashville has engendered in its few outings, I don't think anyone will be missing this botched series.

I guess fans of The Nine are going to have to wait for quite some time to find out what exactly happened in that bank. ABC has announced that it has pulled struggling freshman series The Nine from its schedule, effective immediately. The news comes as the networks complete November sweeps and The Nine has taken an even further ratings hit since Lost disappeared off of ABC's fall schedule a few weeks back. Despite airing promos for this week's installment of The Nine after Wednesday's episode, ABC has opted to replace the hostage drama with 20/20 this week. Next week, the timeslot will be filled with a new Wednesday edition of Primetime . According to ABC, The Nine will return later in the season (ostensibly to burn off the remainder of its original 13-episode order), but seeing is believing as the network said the same thing about fellow frosher Six Degrees . In the meantime, the few fans of The Nine better hope that the producers tied up any loose ends in those 13 ...

Looks like maybe you can launch a series on Fridays, after all. That is, if you intend to move it to a better timeslot once one opens up. ABC has announced that it will move drama Men in Trees from its Friday night timeslot (one of the very worst berths in all of Television Land) to the plum post- Grey's Anatomy timeslot on Thursdays at 10 pm, beginning November 30th. And a further vote of confidence in the drama, ABC has ordered the back nine episodes of Men in Trees , bumping the series to a full 22-episode season in the process. It's the first full season pickup for a freshman series for Warner Bros. TV, the studio behind Men in Trees, and the third pickup for ABC , which previously announced it had ordered full seasons of Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters . (ABC is still weighing pickups on fellow freshman series The Nine and Help Me Help You .) So what does that mean for the current holder of the post- Grey's Anatomy timeslot, the struggling drama Six Degree...

The sly fox is beginning to look a little, well, shifty. FOX has put freshman comedy Happy Hour on hiatus until after it restarts its schedule following baseball during the month of October. New episodes of the comedy series (named "First to Fall" by Cynopsis) that no one has heard of, much less is watching, will return to the schedule on November 2nd. Filling in for the frosh laugher are repeats of fellow newbie comedy series 'Til Death on September 28th and October 1st. Also benched: dramas Justice (whose October 4th slot will be filled with a repeat of House ) and Standoff , whose slot next week will be filled with... something else. As for me, I go on watching television without noticing that any of the above had ever happened.