"Ugly Betty" Gets Prettier Timeslot

It looks like Ugly Betty just got prettier... at least to its network.

According to Variety, ABC has shifted its upcoming telenovela adaptation Ugly Betty to the more high-profile timeslot of Thursdays at 8 pm. (Series was originally slated for Friday nights.) The move comes as Ugly Betty, which stars Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' America Ferrara as a, well, ugly girl in the fashion industry, drew positive buzz last month at the TCA. The series will premiere on September 28th.

With Betty moving to Thursdays, ABC has decided to delay the launch of freshmen comedies Big Day and Notes from the Underbelly until "later in the fall." Those series will air on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings, once the next season of Dancing with the Stars has wrapped.

But will Ugly Betty be match for NBC's newly relocated comedy duo, My Name is Earl and The Office? Something tells me this Betty is no match for the combined forces of Camden County, Karma, and a little paper manufacturer called Dunder-Mifflin.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Dammit!

I don't approve. One of my favorite pilots this year and I was looking forward to coming home from a long week and actually having something to chill out to on Friday nights.

Now I have 3 things Thursday at 8, and that stinks.

8/09/2006

Anonymous said…

I've been shaking my head at this move since I heard about it. It's a slightly improved time slot, but its been ages since ABC successfully launched a show Thursdays at 8PM. Since neither show has gotten the kind of buzz that Betty has gotten, it probably would've been smarter to delay the Tuesday night comedies and give Betty the post-Dancing time slot on Tuesdays (where it'd face L&O:CI, The Unit, Fox's Standoff and Veronica Mars).

8/09/2006

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.

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 ...

Continue reading full story...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...

Continue reading full story...

[Televisionary]

Search This Blog