Upfront Week: ABC
News: Sarah Chalke of Scrubs will join How I Met Your Mother full time. Ugly Betty moves production to the Big Apple.
Renewed: America’s Funniest Home Videos, Boston Legal, Brothers & Sisters, Dancing with the Stars, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, Samantha Who?, Supernanny, Ugly Betty, Wife Swap, Eli Stone, Scrubs (moved from NBC)
Canceled: Men in Trees, Big Shots, Carpoolers, Cavemen, October Road, Women’s Murder Club,
New Series: Life on Mars (another remake of a very popular British series!), Opportunity Knocks (new game show)
Full details HERE
May 13, 2008 in Television |
Life on Mars has an interesting premise, I’ll probably give it a shot.
Comment by jjohnsen — May 13, 2008 @ 9:50 am
For anyone that’s interested, you can see clips of original Life on Mars here. It ran for 2 seasons and now has its own spin off - “Ashes to Ashes”.
Comment by Rebecca — May 13, 2008 @ 10:10 am
Wait, will Sarah Chalke do double duty on Scrubs and HIMYM? How is that possible? She’s too big of a character on Scrubs for her to leave, I think.
Also: Whew! It’s a good thing that “America’s Funniest Home Videos†got renewed! Because that show just hadn’t exhausted all the possibilities of its exciting premise yet.
Comment by BTD Greg — May 13, 2008 @ 10:12 am
Carpoolers? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Comment by Supergenius — May 13, 2008 @ 10:30 am
Whew!! I was worried about Eli Stone. It’s a very good show.
Comment by John Scherer — May 13, 2008 @ 11:25 am
Was there anyone at ABC who thought for a second that cavemen would work??
Comment by John Scherer — May 13, 2008 @ 11:26 am
Yours is not to question the minds of network executives. Only to mourn their choices, stupid or otherwise.
America’s Funniest Home Videos may be the best tv show ever. You can turn it on at any time (literally, it’s on all the time) and always be given something to laugh at.
Comment by Susan M — May 13, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
Susan’s right — scoff at AFV if you will, but it almost never fails to deliver.
Comment by Supergenius — May 13, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
I’m surprised Men in Trees is out. I thought Anne Heche did quite well on it.
Sarah Chalke - It’s beginning to sound to me like we finally “met your mother.” I like Niel Patrick Harris, but Josh Radnor I find annoying. He gives me that David Schwimmer feeling (ie, you’re successful because you work with good actors).
Comment by David J — May 13, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
AFV rules - it’s one of the only family shows that all four of us (plus the dog on pet night!) enjoy together. SpongeBob too.
Comment by David J — May 13, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
#4 : We’re Carpoolers fans, too. Sad to see them go. =(
I’ve never watched How I Met Your Mother. Is it worth going back and watching from the beginning?
I’m particularly pleased about Eli Stone being renewed. O=)
Comment by FHL — May 13, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
FHL, How I Met Your Mother is funny at times, but probably tilting on “guy humor.” My wife and I have watched it since the beginning, and we enjoy it. We’re a little scared for the Sarah Chalke addition because she doesn’t have that couple-chemistry with Josh Radnor (again, like Schwimmer + Anniston - no way that could happen in real life). Niel Patrick Harris is, to me, the one who makes the whole thing work. Give it a shot - the first few shows of season 1 were pretty funny. But if you have to see one and only one, watch the one called “Slap Bet Commissioner” or something like that (”The Slap Bet” maybe? Can’t remember). You’ll die laughing.
Comment by David J — May 13, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
All I want from ABC is for my local affiliate to start broadcasting in HD. How on earth can they broadcast digital but not at least broadcast the ABC shows in HD? It flabbergasts me.
I want to watch Lost in HD. And Pushing Daisies in the fall.
Every other station outside of Comedy Central that I watch is now in HD on Dish. (Even Disney and Cartoon Network - although I’m reasonably sure my kid doesn’t care)
Comment by Clark — May 13, 2008 @ 2:59 pm
Clark,
The NBA games on your local ABC affiliate have been in HD.
Comment by a random John — May 13, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
ESPN?
Comment by Clark — May 13, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
I hope the new Life on Mars be set in Manchester as well (not some lame place, like NY or LA or Scranton). The setting was half the fun of watching the BBC version.
Comment by Brock — May 14, 2008 @ 9:42 am
Clark,
Over the air games on KTVX have been 720p.
Comment by a random John — May 14, 2008 @ 10:29 am
People! I’m telling you, Sarah Chalke is NOT the mother. I would bet on it!
Comment by gabby — May 14, 2008 @ 10:45 am
I get ABC in HD through Charter. Lost looks fantastic.
Comment by David J — May 14, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Since nobody mentioned it in response to #3, Scrubs aired its series finale last week. So Sarah is a free agent. The Scrubs finale was unfortunately lame. I was disappointed.
Comment by spencer — May 15, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Well, crap I guess I missed all the talk about Scrubs going to ABC. I guess I don’t need to be disappointed that the last episode was a really lame way to end a series that I liked off and on thru its run.
Comment by spencer — May 15, 2008 @ 9:03 am
The problem with the last Scrubs ep aired on NBC was that it was actually supposed to have been shown mid-season, but they swapped it around to make it the finale. It was never meant to be.
Last season of Scrubs on ABC will have 18 eps.
Comment by Rebecca — May 15, 2008 @ 9:08 am
John, why then don’t they show Lost in 720p? (And why doesn’t Dish pick up KTVX as HD?)
Comment by Clark — May 15, 2008 @ 10:51 am
heck if I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me. One of the hosts of Good Things Utah lives us the street and I’ve asked her when they were going HD. She didn’t know.
Comment by a random John — May 15, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
While I’m at it, my wife is watching Tivo’d Grey’s Anatomy right now off KTVX and it is clearly HD.
Comment by a random John — May 15, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
If it goes HD I wonder if Dish will pick it up. They just added a slew of more channels but dropped all the Voom channels. Unfortunately most of the new channels they added, such as Disney and Cartoon Network, don’t have any HD content. They are annoyingly just upconverting the SD content and then panning it into widescreen. (i.e. cutting off the top and bottom of the picture) Yeah I don’t really care if Scooby Doo is tweaked as my toddler watches it. But it is interesting they added all these channels as HD without HD content.
Strangely USA has some HD content on shows like Monk but not on others such as Burn Notice reruns.
The big annoyance is that several of the Voom networks they dropped were pretty good. Rave had some great concerts and then there was one (forget the name) that had a lot of skiing, kayaking and so forth I used to watch.
Comment by Clark — May 15, 2008 @ 11:11 pm
Clark,
Buy a big-ass antenna and tell Dish where to go.
You probably live twice as far from the transmitter as I do. My antenna is a paper clip, I kid you not.
Comment by a random John — May 16, 2008 @ 11:35 am
I had a cheap antenna. However I have a 3 and a half year old and a little girl almost ready to turn 2. Antennas are just too big a temptation for them. I’ll try the paper clip trick and see if it works…
Comment by Clark — May 16, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
They put up an HD schedule. Apparently KUED has HD broadcasts as well. Neither is showing up on Dish so I’m going to see if I can rig up an antenna to plug into my DishPVR. (It acts as an HD receiver and those channels are integrated in as if they were on Dish)
Comment by Clark — May 16, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
KUED has an entirely separate HD channel and it is pretty good. They have a Spanish language original programming channel as well. KBYU has four channels, none seem particularly compelling and the picture quality is poor.
Comment by a random John — May 16, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
that KTVX page is not only difficult to navigate, but it hasn’t been updated in a year. Classy.
Comment by a random John — May 16, 2008 @ 9:04 pm
Dang - I didn’t notice that was from 2007! Which suck since they say there their stuff is in HD when it really isn’t!
With KBYU they are building a new building/studio over near where DT just got tore down. They said the old studio was falling apart with a lot of equipment out of date and held in place with duck tape. I suspect that they’re just updating all their equipment now that they need to do the HD transition. From what I could tell with their current signal it’s just Analog converted to digital in some final step which explains all the noise in their stuff. A lot of their shows, such as Curious George (my son’s favorite) have screwed up sound as well.
Comment by Clark — May 16, 2008 @ 11:22 pm