Image Credit: Desperate Housewives: Danny Feld; The Good Wife: CBS

Right after the fall schedule was announced last May, I posted a rundown of the most intriguing time-period battles and who I thought would win. Been a lot of buzz and fresh intel about these shows since, but I’m keeping my predictions the same — plus adding a several new entries. So here they are, below, and be sure to check the Inside TV blog every morning for the ratings to see how your favorite shows performed (of course, in today’s DVR era, time periods are less important than they were five years ago, but don’t be fooled: The slots still matter — just ask any show that faced off against American Idol, or one that had the pleasure of airing after it):

Who: CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 vs. NBC’s Playboy Club vs. ABC’s Castle
When: Mondays at 10 p.m.
Verdict: Castle pulled off a surprise victory in this slot by the end of last season against the first year of Five-0, gradually conquering a time period that it always lost to CBS when CSI: Miami was there (Castle was especially aided by Charlie Sheen’s freak out and Two and a Half Men going into repeats — thus weakening CBS’ 9 p.m. hour’s lead into Hawaii). So this is the rematch, with Hawaii bulking up with a ton of guest stars and adding Terry O’Quinn to the cast. Expectations are modest for Playboy Club. Hawaii will go big tonight when Men returns tonight, but in the coming weeks Castle will probably end up slightly on top. And now on Friday nights, it’s Chuck vs… READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Fox

Can J.J. Abrams do it again?

Like some sort of pilot godfather who makes networks a show they can’t refuse, the prolific producer-director has two new shows hitting primetime next season. One, Fox’s Alcatraz, is drawing inevitable comparisons to Lost. There’s another island, another mystery, with Lost scribe Elizabeth Sarnoff running the show and Jorge Garcia on board in a starring role. But you only need to watch Fox’s trailer (below) to know Alcatraz is very much its own series. “The premise from the very beginning is something I knew I would watch,” Abrams tells EW. “And that’s certainly not an arbitrator of what anyone else would watch, but I knew it was a good place to start.”

The show’s details have been kept under wraps until recently: Alcatraz follows a San Francisco police detective (Sarah Jones) who teams with an expert on the prison (Garcia) after a murder suspect turns out to be a Alcatraz prisoner who disappeared from the island about 50 years ago. It seems the killer wasn’t the only prisoner to vanish — or the only one to return. And now they must stop the Alcatraz escapees as they re-enter modern society without having aged — and try to solve the mystery of how this is happening, and why.

“There’s a kind of intrigue about Alcatraz,” Abrams said. “I heard the name and I thought, ‘How could there never have been a show called Alcatraz?’ I liked the idea of a show looking backwards in order to prevent what’s going to happen looking forwards. The idea of the worst of the worst being sent to that place. What happens if they all disappeared one day, and what happens if they suddenly came back and had not aged a day? That notion was so kick ass.” READ FULL STORY »

Oops, this isn’t the kind of message about stability that you want to send to advertisers: Power problems brought the TNT-TBS upfront presentation to a halt in New York today. The network dimmed the house lights in preparation to air some TBS clips but they never played in the Hammerstein Ballroom. The crowd sat in the dark for a minute or two before the house lights came up.

“You know, I love working for TBS,” quipped Conan O’Brien, who was on stage to introduce the clips.

Turner programming topper Steve Koonin then took the stage and kept the crowd in stitches by joking “we’re not changing our rates” while the cabler raced to restore the video. Ray Romano — star of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age — also did a little improv.

The video was restored after 25 minutes. TNT/TBS then released this statement: “A power surge caused a temporary disruption to video elements at the upfront this morning. Turner executives and show talent rose to the occasion and the show continued after a brief interruption.”

A few minutes later, the power went out again during a promo for Falling Skies starring Noah Wyle. When Mark Paul Gosselaar came up to introduce his new dramedy Franklin and Bash, he joked, “Here’s a clip….hopefully.”

Afterwards, Koonin told EW, “I’m actually very proud of today. We’re not the smartest, we’re not the best, we don’t get everything done right. But we care. We are passionate.” – With reporting from Sandra Gonzalez

Image Credit: CBS

Two and a Half Men is staying put and CSI is getting the boot.

CBS unveiled its fall scheduled keeping Big Bang Theory on Thursdays and shifts veteran CSI from its longtime Thursday night anchor slot.

The network announced several new drams. J.J. Abrams’ Person of Interest stars Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson as an ex-CIA agent and a billionaire who team to stop crimes. Interest gets to take over the coveted CSI spot on Thursdays. CBS also shifted The Good Wife to Sundays. “To move CSI out of that time period you need big guns and we do,” says CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler.

And then there’s two titles that take familiar CBS concepts and give them a fresh spin: Unforgettable is about a female detective (Poppy Montgomery) with a perfect memory (The Memorist?) getting a lead-in from NCIS: LA on Tuesdays, and A Gifted Man is about a surgeon (Patrick Wilson) who receives help from his dead wife (The Spouse Whisperer?). CBS will also add two comedies about male and female bonding, respectively: How to be a Gentleman and Two Broke Girls.

The network is also programming Saturday nights with original shows — putting solidly rated comedy Rules of Engagement at 8 p.m. in hopes of gaining some traction on an evening that most broadcasters have long since given up on. For midseason, the network has a new crime drama about rookie cops called The 2-2.

Asked about Ashton Kutcher replacing Charlie Sheen on Men, CBS chief Les Moonves declined to make a ratings prediction. “I’ve been chased from every restaurant in Los Angeles for the past two months avoiding questions,” Moonves says. “But I think we’ve come through it just fine.”

Since CBS has fewer holes to fill than most of its rivals, it tends to make more powerful moves when it shakes up its schedule. Last year the network opened a new comedy beachhead on Thursdays and put aging procedurals like the CSI spin-offs in tough time periods to make room for new shows.

Full schedule: READ FULL STORY »