SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

Welcome to the 2011 edition of our annual look at the fall schedules for cable and digital TV! We are launching this schedule barrage with the digital network Antenna TV! We have Antenna TV's Fall 2011 schedule and they will be expanding the comedy line-up to feature more sitcoms every weekday! The line-up of comedies will return to start at 1pm ET, like the original launch schedule had. However, this time the comedies will last longer into the night, too! The comedies will run until 5am Sun-Thurs nights, instead of 3am. Antenna TV will also be launching a new logo come this fall. You can take peek at what it looks like below. It is subject to change.


On to the schedule, the new fall 2011 schedule will begin on Monday, Sept. 19, 2011. From Mon-Fri, Antenna TV Theater will air from 5am-1pm with movies from all eras. Then every weekday from 1pm-6pm will feature classic sitcoms with an hour each of Burns & Allen, Father Knows Best, Dennis the Menace, Hazel in new time periods and the return of The Partridge Family to weekdays. Hazel is also returning to the daytime line-up, as currently it is airing every night at 2:00am. Mon-Thurs in the 6pm hour will continue to feature the Antenna TV staple Three's Company with the spin-offs of the series mixed in the rotation. In fact, The Ropers will join the second half-hour (6:30pm and 12:30am) for about seven weeks starting Monday, Aug. 29! This will be the second time The Ropers will be featured on Antenna TV, so catch all 28 episodes before it goes back to Three's Company for the full hour! On Fridays, the 6pm hour will continue to feature the DLT Entertainment sitcom Too Close for Comfort. Weekdays in the 7pm hour will also still have Good Times, but the sitcom will not be seven days a week anymore, though it will remain Sundays at 7pm. Moving on to primetime, Sanford & Son returns to its original 8pm hour replacing Maude, which will be moving to weekends only (Saturdays 7-8pm and Sundays 6-7pm, more on that below). The block of All in the Family, Married...with Children, Mad About You and Three's Company remains in primetime from 9pm-1am. From 1am-3am we have a schedule change though. Mon-Thurs nights will feature one episode each of weekend staples The Partridge Family, The Monkees, The Flying Nun and Gidget as they move from weekend afternoons to weekday late nights! These will replace the late night hours of Sanford & Son and Hazel. Antenna TV will replace another movie with a black & white overnight block from 3am-5am with an episode each of their signature black & white series: Hazel, Dennis the Menace, Father Knows Best, and Burns & Allen.
Fridays will be the same as Mon-Thurs essentially, except as I mentioned above the 6pm hour is Too Close for Comfort still and the continued Three Stooges Friday night prime block from 8pm-11pm, followed by Benny Hill from 11pm-2am in late night. One other change is the 2am hour will now feature Totally Tooned In, replacing Hazel. Antenna TV Theater remains from 3am-5am, so we don't get a black & white block on Friday nights (or Saturday nights either).
Moving on to Saturdays, Antenna TV Theater will still kick it off at 5am and another movie has been added at 7am, replacing Totally Tooned In (as these two hours are moving to Fri-Sat 2am). The classic animated shorts will remain in the Saturday 9am hour, though. From 10am-1pm will be the E/I block which will see some new additions starting Saturday, Sept. 3. Antenna TV Theater will now run on Saturday afternoons from 1pm-5pm, since Gidget, Flying Nun, The Monkees and The Partridge Family are moving to weeknights. Antenna TV Theater will air on Sundays from 1pm-5pm, too, replacing those four comedies. The 5pm hour on both Saturdays and Sundays will still be Too Close for Comfort and in the 6pm hour, All in the Family will now air in the hour leading into spin-off Maude in the 7pm hour. This is unique scheduling and it will be unique on Sundays well as the 6pm hour will feature Maude leading into spin-off Good Times in the 7pm hour. Love that!
Weekends in primetime will still have Benny Hill on Saturdays from 8pm-11pm followed by late night The Three Stooges from 11pm-2am. The 2am hour on Saturday nights will now be Totally Tooned In, like on Friday nights (as we mentioned) leading into a movie at 3am. And Sundays in primetime will have Sanford & Son join the 8pm hour, like on Mon-Thurs, followed by All in the Family and Soap remaining in the 9pm and 10pm hours. However, Soap will lose its 11pm hour on Sunday nights as NewsRadio joins the Antenna TV line-up airing every Sunday night! Hopefully they are saving the plays on Soap so maybe in the winter it could move to weekdays? Anyway, Too Close for Comfort will remain Sunday nights at 12am, as well Burns & Allen in the 1am hour on Sunday nights but also it gains the 2am hour creating a two-hour block of Burns & Allen. Then the black and white overnight block that will air Mon-Thurs will also air Sunday nights, so it will be airing five nights a week!

View the FULL Antenna TV Fall 2011 schedule, so you get the full details. So to recap, Antenna TV is not dropping any shows this fall, while we get more sitcoms on weekdays (1pm-5am), and the addition of NewsRadio to Sunday nights! If there are any changes to this, we will let you know. Stay with us the rest of the summer every weekday for updates on other fall schedules for cable. Coming up will be WGN America, TBS, FX and much MUCH more!
And if that is not all, the TCA Summer 2011 Press Tour starts tomorrow with cable up first and will run through Aug. 8, so even more of a reason to stay with us everyday! Dog days of summer are over here on the blog now! It's time to think about the Fall, as the summer speeds by!

Moving on, we have one story that we saved for a week or two to bring you today. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network and TLC have acquired the off-network rights of Undercover Boss from CBS Television Distribution. TLC and OWN will each have access to the library and will determine their independent scheduling strategies with regularly scheduled episodes of the hit series set to begin airing Fall 2012. However, TLC will being airing the series once a week starting Monday, Aug. 1, 2011 airing Mondays at 8PM with and encore at 11PM. It is unclear if OWN will air the series once a week until it is available for regular airings in Fall 2012.
Undercover Boss is a one-hour reality series that follows high-level corporate executives as they slip anonymously into the rank and file of their own companies. Each week, a different executive will leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their corporation. While working alongside their employees, they will learn about themselves, the effects their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organization, the perception of their company, and discover the unsung heroes of their work force.
We will have more on this when we get near Fall 2012, but for now TLC will be airing it Mondays at 8pm & 11pm starting next week. Stay tuned for more!