SitcomsOnline.com News Blog

Sorry for the late post today, but it has been very busy today due to the TCA and to top it off, we are bringing you WGN America's Fall 2010 schedule! WGN America is adding plenty of new sitcoms and dramas to its line-up beginning in September. Joining the weekday schedule, as previously announced, are contemporary comedies Curb Your Enthusiasm, How I Met Your Mother, Old Christine, & Entourage. But today we have the timeslots for them! Curb Your Enthusiasm launches with a mini-marathon on Sunday, Sept. 12 from 8-10pm ET and 11pm-2am ET. The series will then settle into its Mon-Sat 9pm ET timeslot and encores at 2:30am ET on weeknights. The series will also air Saturday nights at 12:30am ET, in addition to 9pm. The other series won't get a pre-marathon but are heavily featured on the primetime schedule. Entourage will be paired with Curb, with it airing Mon-Sat at 9:30pm ET and weeknight encores at 2am ET. It will also air on Saturday nights at 12am ET, in addition to its 9:30pm ET slot.
Old Christine will air weeknights at 8:00pm & 8:30pm ET, except on Thursdays for WWE Superstars. As a result, that preemption will air in the Friday 7pm ET hour leading into the regularly scheduled airings. Old Christine will also air on Sunday nights in the 7pm ET hour. And How I Met Your Mother will air Tues-Sat at 11:00pm & 11:30pm ET and it will also air Sunday nights from 8-10pm ET.
Classic series wise, joining the weekday schedule will be Walker, Texas Ranger airing weekdays at 2pm and 3pm ET, as The Beverly Hillbillies moves into the 9am ET hour and I Dream of Jeannie heads to 4pm ET. Bewitched and Cheers also move up an hour to 5pm and 6pm ET, as Becker's contract has expired and will not be renewed. Also expiring is The Cosby Show. So, yes, this means with TV Land/Nick at Nite also not renewing, The Cosby Show will be out of a cable home for now come this fall. Wonder if any network will pick it up? 7th Heaven will be leaving the daily schedule come this September, as will Outta Sight Retro Night on Sundays, as the contracts to Newhart and Barney Miller are expiring. Retro night had a great run but ratings had softened in recent months. WGN America will instead use Scrubs at 5pm ET and new addition of Just Shoot Me! at 6pm ET to lead into the new contemporary sitcom block on Sunday nights.
As for weekends, WGN America will be losing Boston Legal, however The Unit and Monk are being added to join Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Bones. The Unit will be used with those two on Saturday afternoons, while Monk will air on Sunday nights from 11pm-2am ET. WGN America will also air classic series on weekend mornings with dramas (In the Heat of the Night, Matlock and Walker Texas Ranger) on Saturdays and an hour of Bewitched on Sundays. Saturday nights will have the new contemporary comedies, like every other night.
Also of note, on and off sitcom Coach will get a marathon airing on Outta Sight Retro Night on Sunday, Aug. 29 from 5pm-10pm ET and 11pm-4am ET to kick-off college football weekend! There are no plans to put it on the regular schedule again, though. This is the last night for Outta Sight Retro Night, with the last regular line-up airing a week prior (Aug. 22). There is also an Addams Family sighting on Sunday, Sept. 5 at 5:30pm ET after baseball. It is just filler, but hopefully it gets to air. Movies will follow.
To recap, Walker Texas Ranger, Curb Your Enthusiasm, How I Met Your Mother, Old Christine, Entourage, Just Shoot Me!, Monk, The Unit all join the schedule while Newhart, Barney Miller, Reno 911, Chappelle's Show, 7th Heaven, Cosby Show, Becker, Boston Legal, Bob & Tom Show, Singstation, Toni On!, Smash Cuts, Hollywood & Dine, Cultivating Life all leave the line-up.
View the FULL WGN America Fall 2010 schedule and highlights. And stay tuned tomorrow for another Fall 2010 schedule as our annual cable fall schedules barrage continues!

Today is the first day of the TCA Summer 2010 Press Tour and CBS is up first. We are not at the press tour, but our friend Mike of TVTango.com is there and is providing live blogging updates for everyone! You even get to submit a question and he will try to ask for you. Sounds cool right?
Anyway, CBS started the morning off right by having a selection of favorite breakfast items with showgirls and slot machines for added fun in honor of the new Wednesday drama The Defenders. Then the sessions started with Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment taking quesitons. Among the highlights from this session were: Nina commented on the resignation of ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson: My first thought was "Dammit, Steve got out of doing a press tour." CBS has given a name to the new CBS Daytime talk show set to replace soap As the World Turns this October. The talk show will be called The Talk. As a result of the talk show, Julie Chen (one of the co-hosts on this new talk show) will continue in a consulting capacity on The Early Show. Nina on pulling The Bridge from Saturday nights: The show wasn't delivering the numbers we needed. Generally, our Summer strategies work. We'll look at doing Canadian shows in future. I haven't decided yet. As for Two and a Half Men and Charlie Sheen: We have no indication that there will be any delay on the delivery of episodes as planned. Nina's comments on the move of Big Bang Theory to Thursdays: It was difficult, but not in the sense that you don't have complete faith and belief in the show...the time felt right. The show is enjoying an extraordinary amount of support and love. This was a great opportunity to move it into a strategic place. We don't expect it to do the numbers it did on Mondays quite yet. CBS is planning to air episodes of the original 1970's Hawaii Five-0 on one of their sister cable networks, Spike TV in September. More info on that will come soon.
Then The Big Bang Theory was up next at the panel. On hand were stars Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, and executive producers Prod Chuck Lorre & Bill Prady. After that the new sitcom Mike & Molly was up next and on hand were stars Billy Gardell, Melissa McCarthy, Reno Wilson, Katy Mixon, Nyambi Nyambi, Swoosie Kurtz and executive producer Chuck Lorre and creator Mark Roberts. The next panel before was the upcoming new CBS Daytime talk show (tentatively titled The Talk) with co-hosts Julie Chen, Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Holly Robinson Peete, Leah Remini and Marissa Jaret Winokur. And the final panel before lunch was Hawaii Five-0 with stars Alex O'Loughlin, Scott Caan, Alex Kurtzman, and executive producer Peter Lenkov.
After a lunch break with boxed lunches, the new drama The Defenders was up at the panel. On hand were stars Jim Belushi, Jerry O'Connell, Jurnee Smollett, Tanya Fischer, executive producer Carol Mendelsohn, co-creator Kevin Kennedy, co-creator Niels Mueller, executive producer Harry Gantz, executive producer Joe Gantz and show runner Greg Walker. Then next at the panel was new Friday drama Blue Bloods. On hand were stars Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, and executive producers Mitchell Burgess & Robin Green. And finally the last panel was the new sitcom S#*! My Dad Says with the star William Shatner and executive producers David Kohan & Max Mutchnick and co-executive producer Justin Halpern.
Then when everything is over today, CBS asks to join them under the summer sky with stars, producers and executives from CBS, Showtime, The CW and CBS Television Distribution at "The Tent," 9900 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, directly across from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where you can eat, drink and party outside in a fun festive setting.

Stay tuned tomorrow for The CW's turn at the TCA Summer 2010 Press Tour!