Earlier this week the "Big Three" TV networks announced their 2009-2010 season lineups. In general I'm pretty happy because a large number of interesting new shows and underdog series have made the cut, including
Dollhouse,
Better off Ted,
The Unusuals,
Southland
and
Chuck.
The real surprise of the week is NBC's cancellation of
My Name is Earl after 4 seasons. There's a
campaign on twitter to try and save the show, but it may be too late. I think at the end of the day we have to blame Jay Leno, SNL and network cutbacks (ok, maybe just the network).
As you've probably heard, Jay is moving to prime time and eliminating 5 hours a week of regular programming. I believe NBC is doing this because it's cheaper than producing REAL content for those 5 hours. NBC is doing this to Earl by putting a 30 minute version of SNL's Weekend Update in it's place on Thursday nights, again to save money. It's an unfortunate sign of the times. Before you know it, all that will be on is FOX "News", soaps and reality television. Ugh.