Homefront seems like an updated version of Soldier Soldier which was a huge hit in its day.


There's a new series of Young Apprentice due to air later this year. After its poor showing last year BBC1 might want to try to boost figures by giving it an Eastenders lead-in (and a pre-watershed slot to try and attract a younger audience). Of course, an EE lead-in isn't doing Waterloo Road much good at the moment, but maybe that's because we've got soap verses soap cancelling each other out. Or maybe, if we're lucky, it's because people are realising that Waterloo Road is an even bigger depressing load of cack than Eastenders is.

Following up on the US daytime numbers reported earlier in the week Katie Couric's new day time talk show Katie has shed about 39% of its household across the week and about 50% of its audience in women 25-54 (the key daytime demographic) since Monday. On Thursday she had a 1.7 in households and a 0.8 in W25-54. In comparison Steve Harvey's new talk show had a 1.3 in households and a 0.9 with W25-54. More worrying for Katie though is that she's now dropped below the timeslot average from last season – her slot was occupied by General Hospital last year.

Other new talkers Jeff Probst and Ricki Lake are in an almost dead heat. Probst is slightly ahead in households 0.9 vs. 0.8 but both pulled a 0.5 with W25-54. Returning talk show (albeit with a new format) Anderson Live had a 1.2 in households but the same 0.5 in the demo.

Leading the pack amongst the daytime talk shows is Ellen with a 2.7 household and a 1.7 in the demo. Live with Kelly and Michael both equalled that household total but were below in the demo, a 1.6 for Live and 1.1 for Dr. Phil. Not that any of this matters because when we get the first batch of syndicated numbers for the season Judge Judy will easily out perform all of them.

I wonder how the new US Trisha show will do.

Homefront is ITV's version of Army Wives isn't it? I suspect it'll do quite well.

FOX's night got a bit worse - Glee was adjusted down two tenths in finals to a 3.1 as well.


It wouldn't be worth it in the end. Both versions of Got Talent are of far less concern than X Factor. NBC pay handsomely and Syco no doubt extract a bit more given all the repeat value they're getting from AGT. Obviously ABC would love a summer anchor and they're probably the only network I could see giving it the same coverage but the only way I could see that happening is if NBC underpaid significantly. They'd never take the risk over a scheduling disagreement.

AGT's finale ratings are, on the surface, rubbish. I think they'll go away and retool - maybe Piers back (hence my use of "retool") and Sharon needs replaced. There will be no Olympics to worry about next season, it'll not start among season finales and will surely have more consistent scheduling.

Cowell may actually wish he had dumped FOX and gone with NBC for X Factor. They'd probably have put him on air quicker, The Voice may never have been commissioned in the US (certainly not before X Factor) and in turn, might not have started in the UK either (and not with as much hype). While The Voice ultimately hit the rocks in the UK, there's still the "saturation" issue (much like the relationship between X Factor and Idol ratings in the US).

For now, Syco need to hold X Factor together and pray that stuff like Glee keeps misfiring this fall. If they end up with a mid 2 average then Britney won't be getting paid next year and the license fee won't be up to much (I wouldn't be surprised if, at that level, they trimmed the order either). But I'm not sure FOX would dump it altogether. I think it has passed the point where they can get rid of X Factor to try and help American Idol recover. To make matters worse for FOX, X Factor covered declines in other shows last fall and helped them win November Sweeps. But this time, X Factor will be compared to its own (higher) averages last season. FOX really have all their hopes pinned on Tuesdays and I don't like the scheduling there at all.

In short, all of this is why 7 years ago, Rupert Murdoch got personally involved in order to keep Simon Cowell on American Idol and put X Factor in his back pocket.

Part of me thinks it should've been given the Sunday night slot using The X Factor lead in with Downton Abbey supporting another night (it could have made use of the spare half hour on Thursday's to air it's first episode, then ran 9-10pm from then on).

Of course the risk behind this would be that Homefront wouldn't take off and Downton would suffer in another slot. But without risk there isn't reward and ITV need to think about using The X Factor lead in to boost other programming while it's still relatively healthy.

So, may be a bit late. but on the nights ratings...

Good Cop seems to be doing below expectations and BBC will be disappointed with Waterloo Road and the ratings, the move didn't work in their favour at all. EE is doing below expectations too. I know a lot of people that have tuned out in the last few months. They need a captivating storyline.

That second Emmerdale episode didn't do too well either. Poor rating and I can't remember the last episode where Emmerdale went that low, or am I just forgetting? TBC doing very well to increase by around 200k on it's first episode, the competition must have harmed it's debut.

Channel 4 now... poor night. The Audience did badly IMO. To get just over 1m incl +1 is bad considering the advertising. I expected 2.3m incl +1 so I was way off! Not a good start for Shameless which may decrease from there. Looks like Ch4 need some luck now the Paralympics have finished, since then, the only success has been the opening episode of 999 What's Your Emergency? (which I thought was very good). Shame Hollyoaks is not increasing. I have been hooked lately.The E4 first look is ruining the Ch4 rating now.... first look is catching up with Ch4 now

Channel 5 need something fast! Dallas is obviously doing wonders for them, but apart from that, nothing. They need to get something decent on there otherwise they just need to rely on Dallas until Jan when CBB11 returns and go 2m+ nightly.

Another fantastic performance by Celebrity Juice. I am one of those hooked viewers which always comes back to watch.

I suspect FOX's deal with Cowell prevented him from judging on another channel for a significant period of time.

Anyway back here and last year X Factor added dancing to Dermot's intro, so this year Strictly are adding vocals to their intro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cow4Eh4pQaw&feature=plcp

Like The X Factor here, America's Got Talent got lost in the Olympics hype. ITV should've held The X Factor back a couple of weeks so the press could direct it's attention on it and surely NBC could've done something different with America's Got Talent? I suppose they wanted a summer show, though.


If NBC hadn't commissioned The Voice then one of the other networks would have done though admittedly NBC would have probably turned the show over quicker rather than allowing another show to have a winter/spring run before The X Factor's arrival.


It appears to me that Syco have tried to keep one eye of the UK show and one eye on the US show and have made a mess of both in the process. What confuses me is that they must have realised how the lack of singing was going down in the UK edit yet seemingly didn't try and edit the US version accordingly? It's bad enough they haven't even found a presenter yet - is this supposed to be their trump card; that they'll pull out a big name which will get people watching??? They've also moved their creative director back to the UK show.

It's not just the talent show genre which has reached saturation IMO - Syco has as well. They need to take the basic approach with the edit on both UK and US versions (UK seemed to be getting back to normal last weekend), find a presenter and creative director for the US version and hope it'll see a gradual increase.

The problem is they wanted an immediate reward whereas the UK and Australian versions both built an audience - by missing out this stage I'm wondering whether they've done the US version more harm than good.

What the hell is that?!

EDIT: Apparently it's a one off for the launch. My worry is it'll be even worse for the main series...

SECOND EDIT: They're apparently going back to the original theme for the main series. Seems a bit pointless to me unless the intention was to use the new theme throughout but they backed down after criticism as guestofseth says below.

It's just for the launch show, but it seems that decision was only taken after seeing the extremely negative reaction to it.

I think her show is quite the dark horse. She went down very well when she guest hosted Murray and her show has pretty good clearance. My guess is that she'll do better than Jeremy Kyle USA at least.


You do have to wonder if, with hindsight, he's kicking himself a little over this.

I think I mentioned before that the primary reason NBC were able to pull The Voice together so quickly is because they'd already been putting the ground work into launching The X Factor and pulling all of that together. So I think we can safely assume that had Cowell taken The X Factor to NBC it would have launched in The Voice's slot in 2011 and probably with more fanfare and hype than The Voice was given as well. Also from some accounts the judging panel and host for the hypothetical first season on NBC wouldn't have been anywhere near as disastrous as it was on Fox. In fact it seems that SyCo's big mistake with The X Factor was assuming that the talent he approached to do the show in order to push NBC's bid up would come with him to Fox and they didn't.

Although in fairness to Cowell sticking with Fox seemed like the right decision to just about everyone at the time. And I think with hindsight NBC would probably consider losing The X Factor as a blessing in disguise since they got The Voice instead which would likely have ended up on ABC instead albeit at a later date. Possibly as late as this summer in the slot that ultimately went to Duets. I'm not sure if its true to say that it wouldn't have landed in the UK had it not landed in the US first though. I know a couple of people in the UK were (very) quietly sniffing around the format around the same time at NBC and ultimately opted to wait and see how it would do on NBC before going for it. Which in hindsight for them was a mistake because they probably could have gotten it for a fraction of the price it ultimately went for.


Its tricky.

The big saving grace for these big reality talent shows is that they fill a lot of hours. Its a slightly terrifying prospect for any network to cut one of these shows out of their schedule and to try and fill that void. Even when they're not pulling monster ratings any more. But assuming The X Factor doesn't grow substantially across the season I think Fox have to take the plunge and cut their loses. They can't do what they did originally and justify buying the show in the name of stopping it going somewhere else (no one will want it now) nor can they justify it by keeping Cowell because I don't think anyone is going to be clamouring over themselves to sign him up now. I doubt he'd even be able to swing a big return to Idol. And make no mistake this is the really damaging part of The X Factor's relative failure its destroyed this notion that Simon Cowell is a big draw. For the record I also think this is why we're never going to see Cowell make a fulltime return to The X Factor in the UK – its easier for him to maintain this idea that he's a big ratings attraction if he's not on the sinking ship as it goes down. If he returns to the UK show and it continues to sink he's screwed because he can't then sell ITV another format built around him.

At this stage I think there are two ways The X Factor survives to see a third season. The first is the obvious one – it grows and justifies a third season on its own merits. The second is that absolutely everything else on Fox collapses this season. And the depressing thing is that the second option actually isn't as unlikely as it might seem. Like you I have absolutely no faith in that Tuesday comedy block, I can't see Glee surviving against proper competition especially not heavy female skewing competition (ABC) and young skewing competition (NBC), the Friday shows have been sent there to die and I don't think The Mob Doctor is the solution to their Monday night problems. Its worryingly easy to imagine a situation where The X Factor is the highlight of Fox's Fall.

The Olympics were always going to be difficult to plan around, particularly with The Voice running through May and starting again in early September. But they could have been more consistent with it at least.

The Biggest Loser also got in the way a bit. Without that they could have run AGT from 9-11pm on Tuesdays out of The Voice perhaps starting in April and getting it over with by The Olympics. Talent show overkill, I guess, but NBC have no obvious issue with that! Starting in April would also have been better than in May with all the season finales.


While NBC might have been lead to believe there was other interest, Deadline and others reported that they were the only bidders (they paid a lot but it worked out in the end!). They were specifically in the market for a talent show whether it was X Factor or The Voice. Other networks would have been more likely to order it as a summer series, I suspect. ABC had been badly burned in the genre prior to that although sustained international success would have eventually brought it to the US in the end.


My attempt to watch the US show was cut short not long in thanks to my dodgy internet connection(!) but I liked the opening. Overblown introductions have always been part of it and the judges stuff was well done. But after that backstage stuff they then did more with the contestants (and those blonde girls) and it was just a step too far. I'm not convinced these things are making much difference to the actual amount of singing on the shows - there isn't much singing in the montages! But I do think they're slowing the pace and that's the issue.


They don't have a presenter because they don't need one for the early rounds. When you actually think about it there's no way Dermot is worth the money for his role in the auditions but they already had him so cutting his hours would have gone down badly and they wouldn't want to lose him from the live shows. In the US it wasn't an issue because there was no existing contract in place for a presenter. The documentary style could have worked but it needed to be done better.

After all the controversies and "boycotts", it's a seemingly minor editing thing that is probably doing more ratings damage than any "fix" or autotune scandal!


I think expectations dragged it down a lot, especially when it failed to meet those expectations. They had to deliver from season one, far moreso than the UK or Australian versions did and it didn't really have a chance to find its feet and grow more naturally.

To be honest I might have opted to put it on Wednesday night after Mrs Biggs finished. It seems like it would work pretty well in that slot especially since Mrs Biggs hasn't embarrassed itself in that slot.

Or alternatively I suppose if they wanted to be really adventurous they could have moved Downton to Wednesday at 9PM after Mrs Biggs finished and had something like Take Me Out take over the 8PM slot when Mr & Mrs finished. Keep pushing this Wednesday night schedule they've set up. That's obviously a bit of a pipe dream though.


I still think NBC's strongest play this year would have been to use the Olympics as an excuse to push America's Got Talent to the Fall. That would have allowed them to improve their Fall performance year-on-year (Talent would have done better than The Sing-Off) and allowed them to keep The Voice to one cycle a year. The Olympics also would have allowed them to not have a big summer show this year and had Talent worked in the Fall they could have resurrected The Sing-Off (or Fear Factor again) for the summer since it did relatively well without competition and kept Talent as a Fall show.


Khloe Kardashian and Mario Lopez are the names that keep coming up. So no.

Although in the US I don't know who would actually fill that role of being a big name that gets people excited. Short of publicly stealing Seacrest from Idol.

I'm guessing the deal was good for FX, I think the production company absorbs the prodictions costs in the hope of making more money when the show hits local syndication but are still guranteed money from the license FX pays for 100 episodes so it's a win-win situation. TBS was doing it with the Tyler Perry shows and clearly they were happy to keep it going for beyond the intial 100 episodes.

I imagine we'll see something similar with drama in the near future but it'll be more costly to do.

I think they're holding Take Me Out back to air opposite Strictly, though, and to be fair I can see the sense behind that as I can't imagine there will be much of a crossover. They really should be thinking about moving The Chase up into a primetime slot IMO; it's obviously a robust show - far more so than the likes of The Cube - and I think it would slip into the Wednesday slot quite easily alongside maybe Family Fortunes/Surprise, Surprise (which will no doubt get a Sunday slot) and Millionaire.


Especially as Dancing with the Stars is looking very vulnerable at the moment and only has an All Stars season coming up. CBS' comedy block looks slightly dodgy to me as well with both The Big Bag Theory and Two and a Half Men taking up the Thursday hour. I thought they would have held one of those back for Monday nights to try and give it a boost as the second hour looks susceptible to a drop to me; especially with a new comedy as a lead in even with support from How I Met Your Mother.

Monday nights look ripe for the taking at the moment for NBC and it would have been worth giving America's Got Talent a shot in that slot. I doubt the other networks would have really targetted it - ABC would have stuck to Dancing with the Stars; FOX looks weak and could hardly strengthen other than maybe firing Syco against Syco while I doubt CBS would move The Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men from Thursday's - especially as they're keeping them there despite The Voice's early return.


I was thinking Seacrest but the last thing The X Factor needs to be is an Idol rip off - especially after the failed attempt at reigniting the Simon/Paula dynamic last year.

I see, so by the time it reached the US The X Factor may have been able to create a platform for itself. Why did FOX take so long to launch the first series? I doubt it was due to Simon's UK commitments; The X Factor's UK contract hasn't been up for renewal since the emergence of The X Factor USA.


I've still got to give it a go; I was going off what AlexiR said earlier in the thread about the edit. I was going to call it the 'TOWIE' edit but wasn't quite sure whether that was the issue with the US version or whether it was taking another approach.


The problem is, how do you link the sections up without a presenter? The good thing about a voiceover is it can push the show along much quicker than backstage or contestant homes clips. The show seemed a lot 'faster' last weekend, when Dermot seemed more prominent, than the other shows where he definitely took a back seat.


Ironic isn't it? But the X Factor survives on fast-paced drama and the pace was sucked out of the show.


The issue was nothing could be done naturally. As soon as the show launched at a 4.4 questions were immediately asked instead of saying it was a decent figure to launch on. The panel was basically on borrowed time from the launch show; Steve Jones was axed after the first live show but both had to survive the series otherwise it'd result in more trouble for the production team. But nothing's organic about the US version; it's all forced for a quick buck and it's not working.

That will be quite the battle of sitcoms between ABC and FOX on tuesday.

Ben & Kate and Mindy Project seem to be liked generally out of all the comedy pilots this year.

I don't think its a system that would work for drama. In part that's because the syndication market for drama just isn't as strong or lucrative as it is for comedy. As long as you have enough episodes you can almost always sell a comedy into syndication regardless of its popularity and whether its any good. Drama doesn't really work that way especially not these days. I just don't think there's enough of a locked in back end to make it worth while for production companies to eat enough cost to make it worthwhile for a network to commit to a 100 episodes. The other issue is that you can't control a drama budget in the same way you can a comedy especially not a multi-cam comedy and as far as I can remember all of these 10 +90 shows have been multi-cam so far. You can produce multi-cam comedy quickly and cheaply. As hard as you might try you can't produce an hour long drama quickly and cheaply.

Having said that I can see a situation emerging where when a drama hits 40-50 episodes we start seeing production companies pushing for multi-season commitments that can lock them into 88+ episodes. At that point everyone involved has a much better idea of how the show is performing, how much it costs and how its likely to hold up and what kind of syndication value it'll have so everyone can go in with their eyes open.


Fox couldn't have launched the show sooner. Cowell's commitments to American Idol meant that the show couldn't be pulled together for Fall 2010 and Fox weren't particularly keen on the idea of splitting focus in 2010-2011 given that they had serious concerns that Idol would collapse without Cowell. Equally with the Super Bowl they felt they had an unmissable chance to promote a Fall 2011 debut for The X Factor.

In fairness Cowell knew this was the case when he went with Fox rather than NBC. The problem is that he (and Fox) didn't count on NBC successfully launching another singing format before them and stealing their thunder. Had The Voice not debuted in 2011 I don't think The X Factor would have struggled as much as it did during its first season. Audiences would have been slightly more receptive to it. The problem was The Voice essentially takes a lot of the elements of The X Factor and does them better and has a much better initial hook than The X Factor.


The TOWIE edit is certainly there although that's not entirely what I meant when I said they'd got the edit wrong. There's a couple of instances in the first episode where they use the TOWIE edit to set up a 'villain' so that when the judges unnecessarily rip them to shreds the audience can feel fine about it. Ultimately it just sums up my major problem with The X Factor these days (and Idol to some extent) its mean for the sake of being mean. That's always been an element of the show but its become the dominant element these days. Its just not uplifting or aspirational television (which is why these talent shows worked in the first place) because its just so contrived, exploitative and mean. All of which is only heightened because The Voice whilst equally contrived albeit in a slightly different way goes out of its way not to be exploitative or mean.

For the record this is why I think The Voice is by far the better format. Yes it needs to work out its later stages but at its core The Voice is still the aspirational television that these talent shows were when they launched and its that aspirational aspect of a 'normal' person achieving something extraordinary because of their talent and work that makes these shows tick and not the OTT back stories and 'personalities'.


Weirdly this was the part I liked most about X Factor US. On paper I agree the lack of a presenter feels like it shouldn't work but it works surprisingly well. The combination of on screen graphics, contestants backstage and stock news/radio audio actually works better than having the presenter there. The complete lack of a presenter is basically the only thing about The X Factor US audition shows that I like.

CBS has two issues on their hands right now on Mondays. Firstly, if Partners will have viewers at all, given the bad reviews it has received and the media predicting this show to get an early axe (even though it will nowhere be as disastrous as How to be a Gentleman). Second, if 2 Broke Girls can really rate well (ie. hold their own ground) for the 9pm block. They did well last season, but worth mentioning that they did drop off quite a bit, in the latter part of the season. As for lead-ins, I doubt it would matter that much in CBS' case for Monday Comedy. Even if Partners rated badly, 2 Broke Girls is more than capable to build up the audiences.

Moving 2 1/2 Men to Thursday after TBBT is obviously a tactic to overthrow TXF and Idol this season. CBS knows that TBBT is a powerhouse right now, being the highest rated comedy show last season (not to mention, beating TXF and Idol in the timeslot last year). Plus, they are amongst the top syndicated shows every week. 2 and a 1/2 Men is just getting a free pass, I think. If CBS did that last season, TXF might be bordering on cancellation at that point. It's going to be an interesting ride for CBS and FOX on Thursday 8pm.

DWTS is in its fragile state right now. They are not the heavyweights of the ratings as they were a few years ago. ABC's "reality star" castings for season 10 (Kate Gosselin) and 11 (The Situation, Bristol Palin) (spring and fall 2010, respectively) prompted a boost, but it virtually went downhill from there. Season 11's blatant favouritism/popularity contest/not-so "suspicious" fixing (not only with public voting but the judges as well ) turned the viewers off. ABC knows that they had to do an "all-stars" season since NBC's The Voice came into the picture with dominating Monday Comedy lineup from CBS. Also, fans have been complaining on how "d-list" the lineup was in recent seasons and it seems as thought that the producers have ran out of which new blood to invite. I heard that Olympic Gold medalist swimmer, Ryan Lochte was in consideration at some point for season 16 (spring 2013). Like I said before, don't be too surprised if you see DWTS claiming 3rd in its timeslot.

Don't get me wrong I think (with the exception of New Girl) the actual content of Fox's Tuesday night line-up is pretty good. I really quite like Raising Hope and both the new comedies, but particularly The Mindy Project, are good. The problem is I don't think audiences will find them or stick with them. The Tuesday schedules on the 'big four' are killer

ABC
8PM: Dancing with the Stars: Results
9PM: Happy Endings
9:30PM: Don't Trust The Bitch in Apt. 23
10PM: Private Practice

CBS
8PM: NCIS
9PM: NCIS: LA
10PM: Vegas

Fox
8PM: Raising Hope
8:30PM: Ben & Kate
9PM: New Girl
9:30PM: The Mindy Project

NBC
8PM: The Voice: Results
9PM: Go On
9:30PM: The New Normal
10PM: Parenthood

The 9PM comedy battle between ABC, NBC and Fox is going to be killer. The weird thing is I think NBC might actually win that battle at least Go On looks like it can beat New Girl and Happy Endings. The 9:30 portion of the hour is anyone's guess. And 10PM is going to be equally tough to call. I'd assume Parenthood and Private Practice will cancel each other out leaving Vegas to stroll to victory but is the CBS audience actually going to like Vegas? Tuesday is one hell of a night this year.

I actually think they should have put more faith in those two and had them anchor the 8pm and 9pm hours. I like New Girl but its ratings, particularly towards the end of the season, weren't special. And Raising Hope at 8pm is going to make life difficult for Ben & Kate. Shows starting on the half hour usually rely on their lead-ins more than other shows. I'd probably have gone for Ben & Kate followed by New Girl followed by The Mindy Project followed by Raising Hope.

On the plus side, it ought to do better than ABC whose Tuesday schedule looks horrific. Happy Endings and Don't Trust the B are OK (sometimes brilliant but too inconsistent). But they didn't rate well out of Modern Family. They're young shows (more 18-34 than 18-49) and they'll be coming out of one of broadcast TV's oldest skewing series.

And while Go On is still in play, The New Normal already looks underwhelming. So I think we could end up with 3 networks quite disappointed at their 9pm hour on Tuesdays.

9pm-11pm on Tuesdays looks like a good bet for any cable network looking to run some drama! I'm not entirely convinced by Vegas on CBS either (though I'd like it to do well simply as it's a bit bolder for them).

We've seen time and time again that reviews mean very little when it comes to the CBS comedies as long as they're sheltered in the Monday comedy block. Just about every new comedy CBS launches and has launched for years has gotten bad reviews. 2 Broke Girls got some horrific reviews last year but the audience stuck with it anyway. It is however interesting that CBS have switched to a promotional campaign that has almost no actual footage from the show. I can see why. The pilot is bad but as with the critics I've felt every CBS comedy for a good few years has been awful. Plus lets not forget that with the exception of Outsourced (and their multi-cam stuff) basically every NBC comedy from recent years has had good-great reviews and nobody has watched them...

Plus if they have to pull Partners they've always got Rules of Engagement on the sidelines. The consistent CBS safety net.

The big point of concern for me when it comes to CBS' Monday block is 2 Broke Girls. That's an awfully big risk they're taking that could go spectacularly wrong. I think I mostly applaud them for taking it and its undoubtedly bolstered their Thursday night line-up (although I still think they have Elementary and Person of Interest the wrong way around) but Monday won't be an easy ride for them and they could be leaving the door open for someone to make huge gains if 2 Broke Girls doesn't work out as the comedy centrepiece. Although in reality none of the other networks actually seem poised to make big gains on Monday anyway...


I think there's more chance he'll do The Bachelor and I certainly think it would be better for both him and ABC if he did The Bachelor rather than Dancing with the Stars. Lochte alone isn't going to do much for Dancing with the Stars (where in reality lower tier stars tend to be the better gets for various reasons) but he can inject some serious life/interest back into The Bachelor by himself.

FX have Tuesday 10PM locked up for the foreseeable future with Sons of Anarchy which is probably enough to scare most cable nets away from 10PM at the moment. 9PM seems like a strong slot for drama though particularly as NCIS: LA has been looking a little shaky as well although I don't know that anyone is poised to take advantage of that.

Best case scenario, New Girl will hover around the 2.5-3 area. Unless Zooey Deschanel wins the Best Comedy Actress at the Emmys this year (which is not likely to happen), I don't see an improvement in the ratings anytime soon, if ever. The problem was that Jake Johnson's character is supposed to look like the "lovable loser" in the sitcom, but in the end came out as very unlikeable who whines and sulks half the season. Plus, the quality were not as great as the first three episodes.

Happy Endings and Don't Trust the B---- are great sitcoms, but like C14E says, they are more younger skewing shows. Their ratings, like New Girl, were nothing to scream about. Plus, they are premiering on October 23, which is virtually halfway of the DWTS season and I don't know how that would help with the frequent lead-in reliant network. I doubt that ABC will have all four Tuesday sitcoms by February 2013. Another possible case can be that Happy Endings can join Cougar Town by moving to TBS in 2014, if their ratings falter further this season. Don't Trust the B---- might be on the bubble here. Even if The Neighbors get cancelled after a few episodes (realistic possibility), will ABC put B---- at Wed 8:30pm after The Middle? It has the upmost potential to do better than Better With You back in 2010-11 season. ABC and NBC will battle to win the slot and FOX's new sitcoms will either do enough for a full-season order or get cancelled entirely since Raising Hope and New Girl were not good lead-ins.

As for the Tuesday 10pm lineup, talk about uninspiring. Private Practice will end after Kate Walsh leaves. I really can't see the show continuing on after that. If they do, things might turn ugly. Parenthood can languish and Vegas will start off well, but end disastrous. If Private Practice ends this year, Body of Proof will take over in the winter period (they were ordered only 13 episodes) and a midseason drama will fill in their shoes afterwards - that is if DWTS returns to 9pm for their results show in spring 2013.