News Roundup: 5 Renewals, 2 Cancellations, & a Whole Lot More

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Renewals, Cancellations, & Scheduling:
MTV has renewed Jersey Shore for a sixth season.

Starz has gone ahead and renewed Magic City (the show that follows a hotel in Miami) for a second season before it even premieres. You may recall that they did this with Boss last fall.

IFC has renewed Portlandia for a third season and Whisker Wars for a second season. They also have a new premiere date: Comedy Bang Bang and game show Bunk on Friday, June 8th.

NBC has renewed Smash for a second season.

The upcoming fourth season of Teen Mom will be the end of the show.

IFC has cancelled Onion News Network after two seasons.

SeaWorld is behind the new ABC show Sea Rescue, which will debut on April 7th. The half-hour show will "give viewers a first-hand look at how SeaWorld works to rehabilitate wounded animals and return them to the wild."

With the upfronts coming fast now, ABCFamily has a bunch of premiere dates. Bunheads, the Vegas showgirl-turned-dance-teacher drama will premiere Monday, June 11th at 9pm ET/PT. Baby Daddy, a comedy about a teen father, begins Wednesday, June 20th at 8:30pm ET/PT. Beverly Hills Nannies, an hour-long docuseries, begins Wednesday, July 11th at 9pm ET/PT.

FOX has announced many of its season finale dates, including Glee on Tuesday, May 22nd, House on Monday, May 21st (preceded by a one-hour retrospective), Raising Hope on Tuesday, April 17th, New Girl on Tuesday, May 8th, Fringe on Friday, May 11th, Bones on Monday, May 14th, and The Simpsons on Sunday, May 20th.

CBS has also announced some season finale dates, such as The Good Wife on Sunday, April 29th, The Amazing Race on Sunday, May 6th, 2 Broke Girls on Monday, May 7th, CSI on Wednesday, May 9th, CSI: NY on Friday, May 11th, The Big Bang Theory on Thursday, May 10th, Undercover Boss on Friday, May 11th, Survivor on Sunday, May 13th, How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men on Monday, May 14th, NCIS and NCIS: LA on Tuesday, May 15th, and Rules of Engagement on Thursday, May 17th.

TBS' Men at Work will launch on Thursday, May 24th. The network's Sullivan & Son will begin Thursday, July 19th.

NBC's Best Friends Forever begins Wednesday, April 4th at 8:30pm ET/PT. This six-episode comedy showcases the friendship of two girls after one faces a sudden divorce.

If you're a WrestleMania fan, you're in luck. Before the April 1st event, a one-hour documentary, Once in a Lifetime: Rock vs. Cena, will air plenty of times. First on USA on Monday, March 26th at 8pm ET/PT, it'll also be seen on SyFy, Bravo, E!, Oxygen, G4, Style, NBC Sports, Cloo, mun2, and Universal HD before the match.

The Ricky Gervais Show returns to HBO on Friday, April 20th.


Cast & Plot Updates:
Jason O'Mara (most recently seen playing a cop father on Terra Nova) will co-star in CBS' "untitled period drama pilot based on the life of rodeo cowboy-turned-Vegas sheriff Ralph Lamb."

When Alan suffers from a cardiac event on Two and a Half Men, Charlie ghost appears... and will be played by Kathy Bates.

Although Cuddy won't be back for the series finale of House, Thirteen will be! Olivia Wilde has been confirmed to do one final episode.

Eddie Izzard will play Grandpa Munster on the new CBS comedy, Mockingbird Lane. 

Teen Mom 2 subject Jenelle Evans has had a few of the charges against her dropped. Not the drug ones, though, just "making threats and harassing phone calls."

Martha Stewart will make an appearance on the Law and Order: SVU episode "Learning Curve" in April.

Doris Roberts will guest on Desperate Housewives before the series' end.

Austin Stowell (best known for playing Jesse on The Secret Life of the American Teenager) is now part of the cast of Ned Fox is My Manny, the upcoming FOX show.

Shows in Development & Other Fun Stuff:
A sequel to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is in the works. More information should be available this summer, but, for now, know that an outline and several songs are written!

DirecTV, DISH, Verizon FiOS, and AT&T U-verse will offer a free preview of Starz and Encore March 29th - April 2nd.

Ripper Street is BBCAmerica's newest drama, an eight-part series that just began filming.

WEtv has two docuseries coming this summer: Kendra on Top and Cyndi. The first follows Kendrea Wilinson-Baskett, of course, and the second follows Cyndi Lauper.

GSN will have Jeff Foxworthy host a new game show, The American Bible Challenge, to begin shooting later this month.

MTV has four new shows in the making, including The Heights (hour-long docuseries about a group of friends living in Washington Heights), Epic Fail (half-hour panel show to re-enact "cringe-worthy moments"), Totally Clueless (a hidden camera game show), and This is How I Made It (lessons in how to succeed from two celebrities each half-hour).

With SOAPnet disappearing on Friday (March 23rd), be ready for Disney Junior to take its place! It'll be geared toward kids ages 2-7.

OWN isn't doing so hot. They've had to let go of 20% of their staff (though they had a larger staff than typical cable channels) and their numbers aren't as high as they had hoped.

If ABC doesn't renew The River, Netflix might pick it up.

News Roundup: Late February 2012

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Renewals, Cancellations, & Scheduling:
Comedy Central's Key & Peele was renewed for a second season of ten episodes, to air next fall. [Press Release]

Tyler Perry's For Better or Worse was renewed for 35 more episodes. TBS also renewed Conan, through April 2014.

Gold Rush has been renewed for a third season.

The CW has renewed America's Next Top Model for a nineteenth cycle. Impressive, considering we're at the very beginning of the 18th cycle.

CMT renewed Bayou Billionaires (Shreveport family who struck it rich with natural gas) and My Big Redneck Vacation (the extended Clampet family in the Hamptons) for second seasons.

FX renewed Archer for a fourth season

Spike's Blue Mountain State has been canceled after three seasons.

MTV's Good Vibes has been canceled.

Sons of Guns will be back on Wednesday, February 29th.

CNBC will present WikiLeaks: Secrets & Lies on Thursday, March 1st at 10pm ET/PT. [CNBC Press Release]

Q'Viva! The Chosen!, a docuseries showcasing Latin music and dance (the one that Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are behind) will start on Saturday, March 3rd on FOX.

On Sunday, March 4th, Army Wives will premiere its sixth season.

Ugly Americans returns on Wednesday, March 14th.

Sweet Genius, another Food Network show, begins on March 15th, and will run thirteen episodes that look at some pastry chefs going for $10,000.

Community will be back on Thursday, March 15th.

NBC's Bent premieres March 21st.

Oxygen's Brooklyn 11223 (a docuseries about some twentysomethings who are torn apart by betrayal) premieres Monday, March 26th.

Oprah's Lifeclass: The Tour premieres Monday, March 26th (8pm ET/PT), and will feature episodes in St. Louis, New York, and a third, yet-to-be-announced location.

OWN's Welcome to Sweetie Pie's (a family restaurant show set in St. Louis) and Beverly's Full House (Beverly Johnson's family life) will premiere on Saturday, March 31st.

Betty White's Off Their Rockers will begin April 4th.

Stephen Colbert's mother isn't doing well, so The Colbert Report has been suspended for a while.



Cast & Plot Updates:
Kal Penn will be the eponymous Prairie Dogs, which is a comedy to run on ABC. The show will "follow an uncool cubicale worker - aka 'prairie dog' - named Neil who is the victim of identity theft."

Kelly Bishop will play the mother-in-law of Sutton Foster's character on ABC Family's Bunheads. 

Remember when Ryan Phillippe signed on to CBS's upcoming cop show, Golden Boy? Well, he's dropped out.

Aimee Teegarden will star in CW's The Selection, which you may have noticed is an awful lot like Hunger Games.

Lily Tomlin will play Reba's mom on the new ABC comedy.

Brittany Snow, Bill Pullman, and Josh Gad will all be on 1600 Penn, NBC's White House comedy.

Ashley Tisdale has been cast in a lead role in Louis C.K.'s CBS sitcom.

Martin Lawrence will be starring in CBS's new family cop comedy.

In a surprise casting move, Lucy Liu has been cast as Watson in CBS's Elementary.

AnnaSophia Robb will play Young Carrie Bradshaw in the CW's Sex and the City prequel, The Carrie Diaries.

Shows in Development & Other Fun Stuff:
We're a little behind in reporting this one, but Amazon Prime's instant video selection now offers "thousands of TV episodes from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT, and Logo."

Google is planning to enter the home entertainment market - soon you'll be able to use a Google-branded device to stream music throughout your home. Look for it later this year.

NBC is cooking up a Hannibal Lecter series.

Jenny McCarthy has a new talk show coming to VH1 later this year.

CBS has 3, an unscripted series about "three women's search for love," coming out this summer.

The Travel Channel has greenlit Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America (eleven episodes of a guy goes around eating sandwiches) and Toy Hunters (a toy collector searches for rare toys worth lots of money. 

Netflix has yet another show that they'll be streaming exclusively - Orange is the New Black, which is based on "the memoir of a communications executive who served time for drug-related charges in a minimum-security women's prison.

The X-Factor's auditions for the second season begins Thursday, March 1st. So You Think You Can Dance is having auditions on Friday, March 2nd.

In case you wanted to watch Awake, NBC's new drama, before it begins Thursday, March 1st), you can!

TLC's My Collection Obsession has been extended into an eight-part series, My Crazy Obsession. It will premiere on Wednesday, March 7th. Extreme Cheapskates has also been picked up as a series, and is expected to air this summer. Casting available!

Comcast has launched a new streaming video service, Xfinity Streampix, which features full backlogs of series such as 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, The Office, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, and Wizards of Waverly Place.

Google is currently testing its TV service in Kansas City, as well as preparing to roll out some "Android-powered, Oakley Thump-inspired" glasses, which would be able to tell you where you met someone if the facial recognition software works well.

Regis Philbin is shopping around a pilot that he's keeping quiet about. CBS and TV Land are among the networks for whom he's pitched so far.