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: Mid-February 2012

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Renewals, Cancellations, & Scheduling:
As we mentioned earlier in the week, House has officially been canceled, so there won't be any more episodes after May. FOX renewed Kitchen Nightmares for a fifth season, though.

Flip Men, Spike's show about real estate investors, has been renewed for a second, 12-episode season. Ink Master was also renewed for a second season.

Shamless, House of Lies, and Californication have all been renewed by Showtime.

Bravo's Top Chef has been renewed for a tenth season.

TVLand renewed The Exes for a second season, set to premiere in June. [yeah, we did mention this in our recap of the first season finale.]

FX renewed Sons of Anarchy for a sixth season, even though season five has yet to air.

TLC's My Crazy Obsession premieres on Wednesday, March 7th, at 10pm ET/PT. Look forward to people who collect Cabbage Patch Kids or have entire households of pink items.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager has been renewed by ABCFamily for a fifth season.

SyFY has renewed Face Off for a third season and Being Human for a third season.

Bravo's Real Housewives of Miami was renewed for a second season.

The Bates Family (you've probably seen them on 17-, 18-, and 19 Kids and Counting) will be getting a television special on TLC on March 27th to share the arrival of their nineteenth child, Jeb Colton Bates. Rumors speculate that this mega-family is also negotiating a deal for a regular series.

TLC's Breathless Bride: Dying to Live premieres on Wednesday, February 29th at 10pm ET/PT, a new special about a woman born with cystic fibrosis waiting on a transplant.

TLC, along with OWN, have acquired the rights to the UK and Australian versions of Undercover Boss. TLC plans to begin airing them weekly beginning tonight at 9pm, while OWN will start airing them tomorrow and subsequent Tuesday nights at 8pm ET/PT.

A&E's Breakout Kings returns for their second season on Sunday, March 4th at 10pm ET/PT.

The Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures returnshttp://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/02/08/travel-channels-ghost-adventures-returns-for-a-sixth-season-on-friday-march-9/119177/ for a sixth season on Friday, March 9th at 9pm ET/PT. Also, Hotel Impossible will premiere Monday, April 9th at 10pm ET/PT.

Nicktoons has Monsuno, a new half-hour action-adventure series premiering Thursday, February 23rd at 8pm ET.

TeenNick has Dance Academy beginning Monday, February 20th at 9:30pm ET. The half-hour show will follow 15-year-old Tara as she pursues her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, alongside other teens living in a boarding house. [TheTalkingBox plans to cover this show, so stay tuned!]

The Hub has The Aquabats! Super Show! premiering on Saturday, March 3rd at 1pm ET. It's about an alternative rock band, and will feature live-action and animated segments.

HBO's animated The Ricky Gervais Show will return on April 20th at 9pm ET/PT.

The Pauley D Project, the spin-off from Jersey Shore, will premiere on MTV on Thursday, March 29th.

FOX's Bones returns April 5th with Hotel Hell to begin April 6th, Bob's Burgers being back March 11th, and Touch officially premiering March 19th.

Jake and the Never Land Pirates has been renewed for a third season by Disney Junior.


Cast & Plot Updates:
Kevin Bacon has been cast as an FBI agent in one of FOX's yet-unnamed pilots.

Rosie O'Donnell's The Rosie Show ain't doin' so well. They've laid off ~30 employees and contract workers, plus they've eliminated the game show segment, as well as reduced the size of the studio audience from several hundred to about 70, and pre-taping more of the interviews. She also said that it wasn't authentic for her to get a conversation going with a big audience and a band.

Sarah Chalke, of Roseanne and Scrubs fame (plus a run on How I Met Your Mother) will star in ABC's How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of your Life, a comedy about a recently divorced single mom who moves in with her parents. [too long a title!]

Tony Shalhoub and Allison Janney will star as the parents on NBC's version of the UK comedy, Friday Night Dinner. Instead of being Jewish, the family will just be "quirky." [I'm a little nervous about how NBC will translate this odd BBC show, but I guess we'll see!]

Liza Minelli had been cast as Victoria's agent on Hot in Cleveland, but she has had to back out, due to an injured ankle.

John Stamos has been cast as the star in Fox's comedy Little Brother, about a man who finds out that he has a half-brother who is an ex-con. TJ Miller will play the ex-con.

John Goodman is close to closing on a deal to be part of Downwardly Mobile, NBC's comedy starring Roseanne Barr as a surrogate mother of sorts to residents of a trailer park.

You may remember that we reported last month about Living Loaded being a new pilot for FOX. Today we report that Mike Vogel has been cast as the lead, provided Pan Am doesn't get renewed out of nowhere.

Ryan Phillipe will be the star of one of CBS's untitled drama pilots, playing a young and ambitious new police officer.


Shows in Development & Other Fun Stuff:
More than 60% of the video streamed by Netflix subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2011 were television shows and miniseries.

With "questionable" photos of Cousin Amy Duggar, someone tried to extort TLC, threatening that if she wasn't paid $10,000, she'd release the images. Or, they could just cancel the show. The FBI have it under control. 

TLC also ordered a new series, Southie Pride, about five South Boston families.

ABC has picked up two more comedy pilots, one written by and starring Reba McEntire, who will play a woman who divorces a cheating husband and moves her family from Nashville to Malibu. [is it just me, or is this turning into a comedy network?]

Tia Mowry and Tori Spelling are slated to star in ABCFamily's 2012 holiday movie, The Mistle-Tones.

Tia's younger brother, Tahj Mowry, is starring in Baby Daddy, a comedy to begin on ABCFamily later this year. The network has another show in the works: Beverly Hills Nannies. Also, Bunheads has just gotten the green light from ABCFamily, which is the tale of a Las Vegas showgirl who married someone she barely knows, moving back with him to work at his mother's dance school.

NBC's reboot of The Munsters is going to be called 1313 Mockingbird Lane - their address.

Nickelodeon has Life with Boys underway, with 22 episodes set to follow a 14-year-old girl who lives her an overprotective dad and three brothers.

Nickelodeon also has a new comedy series coming, NickMom Night Out, set to launch in the fourth quarter of the year on Nick Jr.

CBS has picked up a comedy (yet to be titled) that centers on a single guy in his late thirties who loses everything in the real estate collapse and has to move back in with his parents. Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy's husband) is a co-writer and set to be the lead. [how many shows do we need to have about adults moving back in with their parents??]

TBS is planning Sullivan and Son, a workplace comedy set at a bar in Pittsburgh, to air this summer.

FOX has ordered a family comedy pilot called The Goodwin Games, about "a father who leaves his fortune to his three children only if they agree to his terms. How I Met Your Mother's Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are two of the writers.

Iranian officials have banned Homer Simpson dolls, since they promote Western culture.

The founder of a now-defunct al-Qaida propaganda website has pleaded guilty to the online threats aimed at South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

If you want to chat with ABC talent, Bill Lawrence, creator of Cougar Town will be participating in a live Twitter chat (@VDoozer) on Tuesday, February 14th, 8:30-9pm PT. Carly Chaikin (@carlychaikin) from Suburgatory will be doing the same on Wednesday, February 15th, 8:30-9pm PT.

Bryan Q. Miller, a writer and story editor from Smallville, will be picking up where the show left off - in a comic book series, which will be digitally published starting April 13, 2012, with a new issue every week.

Roseanne is now the California primary ballot, representing the Green Party.