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RICHARD CARTWRIGHT/CBS
Academy Award winner Robin Williams (left) returns to series television in “The Crazy Ones.” Sarah Michelle Gellar portrays his daughter in the new comedy from CBS.

COMING THIS FALL: Top-rated CBS refuses to rest on its success

Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last updated Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 11:02pm

CBS will finish the 2012-13 broadcast season as the No. 1 network in viewers, which is par for the course over the past decade, but CBS is also expected to be No. 1 in the 18-49 age demo, which hasn’t happened since the 1991-92 TV season.

Success does not breed complacency at the Tiffany Network, which will add a quartet of new comedies this fall, including a two-hour comedy block with Robin Williams on Thursday that will go up against an NBC comedy block. In addition, two of CBS’s comedies are single-camera shows similar in look to NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and ABC’s “Modern Family,” a style CBS has not embraced in the past.

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JONATHON HESSION/NBC
Jonathan Rhys Meyers (left) is Alexander Grayson and Victoria Smurfit is Lady Jayne Wetherby in NBC’s new “Dracula.”

COMING THIS FALL: It’s a total revamp for NBC’s prime time

Lisa De Moraes The Washington Post The Washington Post.

Last updated Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 11:01pm

Last weekend, NBC confirmed that “Saturday Night Live” long-timer Seth Meyers will take over as host of the network’s “Late Night” next year, when Jimmy Fallon takes “The Tonight Show” from Jay Leno.

With the announcement, the network hoped to encourage chatter about late-night TV — which NBC still dominates — rather than prime time, where the network has collapsed whenever Sunday football and “The Voice” take breathers.

In prime time, NBC has decided to give a James Spader action thriller the coveted post-“Voice” time slot. NBC also hopes that family comedies starring Sean Hayes, Mike O’Malley and Michael J. Fox can resuscitate its Thursday nights — and hopes Dracula and Blackbeard can revive its Fridays — but hasn’t made up its mind about keeping Donald Trump or Hannibal Lecter.

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BOB D’AMICO/ABC
(Left to right) Chloe Bennett, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen and Brett Dalton will star in “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” on ABC on Tuesday nights.

COMING THIS FALL: ABC adds 13 new series, cuts 'Dancing With the Stars' down to one night

Lisa De Moraes The Washington Post The Washington Post

Last updated Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 10:59pm

NEW YORK — ABC has collapsed “Dancing With the Stars” to just one night a week — Monday — as the network looks to minimize the fallout from the show’s ratings decline.

That opens up Tuesday nights, which will become home to four of ABC’s 13 new series.

ABC Entertainment Group President Paul Lee, who got on the phone with reporters Tuesday morning, said that the condensing of “Dancing” from two nights to one will give the show a “sense of occasion” and will open up Tuesdays for an all-new lineup of “four-quadrant crowd-pleasers.”

By four quadrants, Lee means programs that appeal to men and women — and young men and young women. “Dancing” appeals heavily to older viewers.

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JAIMIE TRUEBLOOD/Associated Press/FOX
Greg Kinnear stars as Keegan Deane in the new Fox drama “Rake,” which will premiere midseason.

COMING THIS FALL: Fox shakes up schedule with nine new shows

Andy Fixmer, Edmund Lee Bloomberg News Bloomberg News

Last updated Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 10:58pm

LOS ANGELES — Fox Broadcasting has unveiled nine prime-time programs for the 2013-2014 season, shaking up a schedule that has fallen into second place among key viewers after once dominating the ratings.

Five new comedies and four dramas will join the schedule, Kevin Reilly, chairman of entertainment for Fox, said in a statement. The Los Angeles-based network and other broadcasters are showing their new lineups to advertisers this week in an annual event known as the “upfronts.”

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COMING THIS FALL: CW betting on spinoff of popular 'Vampire Diaries'

The Washington Post The Washington Post The Washington Post

Last updated Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 10:57pm

NEW YORK — CW will use its biggest hit, “The Vampire Diaries,” to launch this fall its first crunchy-gravel period drama. And the network’s most successful freshman drama, “Arrow,” will be used to launch a series about teens who have supernatural powers.

“The Vampire Diaries” spinoff, “The Originals,” will not be paired with the mothership show on Thursday nights, as you might expect. Instead, “The Originals” will kick off CW’s Tuesday nights and be paired with those still-kicking demon-hunting brothers of “Supernatural.”

And that crunchy-gravel drama, “Reign,” will get the “Vampire Diaries” lead-in because “Vampire Diaries” is the CW’s most-viewed series among young chicks.

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This publicity image released by CBS shows Robin Williams, left, and Sarah Michelle Gellar in a scene from the pilot episode of "The Crazy Ones," a new CBS comedy premiering in the fall of 2013. (AP Photo/CBS, Richard Cartwright)

Robin Williams returns to TV

Contributed The Associated Press

Last updated Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 9:21am

NEW YORK -- CBS is making a few nips and tucks to network television's most successful schedule, including adding a comedy with Robin Williams playing an unorthodox advertising executive with Sarah Michelle Gellar as his daughter.

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Big cast changes planned for 'Downton Abbey'

Frazier Moore The Associated Press

Last updated Saturday, March 2, 2013 - 8:51am

NEW YORK -- Shirley MacLaine will be returning to "Downton Abbey" next season, and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa is joining the cast.

MacLaine will reprise her role as Martha Levinson, Lord Robert Crawley's freewheeling American mother-in-law, Carnival Films and "Masterpiece" on PBS said Saturday. MacLaine appeared in episodes early last season.

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PBS filming at Roy High focuses on importance of students' help in stopping bomb plot, massacres like Newtown

Nancy Van Valkenburg Standard-Examiner

Last updated Thursday, January 24, 2013 - 4:10pm

ROY — A film crew working on a PBS special, tentatively titled “After Newtown,” on Tuesday taped interviews at Roy High School, which was singled out by producers as an example of how a possible tragedy can be averted when a student steps forward to report a potentially deadly threat.

Researchers for the documentary had learned of the January 2012 discovery of two Roy High students’ plot to plant explosive devices in the school. A third RHS student, Megan Wehrman, reported a suspicious text message from one boy, launching an investigation that confirmed an elaborate plot planned for the day of a school assembly.

“They came here because they want to feature students that have come forward and done the right thing in potentially violent situations,” said Nate Taggart, spokesman for Weber School District, which includes Roy High School.

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Violent programs canceled, delayed after Newtown shooting

Edmund Lee Bloomberg News

Last updated Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - 11:26am

NEW YORK - Movie studios and television programmers have postponed or canceled violent films and TV shows after a shooting left 20 children and six adults dead in a Connecticut elementary school last week.

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