Looking at the Tuesday Network Upfronts

Last week, the networks all announced their initial schedules for next season. Beginning September 2007, this is what the Tuesday grid is going to look like, at least tentatively. There is always the chance of reshuffling and other various changes to be made before the schedules actually go live. Now rather than take a look at each of the networks, I thought it would be better to take a look at the daily grids. Better to see how the networks stack up against one another. Today is Tuesday, so let's see how it looks.

Bold= New Show | Italics= What I plan to watch

Tues	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30
ABC	Cavemen	Carpoolers	Dancing with the Stars Results		Boston Legal
CBS	NCIS		The Unit		Cane
NBC	The Biggest Loser		Chuck		Law & Order: SVU
FOX	New Amsterdam		House		Local Programming
CW	Beauty and the Geek		Reaper		Local Programming

ABC leads the off the night with a pair of new sitcoms to kick the evening off. The first of which I doubt will last more than five episodes. It is Cavemen, the comedy inspired by the Geico commercials, that's right, a commercial inspired sitcom. I have read an early report on the pilot, and it is reportedly awful. I saw a scene, and it is as bad as I imagined. It is followed up by Carpoolers, a comedy starring Fred Goss, Jerry O'Connell, Faith Ford, and a few others. It is about guys and their various flaws and their attempts to deal.

CBS schedule starts off unchanged save for a new anchor in Cane, starring Jimmy Smits as the new head of a family who made its fortune in sugar and rum. Frankly, I don't see this lasting all that long, though I am willing to be proven wrong. It is just from the preview I saw I just did not feel hooked into the world of rum and sugar that is causing all the problems for the family.

NBC is shuffling their Law & Order franchises around, with Criminal Intent moving off to the USA network, and the original going to Fridays, which I think happened earlier this season. In any case, they are slotting a new comedy/drama in the 9:00 slot as the lead in to SVU. The show is called Chuck, another one that seems destined for the scrap heap, though this is one I actually want to see. It is about a geek who works at an electronics store (like Best Buy) who gets spy secrets embedded in his head by an encoded email and then becomes a target by those looking for said secrets. Reminds me of Jake 2.0.

Fox is giving House a new lead in with New Amsterdam, a sci-fi styled crime drama whose lead detective is an immortal. OK, I'm sold based just on that. Whether or not it is any good, and if Fox decides to treat it with any respect. I am willing to give it a shot.

The CW is going to start their evening with Beauty and the Geek, followed by a new series whose pilot was directed by Kevin Smith. The show is called Reaper, and it reads like a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural. A guy finds out that his soul was sold to the devil by his parents, and now he must serve as a bounty hunter for Satan. Sounds like it could be fun, but it is taking the place of one of the best shows of recent years, Veronica Mars which has gone to the scrap heap before its time.

Well, 9:00 Tuesday just got awfully crowded, at least for a couple of weeks, until one of these new shows gets canned. I am still smarting over the Mars cancellation, but there are still a few interesting shows coming in to fill the vacated timeslots.