FOX Picks Up Four New Pilots for 2011 – 2012: J.J. Abrams’, Alcatraz, Bones Spinoff, The Finder, Comedies The New Girl & I Hate My Teenage Daughter

There is ZERO coincidence at all that on May 10th, FOX announced that they had closed the deal to bring House back for an eighth season, that they also announces they were canceling all of their remaining shows that hadn’t already been picked up for renewal (Lie To Me, Human Target, The Chicago Code, Traffic Light, and Breaking In… although as we reported, the reports of BI‘s death may be premature).  It’s also not a coincidence that FOX announced that they were picking up four new pilots for Fall 2011 on the same day as well.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Alcatraz, from J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot Prods. and Warner Bros. TV. The crime drama revolving around Alcatraz and the team investigating the mysterious reappearance of its 1960s inhabitants in the present stars Lost‘s Jorge Garcia. The drama gained early buzz and a fan in Fox’s Peter Rice, according to sources, though some questioned whether the net had room for another mystery drama with Abrams’ Fringe already on the schedule.

The Finder, a Bones spinoff from sister studio 20th TV. The drama, which centers on a military-trained “finder” (Geoff Stults) who helps locate lost items or persons in the Florida Keys, recently rolled out to solid ratings as a back-door pilot. The project won high marks internally, particularly by those who wanted to find a way to continue the recently renewed Bones franchise once the long-running — and thus pricey — original ends.

The New Girl, a Zooey Deschanel comedy from 20th, will appear on Fox’s fall schedule. The single-camera series, which is believed to be a Kevin Reilly favorite, centers on a quirky female teacher who becomes roommates with three guys: a man-child, a player and a cynic.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter, a Jaime Pressly/Katie Finneran comedy from Warner Bros., is a go. The multicamera laugher centers on two women who have daughters like the girls who once picked on them in high school.

Deadline is reporting that the Ethan Hawke spy-thriller vehicle Exit Strategy is still in play for mid-season and may being held off for retooling.

Described as a high octane procedural, Exit Strategy centers on a team of 5 experts associated with the CIA who are deployed when a CIA operation goes bad to extract the ones involved before it’s too late. Hawke will play the team leader, the architect of exit strategy who also empathizes with the people they extract and would rather die than let them get hurt. Each episode will tackle a different crisis in a different country. Exit Strategy is envisioned as a potential successor to Fox’s signature drama 24. Like 24, the action in Exit Strategy will also unfold in real-time. And like 24’s Kiefer Sutherland, Hawke would segue from the feature world to take on the lead in Exit Strategy, his first series. Kurtzman, Orci and KOPP’s Heather Kadin are executive producing the project, with Guggenheim co-executive producing.

Folks, don’t forget that the major network up-front advertising events begin TOMORROW, Monday, May 16th and go on through Thursday.  This is the week that we will find out the fates of all this season’s shows that haven’t already been decided and we’ll also find out what new shows will be on the schedules for the 2011 – 2012 season. You can find out the schedules for all of the events, here.

TV-Tastic EPIC FAIL: House Renewed! Lie To Me, Human Target, The Chicago Code, & Breaking In CANCELED!

When we’re wrong we admit it and this was the biggest case of FAIL that we have had since we started this blog.   A few weeks ago we not only predicted that FOX would lose House but we also predicted that out of these three shows, Lie To Me, Human Target, and The Chicago Code at least one would be saved despite mediocre ratings. Well, we were wrong on all counts, but it certainly is a qualified FAIL.

House Stays With FOX For Eighth Season

The New York Daily News has reported that Universal Media Studios the has come to terms with FOX Broadcasting over the price for the show and cast salaries.  Well, to be more accurate NYD reported that NBCUniversal had come to terms with FOX Broadcasting, which is completely inaccurate. Look, Mainstream Lazy-Press, stop calling it NBCUniversal because it sounds cool.  It’s NOT NBCUniversal.  It used to be NBCUniversal Television Studios and NBCUniversal Television Group is the parent company but that’s not who makes the decisions for UMS.  This is the equivalent of calling 20th Century Fox Television Studios, FOX Entertainment Group.

Rant over… moving along.

NOT NBCUniversal

With the deal finally getting sealed for House,  we’re not surprised about the cancellations. We predicted that House wasn’t going to be picked up because of all the deadlines that had gone by, the fact that Universal Media Studios (fka NBCUniversal Television Studio) and FOX could not come to terms on licensing fees and actors salaries and the fact that UMS really wanted this money and would have been glad to take it from NBC who is not only desperate for a scripted drama hit, but it also just had $200 million more dumped into its budget for programming by Comcast. So based on this and the fact that FOX has a lot of question marks this Fall for scripted-drama, we speculated that the loss of House would set off a tidal wave of changes in FOX’s programming decisions, including the ones we mentioned in the beginning of this piece.

So, yes, we failed, but consider the fact that all of those predictions were predicated on House going to NBC.  Regardless of the outcome, there’s certainly no denying the fact that the fate of House on FOX was the key factor in their recent programming decisions so the importance of House for FOX cannot be overstated.  It’s no coincidence that the day the announcement is made about House that FOX also announces that they are canceling five scripted shows (not surprisingly, Traffic Light was also canceled) and picking up a whole bunch of new pilots (story, here).

Canceled? Huh???

That being said, we were very surprised about the cancellation of Breaking In for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s a great show, and it has a strong cast (with the Christian Slater as the lead), put up decent numbers, had great exposure as the lead-out for American Idol and had a lot of potential.  We don’t understand their logic of not giving it a chance to run a complete season next Fall.  The show couldn’t have been particularly expensive to produce and it certainly wasn’t losing money. Was the problem really that it wasn’t retaining enough of AI‘s audience as the lead-out?  How much were they expecting, really?  It’s not entirely the same audience.

But fear not, as it looks like FOX may be reconsidering this rather hasty decision and it is possible that we may see BI in FOX’s 2011 – 2012 schedule after all.  Check out this related post for all the details about all the latest developments for BI.

Folks, don’t forget that the major network up-front media events are on Monday, May 16th.  This is the day that we will find out the fates of all this season’s shows that haven’t already been decided and we’ll also find out what new shows will be on the schedules for the 2011 – 2012 season.  You can find out the schedules for all of the events, here.