Upfronts 2010: Fox

This is my second post on the 2010 Upfronts. You can find a brief explanation of the Upfronts, as well my first entry, here.

The second network to present at this year’s Upfronts was Fox. As the network which finished this year first in the ratings, few people would expect Fox to make many major changes, and they didn’t disappoint. Next year’s schedule looks a lot like this year’s.

There are a few interesting changes, though. Human Target and The Good Guys, neither of which was expected to return by many, were both renewed, but moved to Fox’s friday night. This time period has been labelled the “death slot”, since there hasn’t been a series that has been able to survive this time period since, I believe, the mid 90s. It’ll be interesting to see how long these two can last there. The only other change really worth pointing out is that Fox will be cutting back on the number of hours of American Idol it airs. The show will now run a “mere” 90 minutes on performance nights and 30 minutes on results nights.

Fox has currently scheduled only six new shows for next year. From the descriptions that have been provided they all seem to be pretty standard fare –a Dallas clone, a family comedy, and “jerk pursues sweet girl” comedy all premiere in the fall, while a Friends clone, an adult animated show, and a cop show from The Shield’s Shawn Ryan are being saved for midseason.

Unfortunately, Fox hasn’t made any of the trailers for their new shows available online yet, so we can only judge them based on their brief descriptions. That being said, none of them sound too promising. At this point the only one I might consider checking out is Ryan’s Ride-Along, based solely on the pedigree. He did a great job with The Shield, but I’m not convinced he’ll be able to create another great cop show within the restrictive confines of network TV. Edit: Some clips have now been made available, which you can see here. None of them did anything to change my opinion of the shows' potential (or lack thereof). The Fox project that was receiving the most buzz going into the last few week was Terra Nova, a series about a family who travels back to prehistoric times, from Steven Spielberg, David Fury, Peter Chernin, and Brannon Braga. With the talent involved it should be worth watching, but Fox says that, because of the extensive effects work required, they’re not sure it’ll be ready for midseason, so it will likely be held until next year (or later).

So not a lot has changed over at Fox. They’re still banking heavily on American Idol and Glee to keep them number one, and that should pay out. Idol is enough of a behemoth that even with the departure of Simon Cowell it should still remain the number one show for at least another season. Glee, meanwhile, will move ever closer to its inevitable implosion but, again, I believe it’s got another decent season in it before it destroys itself, so the ratings will likely remain strong, especially since it will get a healthy bump airing in the post-Superbowl timeslot.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a look at ABC’s line-up.

Sleep well,

DTE