ABC is the third network to announce its schedule for Fall 2013, featuring eight new shows and nearly all of its current ones staying in the same time slots. However, there’s one giant show missing: Dancing with the Stars: The Results.
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Yes, following in the footsteps of So You Think You Can Dance, DWTS is dumping its Tuesday night results shows. In the fall the dancing competition will only air once a week and the results and performance show will all be combined into one episode. This is clearly a sign that ABC is losing faith in its aging franchise.
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The only other change for a returning show is The Neighbors, which is moving to Friday to join Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing. I suppose I should just be happy that it got a second season at all as it joins Bones and Raising Hope on the list of shows being shipped off to Fridays next year.
ABC president Paul Lee also revealed a new strategy. Some dramas, including Once Upon a Time, Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and Revenge, will air in two uninterrupted batches of 12 episodes each, one in the fall and one in the late spring. The long hiatud in the middle will be filled by limited-run series. For instance, the fantasy world reality competition The Quest will fill in for Once Upon a Time Sundays. In addition, some new dramas, like Betrayal and the mid-season supernatural series Resurrection, are only intended for 12 or 13 episode runs.
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The schedule does not include Suburgatory, The Bachelor or The Taste, all of which have been renewed. They will likely return at mid-season, as will new dramas Killer Women, Mind Games and Resurrection, new comedy Mixology and new reality series The Quest..
ABC’s new shows are largely debuting on Tuesdays which features an entire line-up of new programming, starting with the highly-anticipated S.H.I.E.L.D. drama from Joss Whedon, which leads into a comedy hour which leads into a drama about winning the lottery. That line-up seems haphazard at best.
Family comedy Back in the Game and Rebel Wilson’s Super Fun Night will join The Middle and Modern Family to take a turn at succeeding on Wednesdays.
On Thursday at 8pm, a time slot ABC has had a lot of difficulty with, the network is hoping the Once Upon a Time spin-off in Wonderland will finally help them out. In the past four years, seven different dramas have failed in that time slot: Zero Hour, Last Resort, Missing, Charlie’s Angels, My Generation, The Deep End and FlashForward.
Here’s a look at ABC’s fall line-up.
MONDAY
8pm: Dancing with the Stars
10pm: Castle
TUESDAY
8pm: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (NEW)
9pm: The Goldbergs (NEW)
9:30pm: Trophy Wife (NEW)
10pm: Lucky 7 (NEW)
WEDNESDAY
8pm: The Middle
8:30pm: Back in the Game (NEW)
9pm: Modern Family
9:30pm: Super Fun Night (NEW)
10pm: Nashville
THURSDAY
8pm: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (NEW)
9pm: Grey’s Anatomy
10pm: Scandal
FRIDAY
8pm: Last Man Standing
8:30pm: The Neighbors
9pm: Shark Tank
10pm: 20/20
SUNDAY
7pm: America’s Funniest Home Videos
8pm: Once Upon a Time
9pm: Revenge
10pm: Betrayal
Here’s a quick description of the new shows.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Based on the spy group from The Avengers, a highly-trained organization fights the forces of evil.
The Goldbergs: A family comedy set in the 1980s.
Trophy Wife: An older man’s third wife must struggle to deal with his exes and their children in this comedy.
Lucky 7: Seven gas station employees in Queens win a huge lottery jackpot and have their lives turned upside-down.
Back in the Game: A former softball player and her son move in with her dad (played by James Caan) where the family business of baseball skips a generation as the woman coaches her son’s failing Little League team.
Super Fun Night: Three best friends agree to make every Friday night a super fun night, leading to wild, chaotic adventures.
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Spin-off of the popular fairy tale drama centered on Alice’s adventures in Wonderland.
Betrayal: A photographer has an affair, but when it turns out the man she’s sleeping with is defending a murder suspect being prosecuted by the woman’s husband, things get complicated.
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
