"Fall 2022 Primetime TV Grid: No Fox (Yet) As Nets Play It Safe With Much More Of The Same"/ "Fall TV preview: What's old is new again, and expect plenty more of the same"

May 19, 2022 "Fall 2022 Primetime TV Grid: No Fox (Yet) As Nets Play It Safe With Much More Of The Same": Today I found this article by Dominic Patten on Yahoo news:

 If there is one thing the now-concluded upfronts have shown us this year, it’s that the diminished giants of the broadcast networks are stepping lightly but blowing a lot of bluster. Unless you’re the Murdoch-owned Fox, that is. Then you’re just giving an Art of War middle finger to the convention of a fall schedule and forcing the town to guess your next move.

Oh yeah, and the self-declared transitioning CW is primping itself for a likely sale to Nexstar – which means a double shot of Walker and All American with new spinoff series on the YA-leaning net’s schedule come September.

Following a pageant of often-bloated presentations from the corporate overlords in NYC over the past few days, it’s also now uncontested that the Big 3 are no longer the jewel in the crown.

Shuffled into the overall conglomerate mega-mix and seemingly secondary to their streaming cousins, ABC, NBC and CBS are playing it very safe this season, if the schedule is anything to go by. In the hope of not having to hit the panic button, there’s a Rookie spinoff coming from ABC, a Love Boat-inspired dating show docking on CBS, and NBC is taking the exact opposite of a Quantum Leap with a reboot of the cheesy 1990s sci-fi series.

Again, with coy Fox TBD, check out the 2022 fall TV grid below (mobile users, please turn phone horizontally to view):

Now, there’s always those midseason slots like the final season of Riverdale and more to come early next year, if not earlier. We will update this grid when Fox finally gets around to showing its unscripted and sports-speckled cards.

Fall 2022 Primetime TV Grid: No Fox (Yet) As Nets Play It Safe With Much More Of The Same (yahoo.com)

"Fall TV preview: What's old is new again, and expect plenty more of the same": Today I found this article by Brian Lowry on CNN:

(CNN)If you watch a lot of network TV already, here's the good news: You can look forward to more of the same, only with fewer opportunities to laugh.

Squeezed by competition from streaming services (including those owned by their parent companies), the major broadcasters unveiled revised fall lineups this week largely built around the notion that sticking with the schedule you know is safer than trying a whole bunch of unproven series.

So after some high-profile cancellations, the networks will add relatively few new programs in the fall, and in many instances will make what's old new again, relying on spinoffs and reboots with built-in name identification. As for genres, sitcoms have lost ground to drama and reality shows, with CBS and ABC each dropping hours of comedy.

The clear embodiment of the comfort-food strategy unveiled during this week's upfront presentations, designed to secure billions of dollars in advertising commitments for the coming season, can be seen on CBS and NBC: The former will continue airing three "FBI" shows on Tuesday, while NBC counters with a trio of "Chicago"-branded shows Wednesdays and "Law & Order" series Thursdays.

All nine of those series, incidentally, come from producer Dick Wolf, accounting for nearly 200 hours of primetime programming.

The trend extended beyond those networks to ABC, which touted a fall lineup of "unprecedented stability" with just three newcomers -- "new," in this case, the label being applied to "Celebrity Jeopardy!" and a spinoff of its cop drama "The Rookie."

In another sign of the times, NBC looks determined to party like its 1989, with a pair of its new shows built around titles from that era: "Night Court," with Melissa Rauch ("The Big Bang Theory") as the daughter of the Harry Anderson character and John Larroquette reprising his role; and "Quantum Leap," featuring Raymond Lee as a time traveler building off the work of the original character played by Scott Bakula.

CBS reaches back even further, bringing "The Love Boat" out of dry dock, only here as a reality show, "The Real Love Boat," on an all-reality Wednesday with "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." The network's drama orders also include a midseason series based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "True Lies."

Expanding to seven nights, the CW was also bitten by the spinoff bug, adding a prequel to its since-departed drama "Supernatural," "The Winchesters," about the brothers' parents; and reaching farther back with "Walker: Independence," a western set in the 1800s (like the "Yellowstone" spinoff "1883") positioned as a prequel to "Walker" -- that series, of course, already being a reboot.

The networks' collective play-it-safe approach prompted their comedy stars to mock them during their presentations, with an "SNL" spoof at NBCUniversal's upfront joking about the network's next spinoff being "Chicago H.R.," "a two-hour Zoom about respect in the workplace."

Similarly, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel said of NBC's addition of "Quantum Leap" and "Night Court" revivals, "That isn't a fall schedule. Those are the tapes you find in your dead uncle's VCR."

As the Hollywood Reporter noted in crunching the numbers, the networks are following a pattern that has entailed adding fewer shows in recent years, recognizing the challenges of a TV landscape filled with streaming options.

Admittedly, "more of the same" isn't the most exciting sales pitch, and the networks' lineups aren't doing much to shake their dinosaur images, while streaming and premium channels gobble up much of the media oxygen.

For now, though, the networks appear content to play the tortoise to those hares, plodding along as they hope that slow and steady will keep them in the ratings race.

Fall TV preview: What's old is new again, and expect plenty more of the same - CNN

My opinion: I'm interested in checking out Quantum Leap.

I like The Rookie, and I saw the backdoor pilot/ 2 episodes to set up The Rookie: Feds, but I don't know if I'm going to like it.  I will check out the pilot. 

This part stood out to me: "All nine of those series, incidentally, come from producer Dick Wolf, accounting for nearly 200 hours of primetime programming."

I didn't know that.  I watch FBI, FBI: Most Wanted, and Law and Order: Organized Crime.