TVSquad

This isn't a real surprise (to me anyway), but NBC has confirmed that Heroes will indeed return for another season this fall.

There's been endless talk about how the quality of the show has declined since the first season, and viewer numbers have been dropping this past season, but it's still a good show that draws a core audience and NBC understands this. It still has a certain amount of buzz associated with it, and NBC needs to hold on to what loyal fans the network has, especially since we don't know what the hell is going to happen with NBC's schedule when Jay Leno takes over 10pm Monday through Friday.

By the way, the Day One show mentioned in the article linked above is a new drama from Jesse Alexander, one of the producers of Heroes who was let go this season. It's about a group of residents from an apartment complex who have to band together after some sort of catastrophe. It could air on Monday nights too.

The networks are cold, heartless bastards.They want us to watch their shows in order to grab ratings and ad revenue; yet, they mess around with their schedules so much that it's frustrating. Eventually, it gets hard for us not to pick up the damn television and throw it out the window. Well, more like get a few people to pick it up and throw it out of the front door. Come on, those flat screens are heavy!

You're probably wondering what I'm ranting about, aren't you? Well, it involves tonight's primetime schedule during the 8 pm time slot. On CBS, we have The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, while FOX has a new House. The 100th episode of House, to be exact. Now, this wouldn't normally be an issue, since I could watch one network and record the other on my DVR. But, NBC decided to bring back Chuck tonight, as well.

Mission accomplished!

According to James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporter, Britney Spears' guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother generated the highest ratings ever for the show. The overnight rating among adults 18-49 was a 4.5, attracting 10.6 million viewers. It was the only show in CBS's Monday comedy lineup to show improvement, as the rest fell in the ratings. This marks the second week in a row that the show generated solid ratings. Hibberd reports that the strong post-strike ratings for HIMYM "assures" its renewal for the fall; CBS had been previously undecided on bringing it back.

Like I said last night, I thought it was a low-water mark for the show, though apparently many of you disagreed with me. And, to be honest, even though Brit Brit did OK on the show, she was still a bit of a distraction. But, anything to help take the show from "maybe" to "definitely" status for next season is all right with me.

TV shows just don't have a chance nowadays, it seems.

FOX is taking its new Juliana Margulies drama Canterbury's Law off of Monday nights and pushing it on over to - wait for it - Fridays. And we all know what that means. Whenever a network wants to dump a show they first put it on Friday nights, traditionally one of the worst nights for television, then it's put on hiatus and then canceled.

The show is averaging 7.7 million viewers, which I would think is not incredibly terrible, except it's doing really badly in the 18 to 49 demographic that networks and advertisers love so much.