There is no such thing as a traditional Upfront season anymore. Last year, very briefly, it felt like the Upfronts — the events when the networks announce their upcoming fall schedules and new series — were back following the pandemic and the steady decline of network television in general. But now with a writers’ strike that could very well stretch through the summer, and potential strikes by the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild on the horizon, the networks are having to play the upcoming fall season entirely by ear. With some networks, this looks like loading up on reality content; with others, it looks like they are moving forward with their scripted material and hoping for the best.
CBS is taking a bit of a mixed approach. The most popular network clearly hopes that the strike(s) will be over before production has to begin for the fall season, as all of their scripted hits are on the schedule. That said, they’ve super-sized Survivor and The Amazing Race, eliminating the need for at least one hour of prime-time programming. Not sure that will do the trick, but I suppose you have to start somewhere.
CBS has also added two new dramas to their fall schedule — a spinoff of one of their popular franchises, and a gender-swapped reimagining of a television classic. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait long for them to premiere.
Continue reading “Here’s what you’ll be watching on CBS this fall.”
