CBS's 2005-06 TV Lineup

Okay, to CBS.

"Joan of Arcadia" was canceled? I never watched it, but I remember when it was a bona fide hit in its first season, which happened to be. . . last season. In its second season, though, the show entered a creative stupor, the ratings fell, and even Amber Tamblyn - the "Joan" of the show's title - wasn't happy with the way it was going. Guess there's only so much you can do with a series about a girl that talks to God on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, "Judging Amy" was canceled after six seasons. Perhaps CBS, in going for younger audiences, decided that Amy Brenneman was getting too old (she's only 41!). But it was still a solid drama, and it is in reruns on basic cable, so you can consider the show a success.

Not so with "Listen Up." Jason Alexander's sitcom became his second post-"Seinfeld" series - and the fourth such show overall starring one of Jerry Seinfeld's ex-co-stars - to fail, getting its cancellation notice and keeping the "Seinfeld curse" intact. (Jerry Seinfeld himself has apparently retired from show business altogether.) Yes, I liked it at first, and thought it was slowly getting better back in December despite the stereotypical nature of its characters - clueless father, savvy mother, headstrong daughter, dimwitted son - but it never improved beyond where it was then, and it quickly reverted to a typically bland domestic sitcom. But there was another factor that caused me to stop watching.

Attentive readers of this blog will remember that "Listen Up" was based on the work of sportswriter and broadcaster Tony Kornheiser, whose sports show "Pardon The Interruption" with Michael Wilbon airs on ESPN. I caught that show while working out in the gym, and it was more exciting and entertaining than the scenes on the sitcom in which Tony (Alexander) and football star Bernie Widmer (Malcolm Jamal-Warner, who was the best part of the sitcom) appear a similar sports talk show. If the real sports talk show is more entertaining than the sitcom, why bother with a fictionalization of Kornheiser's domestic life, which probably wasn't an accurate depiction to begin with, anyway?

If there's a bright side for Alexander concerning his latest career stumble (and I know I'm stretching it here), it's that his series lasted longer than any post-"Seinfeld" sitcom starring Michael Richards or Julia Louis-Dreyfus - or his own "Bob Patterson" - so it raises the bar a bit. Will the bar be raised to something resembling a successful show? Well, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a sitcom in the works, but it likely will air only as a mid-season replacement. Such shows are usually handicapped from the start by their scheduled debuts.

New fall programs on CBS of note: There'll be a couple of shows dealing with the supernatural - again, part of the Big Eye's ploy for a younger audience. Henry Winkler and Stockard Channing - both of whom became famous in the seventies for their portrayals of tough-acting fifties characters - star in "Out Of Practice," a sitcom about a family of physicians.

"Out Of Practice" will follow "Two and a Half Men." And now that the Charlie Sheen "comedy" no longer has "Everybody Loves Raymond" to fall back on as it goes into its third year, how many of you want to bet that "Two and a Half Men" will be gone after two and a half seasons?