More Renewal News

All of the popular sources have confirmed that Dollhouse will be back for a 2nd season. Evidentially, the renewal involved slashing the budget, which sources say is not that big a deal, as the sets are already built. Guess that means no more fighting on top of sleeping pods! I'm hoping Amy Acker's new show being picked up does NOT lead to Whiskey being sent to the Attic, and to a new doll being imprinted as Dr. Saunders.

I love Washington Post's TV Reporter's comments:

"We hear Sony is practically paying Fox to keep " 'Til Death" on the air until it has enough episodes for syndication, and the budget on "Dollhouse" reportedly was sliced as part of the deal to get a second-season pickup late last week -- an order that caused The Reporters Who Cover Television's eyebrows to rise until they nearly disarranged their bangs.

After all, Joss Whedon's latest exercise in feminist heinie-kicking-and-tight-tank-top-wearing hadn't even copped 3 million viewers the other day. That's not even a decent FX number, much less a stat that would merit renewing a series on the country's No. 1-ranked network. The reporters suspected that "Dollhouse's" eyebrow-raising pickup had something to do with the fact that the company that produces "Dollhouse" is owned by the same company that owns the Fox broadcast network. They sensed that the renewal had more to do with keeping the show going for the sake of DVD boxed sets, overseas sales and other ancillary interests than with copping the largest audience possible for Fox, and they said so yesterday during a Q&A with Fox execs.

Those execs were braced to meet that suggestion with stout denial. They are great believers in stout denial and they are very good at it.

"It's a bet on Joss Whedon," Reilly insisted when asked about it, adding that Fox is committed to having original scripted programming on Friday nights.

Unless it's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," Fox's other scripted Friday drama this season. "Terminator" is canceled because, Reilly explained, they looked at that show's ratings and "the trend line was not pointing in the right direction."

Hey, let's take a look at the ratings track on "Dollhouse" -- shall we? It's 4.8 million, 4.2 million, 4.2 million, 3.6 million, 4.3 million, 4.1 million, 3.9 million, 3.4 million, 3.5 million, 3 million, 3.1 million, 2.7 million."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051802744_2.html?sid=ST2009051900007 (Lisa de Moraes, Washingtonpost.com)

Never got into Sarah Connor myself. I love true sci-fi, but am not a fan of the shoot-em-up-action-movie-set-2000 years-in-the-future type of thing. But I'm not sure Fox isn't dooming Dollhouse by leading in with comedies. But then again, didn't the Simpsons originally lead into The X Files? And we didn't even have TiVo in those days. Me, I'm still a good old VCR gal. I'm also single, so my Dollhouse habit rarely involved live viewing. Hulu serves as a backup for the occasional power outage.

I wonder how others think scheduling will effect viewing. I'm also wondering why Fox doesn't try a Dollhouse/Fringe block...