Scheduling Five-Spot, WE 3/20/11 - Fox Summer, The Bachelor, Being Human, NBC Comedies, ANTM

Here's your Scheduling Five-Spot for the week ending March 20, 2011:

Fox Summer Schedule - This was about as "meh" of a summer schedule as you could possibly ask for, as Fox will offer up zero new shows and zero scripted originals during the summer months. So the pundits have turned to reading repeat tea leaves; among the four fairly similarly-rated bubble dramas on the net, only Lie to Me and The Chicago Code have scheduled summer repeats. Personally, I don't make a lot of it, as Fox schedules are always in pencil and those are the two that would intuitively repeat the best. Also, Traffic Light repeats are scheduled, and that sure ain't returning.

The Bachelor, etc. - ABC's bringing back all three shows in its Bachelor franchise: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor Pad. The only one that was anything less than a complete slam-dunk no-brainer was Pad, but even its six-ep run averaged around a 2.0 demo last year, and that's pretty solid for an ABC summer program. Though this winter's Bachelor season was down a good bit year-to-year, the franchise as a whole is still quite healthy. In related news, new ABC spinoff Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition will get the post-Bachelorette slot this summer starting on May 30.

Being Human - The remake of the British genre drama will be returning to Syfy for a second season. The show started somewhat promisingly but seems to have settled in the 0.5 A18-49 vicinity lately, a little stronger than Stargate Universe and Caprica but definitely weaker than the net's scripted flagships like Warehouse 13 and Eureka. Syfy also picked up a second season of unscripted Face-Off last week.

NBC Comedies - NBC has wiped away some of its late-season bubble drama by granting early renewals to Community and Parks & Recreation. (Also The Office, though that one was less dramatic.) Their ratings mediocrity hasn't been reversed this season, with Community just shy of a 2.0 A18-49 average in the Thursday lead-off spot and Parks & Recreation joining a long line of NBC comedies to struggle keeping the Office lead-in audience. Despite some theories that the announcement was an attempt to juice ratings, both hit outright series lows on Thursday.

America's Next Top Model - The CW is moving Top Model up an hour to 9/8c and out of the Wednesday 8/7c reality death match starting April 20, the week after lead-out Shedding for the Wedding wraps up. They might as well try something, I guess, as things are getting pretty dire for the CW's reality standout; its first four episodes of the spring have been down more than a third from the first four of spring 2010! It'll mark the first time since spring 2004 that Top Model will be scheduled somewhere other than Wednesday 8/7c.

More Five-Spots in the Index.