Scheduling Five-Spot, WE 3/6/11 - Shameless/Episodes, The Voice, Hot in Cleveland, HIMYM, Take the Money and Run

Here's your Scheduling Five-Spot for the week ending March 6, 2011:

Shameless/Episodes Renewed - Showtime has picked up season two of the two new programs in their recently concluded Sunday lineup, drama Shameless and comedy Episodes. The former was basically a no-brainer, as it made huge percentage gains on its comedy hour lead-in, but Episodes struggled to even get past the 0.2 A18-49 threshold. That said, pretty much everything that's ever aired on Showtime has gotten a season two, so... there you go.

The Voice Premiere Date - NBC has revealed their scheduling plan for new Carson Daly-hosted singing competition The Voice. It premieres with a couple two-hour airings after The Biggest Loser on April 26 and May 3, then moves the next week to the 8:00 hour on Tuesday. They've also named Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine as voice coaches.

Hot in Cleveland Season 3 - More Betty! The TV Land sitcom whose huge launch was one of my biggest TV ratings moments of 2010 is gonna return for 22 additional episodes. (And it's only aired about a third of its 20-ep second season so far, so lots more to come.) A shocking exclusion from the TV Land press release was that Hot In Cleveland has actually been wayyy down in season 2 to date, settled of late at a little over 1.5 million viewers and a 0.4 in A18-49. All well. That's still good by that network's standards.

How I Met Your Mother Gets Two More Years - Early in How I Met Your Mother's run, it seemed ludicrous that we might be talking about multi-year renewals in 2011. But the one-time bubble show is now a pretty no-brainer renewal for CBS. It's averaging a 3.59 in first-run this season, repeats well, and seems headed for yet another comfortable mid-3's season leading off the Monday comedy block for CBS. The big question mark seems to be Does that just mean that much more time till we meet the damn mother already?

Take the Money and Run Bumped - ABC has rather quietly yanked upcoming reality newbie Take the Money and Run from the Thursday 8/7c timeslot. It may not seem a vote of confidence, but perhaps it's a blessing in disguise since unscripted usually gets lit up against The Death Star. It's now slated for a summer premiere. Meanwhile, that leaves two ABC timeslots in limbo for the last couple months of the regular season (joining Tuesday 8/7c, where No Ordinary Family had its order slashed). To be continued!

More Five-Spots in the Index.