Scheduling Five-Spot, WE 4/24/11 - Chaos, Game of Thrones, Sonny with a Chance, FX Summer, The Paul Reiser Show

Just missing the cut: NBC's 12-minute late night preview of The Voice last Thursday. An unconventional piece of scheduling there. Here's your Scheduling Five-Spot for the week ending April 24, 2011:

Chaos - CBS has axed Chaos after three episodes despite the third episode actually ticking up from the second in A18-49. That said, the initial ratings were so bad that it isn't much of a surprise. The move means that perennial utility player Flashpoint will be showing up a little earlier than originally scheduled; it'll premiere on May 6 now. Can we expect an improvement on the 1.0 demo pulled by week three of Chaos? Probably not a big one; the summer 2010 season averaged just a 1.16 demo.

Game of Thrones - While it wasn't exactly a breakout ratings performance for Game of Thrones (2.22 million viewers and a 0.9 in A18-49), it was still good enough for HBO to give the show a second season renewal the day the ratings were revealed. Season two is usually an inevitability on the premium cable channels anyway, so let's not get carried away with thinking this renewal comes on the heels of an in-depth ratings analysis.

Sonny with a Chance - I don't discuss kids' shows too often, but I thought this story was particularly interesting. Demi Lovato is leaving her Disney Channel sitcom Sonny with a Chance, one of those shows-about-a-show. Disney's response: they're gonna do away with Sonny (they kinda have to) and greenlight the show-within-the-show, a sketch comedy program called So Random. This would be like if NBC greenlit The Girlie Show if Tina Fey decided to leave 30 Rock. Will be interested to see how this little experiment goes.

More Summer Tidbits - This week, FX became the latest network to roll out its summer schedule. The seventh and final season of Rescue Me will debut on July 12, which should mean the nine-episode season of the NYC firefighter drama should wrap up right around the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Sophomore comedy Louie will air on Thursdays at 10:30, and its lead-in is new Elijah Wood comedy Wilfred. They debut on June 23. Also, A&E will premiere the second season of drama The Glades on June 5.

The Paul Reiser Show - NBC's comedy The Paul Reiser Show became the third scripted show to go two-and-through in the 2010-11 season (following Fox's Lone Star and ABC's My Generation). Its debut rated anemically and its second episode did even worse, so it was no big surprise, especially since (and I feel like I've typed this a billion times) NBC had a little something on the line in this timeslot as it'll be leading into the Steve Carell finale on The Office this week. That lead-in will now be a repeat of The Office.

More Five-Spots in the Index.