Schedule Five-Spot, WE 1/8/12 - So You Think You Can Dance, Flashpoint, In Plain Sight, The Voice, Allen Gregory

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending January 8, 2012:

So You Think You Can Dance - Credit Nigel Lythgoe for putting this news in the most inflammatory way possible (the dreaded C-word). Is it technically a cancellation when you just cut the runtime back? As I tweeted earlier, the irony is SYTYCD is really the only talent competition whose results and performance show ratings are about equal, but of course the overall declines are more important; the show couldn't consistently break a 2.0 demo late last season.

Flashpoint - I kinda figured the move of Flashpoint to ION was just a gentle way of phasing the show out of American television. It's certainly less a part of the public consciousness than it was in its CBS days. But ION announced a week ago that they're renewing the show for season five. I haven't seen a whole lot of ratings on the show, but most A18-49 ratings I've seen have been a 0.4. The renewal came on the heels of a season high 2.1 million viewers.

In Plain Sight - USA Network is so loaded that they're getting back in the Friday business on March 16. For most of the aughts, it was one of the network's biggest evenings thanks to detective dramedies Monk and Psych, but USA hasn't had an original there since Monk's huge 12/4/09 finale night. Don't expect Monk numbers from on-the-way-out In Plain Sight and sophomore Fairly Legal, whose winter 2011 run was the weakest for a USA newbie in years.

The Voice - Most of the news that comes out of the Television Critics Assocation press tour is not really "news" to people who follow the industry with any regularity. The biggest piece of scheduling news I noticed from NBC was just the official announcement of something most people suspected all along: NBC will have 6+ The Voice results shows on Tuesday, and The Biggest Loser will get shortened on those evenings to accommodate it.

Allen Gregory - Similarly, most of the "news" from Fox was actually non-news. There's no decision on House, no decision on Fringe, no decision on Terra Nova. And again, the only real "news" was something most discerning folks knew was coming; there will be no more episodes of Jonah Hill's animation flop Allen Gregory. It produced and aired just seven episodes, and its 8:30 timeslot will go to newbie Napoleon Dynamite in early 2012.

The Five-Spots are my recaps of what aired, what got renewed/cancelled and what rated well or poorly last week in TV. For more Five-Spots, see the Index.