Schedule Five-Spot, WE 3/11/12 - Terra Nova, The Star Next Door, Justified, Duets, America's Got Talent

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending March 11, 2012:

Terra Nova - The buzziest news of the week had to be Fox's cancellation of Terra Nova. I asked when evaluating its first two weeks whether this was a show that needed to be a big hit to survive. Though the show did drop a lot from the 3.1 demo of those first two weeks, I still think that was probably close to the truth. Later in the week, Netflix "eyed" a pickup of the show. My advice: treat that as what it is - a long shot - and be pleasantly surprised if it happens.

CW Summer - Wait, the CW summer? This network has historically done either nothing or almost nothing during the warmest months, but this year they actually have four new shows on tap: previously announced game show Oh Sit!, talent competition The Star Next Door from Queen Latifah, and docu-soaps Breaking Pointe and The Catalina. I wonder if this means they will stop killing themselves with unscripted shows in the regular season.

Justified - FX has picked up critically-beloved Justified for a season four. The show still hasn't made the leap to the top-rated tier of FX dramas (along with Sons of Anarchy and American Horror Story), but it's easily strong enough to survive, and it's been down only a touch year-to-year this season despite no Margo Martindale and a drama onslaught in the timeslot with White Collar and Southland also in-season.

Duets - Yet another network is joining the singing competition fray, as ABC will introduce newbie Duets this summer. As has become fashionable of late, this is another one heavy on the "mentoring" aspect, with each of the stars (Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Nettles, Lionel Richie, Robin Thicke) choosing and then coaching two people toward ultimately performing with them in duets.

America's Got Talent - NBC will be starting America's Got Talent early; the May 14 premiere will come over two weeks before the show's previous earliest start (May 31 last year). This puts the surely Howard Stern-fueled early episodes in May sweeps. No need to expand the season because of the Olympic hiatus in July/August. This is the reverse of the last Olympic summer (2008), when they ran the show a couple weeks late, into the start of the 2008-09 season.

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.