Felicity and Roswell will be back

Thanks to roswellfan for sending this in!

Felicity and Roswell will be back
The Toronto Star
May 17, 2000
By Antonia Zerbisias
There’s good news for fans of Felicity and Roswell.

WB has renewed both very fine dramas. It has also picked up the campy-and-getting-campier-by-the episode Popular. But whether CTV re-acquires these youth-oriented shows is up in the air.
Meanwhile, Sports Night devotees are out of luck. ABC has, as expected, cancelled Aaron (West Wing) Sorkin’s brilliant half hour and, despite hopes NBC would buy it, it didn’t. Last night’s season finale was the end.

Yesterday, both ABC and WB unveiled their fall schedules and, surprisingly, both webs announced few new shows.

Or maybe not surprisingly.
ABC, a.k.a. the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire network, added a Wednesday edition of the ratings juggernaut to its schedule. Now host Regis Philbin will be doing his “Final answer?” thing four times a week.

“ABC has pioneered a new strategy – it’s the one-program network!” said Gene DeWitt, chairman of Optimedia International, a media buying firm. “But it’s faddish and will wear out.”
Maybe. Millionaire’s ratings had started to sag just as the May sweeps began. Then, thanks to those celebrity contestants, audiences broke records. Now viewership is down again.

Not that ABC is panicking. Millionaire still beat everything last week except for that Carole Hathaway farewell episode of ER, Frasier and CBS’ Jesus. When the sweeps are over, Regis will rise again.
Among ABC’s definitely dead and gone are Talk To Me, The Hughleys, Then Came You, Boy Meets World, Making The Band and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. In fact, all its TGIF kidcoms are toast, although Sabrina is relocating to WB.

ABC announced four new shows:

Geena (comedy) – Oscar-winner Geena Davis stars as a glamorous Manhattan career gal who becomes an instant mom when she marries a widower (Peter Horton) with two challenging kids and a hostile housekeeper. Good cast. Lousy premise.

Madigan Men (comedy) – Yummy Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) is a newly divorced New York architect. But he’s no player with the ladies. That means he must seek dating advice from his cocky teenaged son and his ornery widowed dad. Yeah. Right.
People Who Fear People (comedy) – Bob and Max (newcomers David Krumholtz and Brad Raider) are paranoid pals who think the world is out to get them. (When will the networks figure out stupid sitcoms are dead, dead, dead?)

Gideon’s Crossing (drama) – Homicide: Life On The Street vet Andre Braugher is Dr. Ben Gideon, “the voice of reason, empathy and wisdom in a world of medical chaos, bureaucracy and hypocrisy.” This one’s from Academy Award-nominated writer Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show) so it just might work – except that it’s scheduled opposite NBC’s Law & Order.

Meanwhile WB’s lineup, available to viewers with premium pay TV, got a slight shake-up yesterday.
The weblet added five new shows to its teen-themed schedule – and two of those shows, including Sabrina, were picked up from other networks.

The other pick-up was Eddie Murphy’s The PJs, the “foamation” look at life in the projects formerly on Fox. Great. The show cleverly satirizes race relations and class in the U.S.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, 7th Heaven, Charmed and Dawson’s Creek are all back (whew!), as is the lame Jack & Jill.
WB’s new shows are:

Hype (comedy) – This sketch show “skewers all things hyped, setting its sights on popular culture.” Let’s hope.
Nikki (comedy) – An aspiring showgirl and pro wrestling wannabe marry and settle in Las Vegas. It’s the American dream.
Gilmore Girls (drama) – A young mom and her teenaged daughter, often mistaken for sisters, friends, move to the mother’s hometown where they seek support from the family. (What fresh hell hath Providence wrought?)

CBS announces its schedule today.
As for Fox, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if David Duchovny will return to The X-Files.