Are you spending the evening with the Oscars?
Check out today's TV Week insert for my report on what ABC has planned for the global audience. The glitz begins at 6 p.m. with the red carpet arrivals and lasts until 10:30.
If watching movie stars pat themselves on the back and thank their mamas and agents isn't your cup of tea, there are alternatives.
Fox and NBC plan reruns of their usual Sunday lineups, but CBS has some original counter-programming in the works instead of Undercover Boss and CSI (which had its season finale last week).
Note: During the Feb. 10 episode of NCIS, CBS accidentally promoted last week's CSI episode as the "series finale" instead of the "season finale."
Loyal CSI fans went nuts and Chris Ender, CBS' executive vice president of communications, quickly tweeted (not in an official capacity), "it's the season finale. We would never cancel a show in a promo five days before broadcast, especially one that has been this important to the Network."
That's probably true. Usually a network just sort of neglects to include a series on its list of renewed programs for the following fall. CSI, which has been on for 15 seasons, has not been renewed yet. It may or may not be back, but we won't find out until May.
Before announcing renewals, networks like to check all their possibilities, especially with a venerable series. They evaluate the existing lineup and the competition, factor in how the midseason tryouts fared, look at how much a veteran show is costing them and balance that with any ratings trend.
For example, has the show been slowly, steadily losing viewers for several years?
Armed with all that data, a team of number crunchers, bean counters and bottom-line network functionaries make the decision for the fall line up and CSI lives or dies.
I would be shocked if the steady series was canceled. As far as extant, scripted, non-animated shows are concerned, only NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) has been on the air longer.
But all series come to an end eventually and CSI has had an unusually long run of 15 seasons. Even its spinoffs of CSI: NY and CSI: Miami lasted nine and 10 years, respectively.
On the negative side, however, CSI had its season order cut back from 22 episodes to 18 this year. That will free up money for the spinoff, CSI: Cyber, which will air at 9 p.m. Wednesdays beginning March 4.
Ominously, last Sunday's CSI episode was titled "The End Game." It involved the final showdown with the Gig Harbor killer and marked the "amicable" departure of George Eads from the series. (Eads' Nick Stokes left to run the CSI lab in San Diego.)
Eads, who has had a few clashes over the years with the show's management, played investigator Stokes since the series' first episode. It was good to see he got a happy send-off and wasn't just killed off.
Original CSI stars William Petersen and Gary Dourdan left after Season 9; Marg Helgenberger departed after Season 12; Paul Guilfoyle, who played Capt. Jim Brass, left last year after 14 seasons.
CSI: Cyber, starring Patricia Arquette, is a drama inspired by the advanced technological work of real-life cyber psychologist Mary Aiken, a producer for the show.
Arquette will play Special Agent Avery Ryan, head of the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI, a unit "at the forefront of solving illegal activities that start in the mind, live online and play out in the real world."
Also in the cast are Peter MacNicol and James Van Der Beek.
I would assume that if CSI: Cyber does well, especially if it draws a younger audience, it would be a contender to replace CSI, which has a median viewer age of 62. But there are many factors that go into that decision. We'll see.
• Act of Valor. Meanwhile, the 2012 movie Act of Valor airs at 7 p.m. today on CBS and tells the tale of Navy SEALs and a global terrorist manhunt.
The film stars Alex Veadov, Roselyn Sanchez, Nestor Serrano and Emilio Rivera, and involves a mission to rescue a kidnapped CIA agent.
That's just the beginning. The mission uncovers "an imminent, global threat" and our team of heroes "will determine the fate of the world." Is that better than the Oscars? You decide.
• Black photogs. You can watch the Oscars and something educational tonight. Independent Lens: Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is the wordy title of the episode airing at 10:30 on AETN.
This is "the story of the pioneering black photographers who have recorded the lives and aspirations of generations, from slavery to the present."
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 02/22/2015