CBS, ABC announce mid-season schedule changes

I just keep finding excuses to run photos of the Bobby Cannavale "Cupid" remake (trailer here, don't forget), in this case because it's one of several mid-season shows on ABC and CBS to get a timeslot today. You can read the ABC press release and its CBS counterpart, and I'll offer up some specifics and analysis after the jump...

• CBS's crime procedurals are holding up as well as anything on TV this season, so there are very few changes on their mid-season sked. "Eleventh Hour" got extended for five more episodes past the initial 13, then will give way for the serialized mystery show "Harper's Island," which they hope will do better in the post-"CSI" timeslot. With "The Ex-List" long dead, "Flashpoint" returns to the Friday timeslot where it did very well in the summer, and Ashton Kutcher's "Game Show in My Head" gets banished to Saturdays, no doubt because of the fast flop of Kutcher's ABC game show "Opportunity Knocks."

• Of the three new ABC dramas to get timeslots today -- "Cupid," "Castle" and "The Unusuals" -- only the latter seems to be placed in a position for easy success, as it will get to air after "Lost." "Cupid" goes Tuesdays at 10, with "Scrubs" and a comedy to be named later as its lead-in, while Nathan Fillion and "Castle" go Mondays at 10, against a certain carrot-topped individual who favors sunglasses and snappy one-liners.

• When ABC announced that they were remaking "Cupid," a show that had failed on the network a decade ago, I argued that the ABC of 2008 was a lot better-equipped to support the show than the ABC of 1998, because a timeslot after either "Desperate Housewives" or "Grey's Anatomy" would be much more hospitable than having to air on Saturday nights or against "Seinfeld" the way the original version did. So, of course, ABC goes and schedules it away from either sensible lead-in, on the same island where "Eli Stone" died a slow death this fall. I understand that ABC is trying to salvage "Private Practice" by pairing it with "Grey's," but couldn't the network have tried "Cupid" on Sundays at 10? "Brothers and Sisters" has to take one of those March/April breaks, doesn't it? Sigh...

(UPDATE: Of course, my scheduling math was off. "Cupid" will be on after the "Dancing with the Stars" results show. I still think getting a lead-in from another drama is more advantageous, but I can't complain about the show not having a huge audience watching ABC right before it comes on.)