It's that time again: time for the networks to dazzle us with what they have in store for 2012 before they run the rest of 2011 into the ground and then bore us into a stupor over the summer holidays.

That means some underwhelming news (like Seven's second season of Downton Abbey, which will air so far after it does in the UK that it's doubtful any fans won't have seen it by the time it hits our screens), some inexplicable (Nine is reanimating the bloated corpse of Big Brother; Ten's Young Talent Time reboot), and some genuinely intriguing (Ten's miniseries adaptation of Puberty Blues; ABC1's The Slap).

The question is not whether or not any of these shows will turn out to be good, but how many of them we'll actually get to see a full run of.

It's rare that I pay any attention to commenters on news articles - given I spend a good part of my week moderating comments, I try not to expose myself to their generally witless vitriol on my days off if I can avoid it - but this morning's first comment on news of the networks' planned 2012 line-ups was too good to ignore:

Catch Seven's new scorching summer line up!
Starting this Sunday at 7:30!
Then at the new sizzling time of 8:30 for the two weeks after that!
Then at the adults only time of 9pm!
Then moving to the sexy new time of 10:30pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday!
Then a saucy double episode sandwich filled with a repeat of the second episode that rated the best!
Then gone forever and available for free download on all good torrent sites near you!
ps. Footy!

Yes, well done, "franzy", it appears I'm out of a job.

The thing is, this sort of approach to programming was once the sole domain of Channel Nine.

Ask any fan of The Sopranos or Six Feet Under to tell you: Nine's handling of those series in particular was so maddening most viewers turned to imported DVDs and eye-wateringly-slow torrents (those were the good old days, remember) rather than be faced with the network's 'here one minute, gone the next' tactics.

That skittish approach to programming has affected every commercial network, unfortunately, so the heralding of the next year's aquisitions now comes with the near-certainty that all but a handful of the new shows will likely end up disappearing or swapping nights or any number of programming dooms.

The jewel in Seven's 2012 crown appears to be Good Christian Bitches, or Good Christian Belles, or GCB - there doesn't seem to be word on what it's actually going to run as here, given that all three titles were at one stage relevant Stateside (it's the mystifying GCB "moving forward", evidently).



Unusually, we'll be getting GCB not long after the States - it's a mid-season replacement on ABC's '11/'12 line-up - so it's impossible to say whether the show, you know, sucks yet.

Certainly it's got a decent cast: Leslie Bibb, Kristen Chenowyth, the divine Annie Potts, and the underused Tom Everett Scott (do you think he can tell us what happened to his former co-star, the similarly absent-from-screens Ethan Embry?).

A more compelling addition to the 2012 TV landscape is 2 Broke Girls, CBS' Fall breakout hit starring Kat Dennings, which has been mysteriously picked up by Nine (though no air date has been given at this stage).



It's unusual for Nine to be so on the money, so one can only assume it was an accident; perhaps, like the Big Day Out snaring Nirvana before they got famous, the network got its paws on 2 Broke Girls before news of its 19.37 million viewers (the biggest comedy debut in ten years) broke.

Of course by now we know that if 2 Broke Girls doesn't crack a million on its debut here, Nine will probably humanely euthanise it into the middle of the night, or Saturday afternoon, or a few months from now, or whatever they feel like.

That's part of the excitement of TV, right? ...Right??

Over to you folks: will you be watching? Is there anything you're looking forward to next ratings season? Do you know what happened to Ethan Embry?