Darn you, CW. If both hours of your last night had been scheduled with originals I think some kind of record would have been set. There would have been 13 hours of all-new primetime broadcast series programming across five networks on a summer night.
Instead, we got 12. Maybe we’ve been there before, but I can’t recall when, especially if I'm excluding live sports programming from consideration. Maybe we will see this again (perhaps next Thursday?) since all of the shows in all of those time periods were episodes of ongoing series.
I’m not sure I would even have noticed this bizarre summer occurrence, the likes of which was once thought improbable if not impossible, had I not been reading a paper copy of the New York Post, something I rarely do. When I saw the Post’s TV grid on its back page with a huge yellow area comprised of small time-period blocks at the top, and then recalled that blocks colored yellow indicate that the programs appearing inside them are new, I took a closer look and realized that history was quite likely being made. So, three cheers for the traditional newspaper on newsprint experience, which once again proves to be more readily informative than its digital counterpart.
All excitement aside, I don't mean to suggest that the 12 original programs seen last night represented the very best that broadcast has to offer.
CBS presented an installment of its surprisingly durable mindless summer staple “Big Brother.” That was followed by two episodes of its sci-fi series “Under the Dome” (pictured below) kicking off its third season (and adding Marg Helgenberger to its cast).