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In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

For TV lovers, this is the best time of the year, right after the networks have trotted out all their programming for next fall to entice the advertising agencies in New York. Everything has that new-show smell. All the pilots are beautiful, and hope springs eternal. By all means, enjoy this honeymoon period. Just don't get carried away. What look like gems in May often get raked away with the leaves in November. As a reminder of how unreliable first impressions can be in television, let us travel in the way-back machine, Mr. Peabody, to this exact time a year ago. There was one universally acknowledged "sure thing": The X Factor was going to be the season's biggest hit. Not only had the format already proved enormously successful in Britain, but Simon Cowell, the bloody Pied Piper of singing contests, was at the helm besides.

Valentine's Day will be a downer for the folks at ABC's "Cupid. " The network has halted production on the new Nielsens-starved show and will take it off the air following the Feb. 11 telecast. The show will have taped just 14 shows of 22 that were ordered. "Cupid" stars Jeremy Piven as a man claiming to be Cupid, the Roman god of love. Paula Marshall stars as his psychiatrist. The show usually finished near or in the ratings basement. "'Cupid' has been a labor of love for everyone at ABC from the very start," said ABC spokeswoman Susan Sewell.

ABC won last week's rating race, is going for the gold in the February "sweeps" and may push CBS into third place for an entire season for the first time in television history. The Olympics have made the difference. For the week that ended Feb. 21, ABC led with a 19.4 rating and a 30 percent audience share. NBC was second with a 15.0/23 and CBS last with a 12.8/20. ABC says that 19.4 is the highest weekly rating for any network since Nov. 2, 1986. In addition, the 4.4 margin was ABC's largest win since the week ending Oct. 27, 1985, during World Series telecasts.

ABC struggled nobly through the first weekend of the Winter Olympic Games, in which Americans suffered repeatedly through the agony of defeat, while not once enjoying the thrill of victory. Overnight Nielsen ratings for the first of three weekends of the 15th Winter Games were not sensational, and when complete national ratings are released today, they probably will be lower than ABC would have liked. That's because it got only a third of what it wanted. What it got that it liked was harsh weekend weather in the major television markets in the East and Midwest.

Steven Bochco, whose innovative "Hill Street Blues" marked a turning point in NBC's fortunes, has agreed to work his magic exclusively for rival network ABC. ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard said Bochco, an eight-time Emmy award winner and arguably the hottest television producer in Hollywood, has signed an exclusive contract to produce 10 new TV series for ABC during the next six years. A network spokesman said Bochco's contract with ABC would go into effect July 1, 1988, presumably forcing him to cancel his ongoing involvement with the production of "L.A.

No more Monday Night Football? It's possible. ABC has lost around $30 million on its football coverage, according to Dennis Swanson, president of the network's sports division. Swanson isn't telling exactly how much the network is in the hole for, but he mentioned recently that the three networks together lost $75 million broadcasting football glames in 1986. The problem: The cost of the multiyear pact the networks signed with the NFL is outdistancing advertising revenues.

You know, the words "star-studded extravaganza" don't get bandied about nearly enough anymore. There was a time when any kid who watched TV knew what a "star-studded extravaganza" was. It usually meant that at some point, Joey Heatherton or Jaye P. Morgan was going to writhe around on a stage while a band played ersatz rock music and a bunch of dancers gyrated in formation. Over the years, the viewing public kind of got extravanganzaed out. Which is why you don't see those kinds of specials anymore.

John Madden may eventually end up in ABC's Monday Night Football booth, but he said yesterday that reports that a deal had already been completed were not accurate. "I haven't decided on anything, and I won't until after the season," Madden said from his apartment in New York. "This is the fun part of the season and I want to enjoy it. " The New York Post reported that Madden's arrival at ABC was a "mere formality," and USA Today said that Madden had recently agreed to a $2.5 million-a-year deal with ABC after rejecting a $4 million offer from Fox. "I haven't heard those numbers from anybody, so that tells me the source for these stories is an outsider who doesn't really know what is going on," Madden said.

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

For TV lovers, this is the best time of the year, right after the networks have trotted out all their programming for next fall to entice the advertising agencies in New York. Everything has that new-show smell. All the pilots are beautiful, and hope springs eternal. By all means, enjoy this honeymoon period. Just don't get carried away. What look like gems in May often get raked away with the leaves in November. As a reminder of how unreliable first impressions can be in television, let us travel in the way-back machine, Mr. Peabody, to this exact time a year ago. There was one universally acknowledged "sure thing": The X Factor was going to be the season's biggest hit. Not only had the format already proved enormously successful in Britain, but Simon Cowell, the bloody Pied Piper of singing contests, was at the helm besides.

Looking at the fall schedules announced so far by the networks, you may well be wondering: Where have all the dramas gone? ABC has them, adding three strong ones in September, with three more waiting in the wings. In other news, Dancing with the Stars will for the first time feature an all-star edition, with fan favorites from the previous 14 rounds returning. The network will roll out only one new sitcom in September, one in November, and two more in January. ABC lost Desperate Housewives to age and pulled the plug on GCB, Missing, The River, and Cougar Town (which will gain a second life on TBS)

GET READY GHOULS, ABC is prepping a show for next month in which you'll be able to wait breathlessly for three hours to see if a daredevil plunges to his death. The alphabet network is turning Nik Wallenda's attempted tightrope walk through the mist and wind over Niagara Falls into a prime-time TV event on June 15. As a tie-in, if Nik needs a doctor, the cast of "Grey's Anatomy" will appear. Wallenda is a seventh-generation member of the famous Wallenda daredevil family, whose history as a traveling circus troupe dates to 1780.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But what if people create a show for ABC called "The Glass House" and it's surprisingly like a show called "Big Brother" on CBS? Can CBS throw stones? Can the network sue? Attorneys for CBS have sent ABC executives a letter warning that "The Glass House" is "strikingly" similar to "Big Brother. " CBS also notes that ABC may be benefiting from the fact that 18 former "Big Brother" staffers and executives are now working on the planned ABC show.

Philadelphia's real-estate-tax disparity has been plaguing city finances and taxpayers for decades. Neighborhoods that were once thriving economic centers are now pockets of poverty. Neighborhoods that were once among our poorest are now home to million-dollar houses and condominiums. Despite shifts in wealth, demographics and population, our property-tax system has not changed with the times. Leaders in the city have chosen to sidestep this reality for years because of the perilous nature of dealing with tax policy.

"PARTY ROCKERS" is the latest in a long line of produced-in-Philly TV dance-party shows (many of which ultimately gained national distribution) dating to the earliest days of commercial broadcasting. Here's a look at some of the others that are part of the local (and in many cases, national) pop-culture fabric: "Bandstand" The granddaddy of all TV dance-fests was inspired by the popular afterschool radio show hosted by WPEN-AM disc jockeys Joe Grady and Ed Hurst. It debuted on what was then WFIL-TV (Channel 6)

Footballers Nathaniel Claybrooks and Christopher Johnson are spearheading a class-action racial discrimination suit in federal court against ABC and producers of the network's megahits, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, says the Hollywood Reporter. The suit says The Bachelor, which has been on for 16 seasons, and its sister show, which premieres its eighth season in May, have never once featured a person of color. ABC has declined comment. Bachelor exec producer Mike Fleiss last year told Entertainment Weekly, "We always want to cast for ethnic diversity, it's just that for whatever reason, they don't come forward.

DON'T TRUST THE B---- IN APARTMENT 23. 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, 6 ABC. GIRLS. 10:30 p.m. Sunday, HBO. THE PROBLEM of too much TV comedy being placed in the hands of women is such a new one it probably takes a man to explain it. "Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods," "Two and a Half Men" co-creator Lee Aronsohn told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview this month at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference. "We're approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.

ABC is really itching to make B part of its lexicon this spring. First it introduced the Sunday series GCB, making sure everyone knew it was an abbreviation for a book titled Good Christian Bitches. Now they bring us Don't Trust the B- in Apt 23. How almost daring! But at least this tart and tangy comedy earns its attitude. It's the twisted contemporary fable of June (Dreama Walker), a sweet Midwesterner who is relocated to Manhattan by her mortgage company. The business implodes just as June is walking into the office.