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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.

You bring it on yourself, you know. You could just run with the herd. Watch the same shows everyone else does: NCIS, Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, and the like. Then you'd be sitting back right now, confident in another year of uninterrupted entertainment. But nooooooooooo. You pride yourself on being just a little bit different. You seek out those broadcast shows that Nielsen couldn't find with a Geiger counter. And as a result you spend this time of year on tenterhooks (not sure what those are, but they sound painful)

IF YOU'VE been thinking about getting your GED and you're not too good with computers, then get a move on. Effective January 2014, the high-school equivalency test will be more rigorous and entirely computerized, requiring a level of digital fluency that education advocates here say could hinder many test-takers. The GED was last revised in 2002, but for its next incarnation the test will be overhauled by a magnitude never before seen in its 70-year existence. Last year, the American Council on Education, which manages the test nationwide, partnered with a computer-based testing company to develop an assessment that they believe will better prepare students for modern workplace demands.