Quick Hits: MasterChef renewed; Murphy Brown extended; I Feel Bad ratings

There are a few different stories worth getting to in this morning’s CarterMatt Quick Hits, but let’s kick things off with something that may make many of you out there smile: MasterChef is renewed!

We reported yesterday that the odds were extremely high the series would be coming back for a tenth season, and now it is 100% official. The lineup of judges is still to be determined, though it’s fair to speculate that Gordon Ramsay will be coming back given that he is a face of the operation and an executive producer. Season 10 will premiere next summer, likely around the same time that season 9 did given that this is what works for Fox in terms of their ratings.

As for some other pertinent news of the day…

A longer Murphy Brown – CBS has granted their comedy revival a little bit more time to shine. How much? Think an extra five minutes, which actually is a lot for a half-hour comedy series. The premiere episode will still air next week (September 27) at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, but will now run until 10:05. This move will shift back the season 2 premiere of SWAT, which will run then until 11:05. It’s a one-time occurrence, so don’t freak out if you’re expecting SWAT at 10:00 and you wonder if you have made some sort of mistake.

First ratings for I Feel Bad – The NBC comedy was the first new show of the fall season to premiere, and we’d say that the results are mixed. The first episode got off to a good start with a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic and over 6.5 million viewers. However, the second episode slid down to a 0.8 rating and just over 4.2 million viewers. Basically, a third of the premiere viewers didn’t want to stick around for the second episode, and that’s not an especially encouraging sign for the future. Maybe the late timeslot did scare some away; we’ll get a better sense of the show’s ratings fortunes next week.