Skip to main content

Channel Surfing: "30 Rock" Lands Off-Net Sale, Andrea Bowen Returns to Wisteria Lane, Producers Seek Replacement for Lynch on "Party Down," and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.

Liz Lemon still has a lot of life left in her yet. Universal Media Studios was able to negotiate a payout of roughly $800,000 per episode of 30 Rock from two separate off-network deals to Comedy Central and WGN America. Both channels will be able to begin airing the episodes as a weeknight strip in fall of 2011. "Pound for pound, this is one of the funniest shows on TV. The DNA of the show is fabulous," said Comedy Central's SVP of programming David Bernath. "I really believe its biggest and broadest days are still ahead of it on NBC." TBS and E! were also said to have had interest in picking up the off-net rights to 30 Rock. (Variety)

Andrea Bowen is set to reprise her role as Julie when Desperate Housewives returns for a sixth season this fall but Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Bowen will be back in a major way: as a series regular, citing an unnamed insider with Desperate Housewives as a source. "Bowen vanished from Housewives at the end of season 4, a casualty of the show's four-year flash forward," writes Ausiello. "She briefly returned last season when Julie, on break from college, announced that she was dating her 40-year-old professor Lloyd (Steven Weber). It's not clear if he'll be accompanying her back home, but I'm guessing not." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Meanwhile in other Desperate Housewives news, Maiara Walsh (Cory in the House) has joined the cast of the ABC drama as a series regular, where she will reprise her role as Ana, the "gorgeous and manipulative niece" of Carlos (Ricardo Chavira), who moved in with the Solises last season. She previously appeared in the final two episodes of Desperate Housewives last season. (Hollywood Reporter)

Following news that Jane Lynch won't be returning for Season Two of Starz's comedy Party Down, E! Online's Watch with Kristin is reporting that producers are looking to cast the role of Lydia, a new series regular who can be any ethnicity other than white and at least 38 years old. In a casting call, Lydia is described as "a recently divorced stage mom who has moved out to L.A. from a small town with her daughter and is very upbeat and optimistic about breaking her daughter into the industry. As a newly single woman adrift in the big city, her thoughts are never far from the matter of reeling in a new man, but things never seem to work out. Her constant love troubles never get her down, it just means more to talk about with her Party Down colleagues..." (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

FOX has pushed the launch of Season Two of Dollhouse back a week to Friday, September 25th at 9 pm ET/PT and will instead rebroadcast the season premiere of Glee on September 28th. Meanwhile, The Moment of Truth returns on Wednesday, August 5th at 9 pm ET/PT. (Futon Critic)

Lost's producers are looking for your take on the iconic series' theme song (currently consisting of, um, one note) as part of a competition coinciding with the series' Comic-Con panel later this month in San Diego. "The Lost producers want all you musicians out there to compose and submit a Lost theme song," writes E! Online's Jennifer Godwin. "The winning entry will be premiered to 7,000 screaming fans in Hall H during Lost's Saturday panel at San Diego Comic-Con, on the fifth anniversary together of our time together as show and fandom." (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

BBC One has commissioned and third and final season of drama Mistresses, which will return for a short run of four episodes in order to wrap up the series' storylines. "Mistresses: The Last Act is a final four part special event that will bring the stories of the four mistresses to a dramatic conclusion on BBC1 next year," said BBC drama commissioning controller Ben Stephenson. "Simply and elegantly book ended by a mysterious glimpse into the future, all the four women will be returning - Katie, Trudi, Siobhan and Jessica - with new and sometimes shocking stories." (Broadcastnow)

Bravo has ordered a third season of The Real Housewives of New York City, with production set to begin this fall. (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that CBS will kick off CSI: Miami's eighth season with an origin story that shows how the team came together in 1997. "It's my understanding that the episode will be told from the point of view of a comatose Delko (Adam Rodriguez), who flashes back to his first murder case with the Miami-Dade PD," writes Ausiello. "Delko, of course, was critically wounded in the season finale." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Lionsgate Television has forged a joint venture with Marty Adelstein and Jon Kroll's Lost Marbles that will focus on unscripted programming, specifically new reality formats that they can export to territories around the world. Under the two-year deal, Lionsgate will provide overhead and financing as well as distribution in exchange for a profit stake in any projects Lost Marbles produces. Their first project is an untitled reality series that will pit celebrities against disabled people in a variety of challenges. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Comments

SweetD said…
I guess that means that Jennifer Coolidge won't be joining the cast of Party Down, then. Maybe they'll have her back as a guest? She was hilarious!
Jon88 said…
Re "CSI: Miami" flashback: 1. So I guess Rory Cochrane gets another episode. 2. [Thought about gauze, camera lens, and two regulars in the cast deemed too cruel to include.]

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...