[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. I hope everyone's now well rested from Super Bowl weekend and a slew of first-run series programming. Let's dive into the headlines. Bad news for the belly button-less: ABC Family has canceled teen sci-fi drama Kyle XY . The cabler did however renew Greek , Lincoln Heights , and The Secret Life of the American Teenager for additional seasons and handed out ten episode orders for new series Ruby and the Rockits , Perfect 10 , and 10 Things I Hate About You . ( Variety ) NBC announced that it will stream both the 3D and 3D versions of tonight's episode of Chuck live at NBC.com starting at 5 am PT tomorrow. Viewers will also be able to choose between watching the 3D installment in either HD or standard definition, with or without closed caption subtitles, and stream while chatting using NBC.com's Viewing Party function. (via press release) The New York Times profiles Chuck 's Adam Baldwin, who returns to the airwav

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. ABC ordered three drama pilots yesterday: Inside the Box , about a female news producer in a Washington network news bureau from writer Richard E. Robbins and executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers (Grey's Anatomy); I, Claudia , about a young prosecuting attorney who is unaware that in the future she will be a contender to be the first female president of the US, from writer/executive producer John Scott Shepherd ( The Days ); and an untitled US adaptation of Argentinian series Brothers & Detectives , about a detective who discovers that he has a brilliant 11-year-old brother after the death of his estranged father, from Daniel Cerone ( Dexter ). ( Hollywood Reporter ) NBC has ordered a pilot for futuristic drama Day One from writer/executive producer Jesse A. Alexander ( Heroes ) about "the aftermath of a global event that devastates the world's infrastructures when a small band of survivors strive to

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. The news that everyone is talking about since yesterday afternoon is that NBC has handed over its 10 pm timeslot Mondays through Thursdays to Jay Leno, beginning Fall 2009. This has been rumored for the last few months but I don't think even NBC was prepared to make it fact until the recent economic (and ratings) downturn of recent times. First, it solves two issues: keeping Leno--who is losing his 11:35 timeslot to Conan O'Brien (while Jimmy Fallon will take over his old digs)--at NBC and thus out of the grabs of rival networks such as ABC and FOX; and allows the Peacock to continue programming the 10 pm hour instead of handing it back to the local affiliates. (Something, believe it or not, that was also widely discussed.) ( Variety ) Which means that scripted television has just taken another hard-to-handle blow. If NBC goes ahead with its plans for a Leno talk/variety series at 10 pm weeknights and has Sunday Night Footbal

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I'm now seriously behind on my telly-viewing as I was out last night at the West 3rd Street Holiday Walk, where I bumped into Anne Hathaway and Alan Rickman, but I did manage to watch The Office and 30 Rock , naturally. Today's biggest headline is that CW has announced that it will pursue developing a spin-off of teen-centric drama Gossip Girl . Rather than shoot a pilot, however, the CW will use an upcoming episode of Gossip Girl to function as a backdoor pilot in order to save costs and test the concept before committing to a series order. One caveat: the untitled spin-off will not be an adaptation of novel series "The It Girl" and will not focus on Jenny Humphrey. So who could be the focus of said spin-off? It's likely that producers would select one of Gossip Girl 's main cast members to spin-off but it's difficult to figure out who the most likely candidate would be. Or producers could introduce a

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. While there's not much television-related news today (this being a national holiday and all), I did want to just share a few tidbits that are floating out there. Ari Graynor (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist ) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on FOX's Fringe , where she will play the younger sister of Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) in at least three episodes. Graynor's first appearance is scheduled for early January and she will turn up unannounced in Boston at Olivia's flat with her young daughter in tow, supposedly looking for some place to crash after man troubles. Could it be that Little Sis has an ulterior motive? Hmmm. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) James Hibberd talks to The Mentalist creator Bruno Heller about the hit CBS freshman procedural drama. Among the topics under discussion: where the idea for The Mentalist came from, when to expect a res

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While everyone is buzzing about last night's presidential debate, there are more than a few television-related news tidbits to discuss as well. Following several months of discussions, FX has confirmed that it will not be renewing drama series The Riches for a third season, due to falling ratings for the drama. In its second season, which was shortened to seven episodes due to the writers strike, viewers dropped 44 percent in the key 18-49 demo. The move is hardly a surprise: showrunner Dmitry Lipkin is currently working on his HBO pilot project Hung and I had assumed for a while now that The Riches would sadly not be returning to the cabler. ( Variety ) TV Guide talks to Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace about what to expect for Season Two, a certain game of "slap jack" between Ned and Chuck that never made it to the screen, and the Pie Maker's family. ( TV Guide ) Sadly, there might not have been a new episode

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I suffered through some sweltering heat here in Los Angeles last night and watched the latest lackluster episode of 90210 and a fantastically taut episode of Fringe (more on that in a bit). CW has given a put pilot commitment to drama The Graysons , based on the pre-Boy Wonder life of Batman sidekick Robin before he dons the mask and cape (a la Smallville ). Drama, from Smallville executive producers Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson and Chuck/Supernatural executive producer McG, will follow Dick "DJ" Grayson in a new take on the iconic character. (In the original comics, Robin was the orphaned son of a high-flying trapeze artist family who was taken in by Bruce Wayne and trained to be Batman's sidekick.) Series is viewed as a potential replacement for Smallville , should this be final season, or as a companion piece if Smallville is renewed. Studio Warner Bros. Television also hopes to use this development to pro

Good morning and welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. I ended up making it a fashion-fueled night last night with new episodes of Top Model and Project Runway and threw on the ABC pilot Single with Parents (starring Alyssa Milano) just for good measure. What's up first today? Dollhouse , natch. Everyone is talking about the production shutdown on the set of the new Joss Whedon action drama, slated to kick off in January 2009. 20th Century Fox Television has shut down shooting on Dollhouse beginning tomorrow through September 25th so that Whedon can oversee a rewrite of the fourth script and get ahead on the next few scripts. News comes after FOX rejiggered the running order in July: Dollhouse 's originally filmed pilot will now bow second, after a newly constructed pilot episode (which I hope to see soon). Does this bode ill for the series? No one can say but it does at least point to the reassuring fact that Whedon does seem to be involved with the decisi

Good morning and welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Everyone wanted to talk about yesterday's announcement that ABC had picked up five series (three dramas and two half-hour comedies) and had seemingly passed over Rob Thomas' Good Behavior (based on the Kiwi series Outrageous Fortune ). But there's still hope for the Catherine O'Hara-led dramedy. ABC says that it hasn't yet made a decision on Good Behavior, half-hour comedy Never Better (starring Damon Wayans), or the untitled legal drama from David Hemingson (the script of which I quite enjoyed)... and it still has yet to screen Prince of Motor City and Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas . Keep your fingers crossed, Rob Thomas fans. ( Variety ) SPOILER ALERT! Lost will resurrect--for one episode, anyway--one of its dead characters, likely as a flashback, vision, or ghostly apparition. And, no, it's not Artz. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Why does Battlestar Galactica

Looks like PJ will be hanging with her boys for some time to come. Basic cabler TBS has ordered nine additional episodes of its freshman comedy My Boys , the network's first original series. Series, from Sony Pictures Television and creator Betsy Thomas, will resume production after the New Year and the newly ordered episodes will air sometime during summer 2007. The back nine order bumps My Boys ' episode count to 22 episodes. News comes as the original 13-episode order for My Boys wraps next week, with TBS scheduling no less than five original episodes just after Christmas Day. The series' ninth and tenth episodes will air back-to-back on Tuesday, December 26th at 10 pm ET/PT, with episodes 11 and 12 popping up on December 27th from 10-11 pm ET/PT, and the final episode will air the following night (that would be December 28th) at 10 pm. For the uninitiated, My Boys follows the travails on tomboy PJ Franklin (Jordana Spiro), a sportswriter looking for romance, but she di