[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Kate isn't going anywhere, any time soon: Reps for Evangeline Lilly have denied a recent report on Zap2it.com that claimed that the Lost star was seeking work on another television project for this fall and have maintained that the actress is under contract on Lost until May 2010, when the series ends. We have no idea how this rumor got started," Lilly's rep told Michael Ausiello, "and whoever started it didn’t call us or ABC to verify the validity of it, for which there is none." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) UPDATE : E! Online's Kristin has spoken with Lilly herself, who said that she isn't leaving Lost anytime soon. "I am very happy on Lost ," said Lilly, "and have no reason to look anywhere else for a home." ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin ) Brittany Snow ( American Dreams ) will star in the Gossip Girl prequel spin-off, currently being referred to in the

Ending several months of speculation, The Paley Center for Media has today announced the full lineup for PaleyFest09 , the 26th Annual William S. Paley Television Festival. Among the honorees this year are the casts and creators of 90210 , Battlestar Galactica and Caprica , The Big Bang Theory, Big Love, Desperate Housewives, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Fringe, The Hills, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Mentalist, Swingtown, and True Blood . PaleyFest09 will be held from April 10th to April 23rd at the Cinerama Dome at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood; the Paley Center will also present a special closing night presentation honoring Swingtown at The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills on April 24. Other festival firsts this year? PaleyFest09 will be the festival event to honor a new media property, in this case Joss Whedon's celebrated web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog , and will be the first to premiere the last three unseen episodes of A

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. The CW has unveiled a scheduling shakeup that will feature the launch of Season Two of Reaper earlier than expected. Reaper will take over the Tuesdays at 8 pm timeslot--currently inhabited by 90210 --on March 3rd and will air 13 episodes without interruption. 90210 will then move to 9 pm on Tuesdays, taking over Privileged 's timeslot. So what happens to Privileged ? That series will wrap its run February 14th, much earlier than originally planned after it aired fewer repeats. No decision has been made yet about a second season of Privileged . ( Hollywood Reporter ) Torchwood fans should keep their eyes on the internet on Thursday as the 60-second trailer for the series' five-episode Season Three, entitled "Children of Earth," will be released... simultaneously around the world at 4 pm ET. Season Three is set to air later this year on BBC One and BBC America over five consecutive nights. (via press release) Mi

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I don't know about you but I'm still on a high after yesterday's amazing presidential inauguration. While the nation joined together yesterday to bear witness to the 44th president taking the oath, there are still a few television-related headlines to get through this morning. Entertainment Weekly 's Doc Jensen (a.k.a. Jeff Jensen) continues his video interview series with Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Up today: a segment focusing on Season Four, including discussions about the coffin, the donkey wheel, and the freighter. ( Entertainment Weekly ) Jason Priestley will direct the eighteenth episode of 90210 this season, which will feature a crisis involving several characters. "I have a lot of challenges ahead of me on how to shoot this, it's big," said Priestley, who wouldn't confirm whether said crisis is an earthquake or a car accident. "Yeah, we're in a hosp

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. By the hammer of Thor! Good news for fans of 30 Rock and The Office : NBC has renewed both series for the 2009-10 season, which means that we're guaranteed a fourth and sixth respective season of each. Given 30 Rock 's comedy win at this week's Golden Globes (and well-deserved statuettes for stars Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin) , I would have been gobsmacked if NBC hadn't ordered an additional season of the critically beloved series. (press release) Unfortunately, there's no news of the fate of ratings-challenged but critically loved NBC series Chuck and Life , which weren't mentioned in NBC's renewal announcement (which also included another season of The Biggest Loser ). And there's even worse news for fans of ABC's Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money , and Eli Stone . According to Kristin dos Santos' sources, the Alphabet won't be airing the remaining episodes of either series until June at t

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Looks like Ashes to Ashes isn't the only series heading back to the 1980s (well, except for Mitch Hurwitz's Lost in the '80s , that is): Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage have announced that the untitled spinoff of CW's Gossip Girl will focus on a teenage Lily Rhodes van der Woodsen Bass (played in the original by Kelly Rutherford) as a wild child in 1980s Los Angeles who moves in with her sister in San Fernando Valley after a falling out with her parents and must adjust to life at a Valley public school and a nightlife on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Spinoff will be produced as a backdoor pilot that will air May 11th as part of Gossip Girl 's current season. ( Variety ) Chevy Chase has been cast in a three-episode story arc on NBC's Chuck , where he will play Ted Roark, the billionaire technology mogul and owner of Roark Instruments, a company that Chuck Bartowski has always dreamed of working for. But

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. I spent last night fully immersed in television, watching screeners of the Season Three premiere of Skins , Lost in Austen , and Mistresses , before indulging in this week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef . Tori Spelling is in "final negotiations" to reprise her role as Donna Martin in the CW's 90210 in multiple episodes this season. One major point holding up the deal previously was allegedly Spelling's fear or running into Shannen Doherty on the set, but Doherty has now wrapped her role for the season. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Oscar winner Stephen Gaghan ( Traffic ) was recently the subject of a bidding war between ABC and FOX, with ABC landing the writer with a seven-figure blind put pilot commitment. Under the terms of the deal, Gaghan--who previously wrote for The Practice and NYPD Blue --will write and executive produce a one-hour drama pilot for the network and is attached to di

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Those of us who loathed John Patrick Amedori's Aaron Rose on the CW's Gossip Girl have reason to celebrate today. The CW has confirmed that the December 8th episode that saw Serena heading off to Buenos Aires with Aaron will be the character's last appearance on the series. Whew. So what went wrong? "It was the facial hair," says Show Tracker's Enid Portuguez. I have to agree but I'd also add greasy hair and personality bypass. ( Los Angeles Times ) Tom Cavanagh has confirmed that he will return to ABC's Scrubs this season as Dan, the screw-up brother of J.D. (Zach Braff), in an episode filmed in September that also sees the return of previous guest stars Amy Smart and Nicole Sullivan. Scrubs launches its final season on January 6th on ABC. ( TV Guide ) Matt Lanter ( Heroes ) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on the CW's 90210 , where he will play bad boy Liam, a potential love in

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Mark Cherry announced that he would like to continue ABC's Desperate Housewives through 2013. While Cherry is signed on to executive produce the ABC drama through its seventh season and ABC has only committed so far to the current fifth season, there is currently no deal in place for any additional seasons beyond that. Cherry announced his intentions to keep Desperate Housewives on the air for nine seasons (rather than the seven he previously discussed) during a cast and crew celebration yesterday. "We've been talking with the studio and the network about the conceptual possibilities of additional seasons," said a source close to the situation, "but it's still dependent on a lot of things like cast willingness, ratings, etc... It sure seems like it could happen!" Yes, but four more seasons? ( E! Online ) "I think the goal for everybody is to put a face back on the drama. " Pushing Daisies

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Pushing Daisies fans can at least look forward to one thing: closure. The series finale was said to contain a cliffhanger ending for our girl Chuck but no more, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello, who learned that Bryan Fuller and Co. were able to tack on a different opening and ending to the episode in post. "We're doing a lot of work in post to shape it so that it is satisfying for the audience," said Fuller. Ausiello also reports that there are rumors swirling that ABC may burn off the final three episodes in a single night. I don't know about you but I'm already missing Daisies . ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Looks like she's always the constant: Lost 's Sonya Walger has been cast as the female lead in ABC's drama pilot Flash Forward . She'll play Olivia, the wife of newly sober FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), who is troubled by the vision

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Let's get to the headlines, shall we? Neve Campbell ( Party of Five ) will return to network television with NBC's midseason drama The Philanthropist , starring James Purefoy and Jesse Martin, about a renegade billionaire who uses his wealth to help people in need. The former Scream queen will play the wife of Teddy Rist's business partner and BFF Phillip (Martin), who runs the men's philanthropic organization and finds herself drawn to Rist (Purefoy). ( Hollywood Reporter ) ABC released some new footage from the Season Five premiere of Lost . ( Televisionary ) Samantha Who? (and former Ugly Betty ) writer Marco Pennette has three projects in development, including ABC drama pilot The Romeos , about four men in the 1960s who eventually become the country's biggest pop stars, which he'll write and executive produce with Brad Meltzer and Steve Cohen ( Jack and Bobby ), and ABC comedy Straight Up and Dirty ,

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. I'm still laughing about last night's unintentionally hilarious episode of Gossip Girl , which in true Thanksgiving spirit, featured seemingly mortal enemies being polite to one another and everyone refusing to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room: namely Little J's ghastly "makeover." (Shudder.) Are the producers of CW's 90210 update going to do the unthinkable and kill off toothy Brenda Walsh? Fans are in an uproar about a possible rumor that Brenda (Shannen Doherty) will contract a terminal illness on her latest batch of 90210 episodes and, well, die. While some are livid about the potential storyline, Jason Priestley seemed open to the possibility of Brenda dying on-screen. "This is all news to me, but this is fantastic," Priestly told Access Hollywood. "That is going to be awesome. No they haven't given me anything yet. I don't even know if the episode is written yet, but I

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While the post-election television-related news is pretty scant today (though I am filled with hope at the prospect of change under President Elect Obama... while being pretty disappointed in the still undecided tough race for Prop 8 in California), there are a few tidbits to get through. As the networks prepare to announce their full midseason schedules, many believe that some of our favorite series are in serious jeopardy. Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, Lipstick Jungle, Eli Stone , and Life are all said to be on the bubble for midseason. Pushing Daisies ' cancellation would make me absolutely heartbroken but the writing is starting to appear on the wall for this sophisticated and unique series. Sigh. ( TV by the Numbers ) Nikki Blonsky will guest star on ABC's Ugly Betty , where she will play an assistant at Mode's rival publication, Elle, and will make an offer of friendship to Betty, though naturally she'll

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Hope you weren't too attached to CBS' The Ex List . The Eye has pulled the low-performing drama off of its schedule, effective immediately, and will fill the Friday night timeslot with repeats of NCIS for now. Decision comes on the heels of yet another batch of low ratings for the drama (5.3 million viewers and 1.5/5) and the departure of showrunner Diane Ruggiero. No word on whether production will continue (series is currently shooting its eleventh episode) or whether CBS will air the produced episodes later down the line. My thought is that they won't be going to prom any time soon. ( Variety ) Barack Obama's presidential campaign has decided not to enlist a full broadcast regime on Wednesday night, opting not to purchase the 8 pm air time on ABC, which will instead air an original episode of Pushing Daisies instead. I'm hoping that the fact that Daisies is one of the few series that will air original episod