TVSquad

Did you know that double Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro acted in soap operas? It's true. Many of today's biggest stars honed their craft by doing New York soaps like As the World Turns and Another World. Before she was Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar was Susan Lucci's daughter on All My Children.

Hollywood soaps like Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless also produced stars. Tom Selleck, for instance, was a Y&R hunk before becoming Magnum, P.I. There are a lot of current stars right now on hit shows who were daytime characters just a few years ago. After the jump, we count down the top ten primetime stars who started in soaps.

Good news for fans of Thursday night comedy: NBC has renewed both 30 Rock and The Office. The Biggest Loser has also been renewed (and Heroes is noted as 'very secure'), but the final verdict has not been reached for the low-rated Lipstick Jungle, Kath & Kim and Knight Rider. In other news, the sky is blue.

Seriously, this should come as no surprise to anybody who watches either show, as they are both brilliant. NBC seems to be trying to make Thursday nights into "Must See TV" again. As someone who enjoys The Office and is pretty much addicted to 30 Rock, I think they're succeeding.

At this stage, it is only known that the series is renewed, and not whether or not the shows will stay in their current time slots. I cover Smallville on Thursday nights. If they move either series to the 8 PM hour on Thursday, then I have to make sure my video recorders are properly working.

It looks like NBC's new Knight Rider is on its last turbo boost, and the show's executive producer claims NBC has no one to blame but themselves.

Mediaweek's Alan Frutkin sat down with the show's executive producer Gary Scott Thompson to talk about the show's already troubled times before it hits the air again on Wednesday.

Thompson said the show has undergone some usual first season changes like differences in creative direction and story outlines, but the changes the network handed down cut far deeper to the bone.

NBC had planned to bring the popular BBC and BBC America car show Top Gear to us yanks. Instead, NBC has decided to cut its brake cables in the middle of a brilliant power slide.

The official Top Gear blog announced that NBC won't air their US version of the show as a mid-season replacement in 2009.

This means the show and their hosts, Adam Carolla, Eric Stromer and Tanner Foust, are up to grabs for the highest bidder like a drug dealer's impounded Cadillac Escalade at a municipal car auction.

... Eleven babes worth watchin'

Oh sure, there may be 12 shows a stinkin', but there's still reason to tune in. See just like advertisers, show-runners and TV executives know that sex sells. And hot chicks sell. And hot chicks selling their sexuality sell like hotcakes ... or chicks ... I never can get that right. But just being hot and sexy isn't enough. To really sell it, they need to be as close to naked as legally allowed on the airwaves. We're talking "Oops, sorry to barge in on you standing there in your underwear bending over the bed pulling on your fishnet stockings. Nice rack."

Sometimes near-nudity, and even nudity, legitimately serves the plot. Let's face it, Anna Paquin had to bang that vampire on True Blood so she was going to have to get naked. It's a necessity. But Yvonne Strahovski on Chuck? Does she have to be in her underwear that often to protect the Intersect? Was it required by Simon Elder that Karen Darling be in her underwear in order to talk to him? Of course not. But it's hot and that's the way we like it. Hell, they made Catalina a stripper on My Name is Earl.

... Twelve shows a stinkin'

That aroma tickling your nose is not one from an oven full of fresh gingerbread cookies. No, it's from a television full of burned-out ideas and gutted hulks of viewers who can't take the crap that is heaped upon them. That's because, more than ever, there is a lot of stink on the television landscape. Most of it is due to inordinate amounts of reality programming which has flooded the market. The rest is due to the lack of new ideas for an industry that is rapidly changing.

In order to start our annual Festivus countdown we have compiled a scientifically proven list of 12 shows just stinking up the flat screen. And, when I say 'scientifically proven' I mean I just asked a bunch of people off the street about shows they disliked. So, it's as accurate as it possibly can be. Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll have opinions, one way or another, on these shows and others not on the list. So, if you have your nose plugs, let's begin.

It's looking like yet another new series is going to quietly fade away. The new Knight Rider show has halted production in what is likely the beginning of the end for the sequel of the 80's series of the same name.

The number of shows ordered by NBC has been ordered has been lowered from 21 to 17. The creators probably won't even have time to change the scripts, so I predict the season (and likely series) finale will end on an awkward note.

I'm sure at one point or another in every little kid's life, he or she has wanted to have a robot BFF. All the potential for wacky fun and scientific misadventures would make up for the inevitable human/binary language barrier, and, when I think about it, I still totally want a robot buddy. I mean, from my time on this Earth, of two things I am sure: Lists are fun and robots are awesome. So, despite the fact that my age numerically suggests I shouldn't be thinking about this sort of stuff, I am all over this list.

I should also note that, upon completion of this depressingly nerdy post, I am legally obligated to punch myself in the face for a solid fifteen minutes and then steal my own lunch money. Let's just get this over with, shall we? Here are the top eleven robot buddies from TV, in no particular order, because each robot is special in its own way. Also, I don't want any readers to kill me for not ranking to their liking.

Has anyone else noticed the lack of hair trigger cancellations thus far this season? We're a good month or more in now and only Opportunity Knocks and Do Not Disturb have had the plug pulled. And believe me those needed to happen. By now, though, your high quality shows that have underperformed like Pushing Daisies usually would be doing just that ... pushing up daisies. But, for some reason, not this year. At least not yet.

Hell, ratings-challenged shows like Knight Rider and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles are even getting full season pick-ups. And that's FOX giving Sarah Connor a chance to find an audience! FOX!! I think what we're seeing is the continuing fallout from the Writer's Strike last year. Remember when the execs were talking about how they were going to rethink their approach to television, ordering fewer pilots and possibly even altering the landscape of television in regards to seasons and sweeps? Well, the fall season started up pretty much like it always has, but I do believe there are far fewer shows waiting in the wings to replace this season's failures.

Okay, the other day I applauded Fox for giving Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles a pick up for the remainder of the 2008-2009 season. Even though the critics have been expecting more from the sci-fi series, Fox chose to stick with the show and give it a chance to evolve. Good for them!

That said, the news today that NBC has given Knight Rider a full season order leaves me cold. That's an order for nine more episodes, and it strikes me as throwing good money after bad. Knight Rider has been struggling in the ratings and generally dissed by the critics. It hasn't earned a pick up to be perfectly frank.

So why would NBC give this remake of the 1980's action drama a vote of confidence? Well, it could be that it's considered one of NBC programming chief Ben Silverman's pet projects.

If you've been watching NBC's Olympic coverage, you must have seen all of the promotion they have been doing for their fall season. New shows My Own Worst Enemy, Crusoe, Knight Rider, Kath & Kim, and America's Toughest Jobs have all had plenty of play. As have the returning Chuck and Life. Given that the latest Olympiad is closing in on becoming the most watched television event of all time, you might think those promo spots were pretty valuable.

Apparently, not so much. The Hollywood Reporter runs down the record for the network promoting new shows during past games. In 2004, the Athens games led to one show, Joey, making it beyond its first season. Likewise for the Sydney games in 2000, which brought us Ed, and nothing else. Things were a little better in 1996 from Atlanta. Profiler, The Pretender, and Suddenly Susan all lasted another four years. Not a stellar track record and it leaves you thinking that those precious spots might have served the network better pitching more beer. It has the makings of a good poll though. After the jump, place your vote for the one new show that will make it out of season one.

It's coming. The table is set, the players are on the field, the sails are raised, and the pretty maids are all in a row. Of course, I speak of the 2008-09 television schedule. In just a few short weeks viewers will be able to dine on a number of favorite and new dishes that are being served by the networks as well as the increasing number of cable channels who are delving into original programming.

While other fall seasons have come and gone with nary a whimper, this season may be different. Due to the prolonged Writers Strike many shows ended their seasons quite early. Programs like Life, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes haven't aired original episodes since the end of 2007. Heck, there hasn't been a new episode of The Shield since June of last year! So, the beginning of the 2008-09 season will be a second chance for some of these shows, particularly the ones that premiered last season, to show their worth to fans and the networks.

Just to be complete, I wanted to go over a few more tidbits from the NBC executive session with entertainment co-chiefs Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff. We already know about Leno copying Kimmel, and the late night news that came out of it, and we already know about the non-spin-off and the actual spin-off for The Office. But what else did they talk about?

• Life will get two Monday night showings, starting on September 29 at 10 PM ET, which will allow them to premiere Christian Slater's My Own Worst Enemy on October 13, and run it straight through December. Silverman called having that show after Chuck and Heroes a kind of a "male Heroes sandwich."
  

Imagine for a second that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons was hired to run a television show. Now imagine that the television show was a remake of an old favorite. Sounds like it would make for a pretty impatient press tour panelist, right? Well, that's what we got with Gary Scott Thompson, the new show-runner for Knight Rider.

Thompson answered most of the questions on the panel, and his message to everyone was: remember that two-hour KR movie that aired last year? Forget all about it. The characters may be the same but the story is completely different. What went on before probably won't matter for much. Even KITT is a little different.

Got $299 burning a hole in your pocket? Well you can use that cash to buy yourself a Knight Rider GPS from Mio that uses the actual voice of the original KITT, William Daniels.

The unit also has oscillating red LEDs on either side that mimic the pattern of KITT's speaker-unit from the original series. I think David Hasselhoff is going to get a lot of these around Christmastime.