Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be celebrating the cancelation of one of the most interesting and unique shows to hit the small screen in years. That said, there was very little normal about HBO’s BIG LOVE. So rather than wallow in today’s news that the cult HBO favorite will call it quits after it ends its fifth season which is scheduled to kick off this January 16, 2011, we’d rather look on the bright side and applaud HBO for giving co-creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer ample time to craft a proper send-off and celebrate the fact that Sheffer told E! Online that, “I think you’ll agree this is definitively our best season to date.”
Still having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that the once would-be-king of late night, Conan O’Brien, is mere weeks away from unveiling his new show on… TBS? Us too! Which is why we thought that now would be as good a time as any to take a look back at how he got there. And what better way to do that than by picking up the must read tome from Bill Carter, one of the industry’s most well-connected authors. Hitting both digital and analog book shelves on November 2nd, 2011 comes Carter’s highly anticipated follow-up to The Late Shift, The War for Late night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy. But hey, don’t take our word for it, try before you buy courtesy of this awesome excerpt just posted over on VanityFair.com.
And speaking of the man, the myth, the keeper of the Masturbating Bear, perhaps the most pivotal characters in Carter’s axis of funny will follow up his “Live Coco Cam” by letting fans in on the ultimate warm-up for his new TBS show. Conan O’Brien will host “Show Zero” on Monday November 1st, at 11PM (ET) / 8PM (PST), which will feature celebrity guests, “The Basic Cable Band,” and Andy Richter as they help O’Brien warm up for the main event. See for yourself at TeamCoco.com, YouTube.com, and Facebook.com.
Now we know what you’re thinking! Just what on earth is the traditionally reality-free TV Addict doing expressing excitement for Paula Abdul’s upcoming Dance Show on CBS? Well, allow us to explain. The exciting aspect isn’t so much that Abdul is returning to our living room with LIVE TO DANCE, but rather that CBS is reportedly pitting her new show up against AMERICAN IDOL. A strategic move that can only mean one thing: Networks smell blood! And come January 2011, rather than continue to sit idly by as IDOL dominates the primetime television landscape, CBS is making the first of what we suspect will be a series of high profile moves by FOX’s competitors to stop the once unstoppable juggernaut that is was AMERICAN IDOL.
The only thing cooler than the news — first reported by Michael Ausiello — that CASTLE has tapped Laura Prepon to play Natalie Gray (an actress who has just been cast as Nikki Heat in the movie version of Heat Wave) is if the brains behind CASTLE nabbed fellow THAT 70’s SHOW co-star Topher Grace to play her foil. We’re just sayin’ 
