Friday, November 30, 2007

Lifetime Stakes Blood Ties, NBC Extends Chuck, ends Journeyman, and BBC America Speeds up Torchwood

NBC's Chuck & Journeyman
Early in the week, NBC announced that it had given Chuck a full season renewal (of course, dependent on what a full season will actually mean with the Writer's strike). They have also announced that the final two episodes of Journeyman will air December 17 & 19th (Mon & Wed) at 10 pm ET/PT.

Blood Ties on Lifetime - Final two episodes online only
Lifetime will not be airing the final two episodes of Blood Ties, making them available online at lifetimetv.com. Blood Ties creator, Tanya Huff, has commented about it on her Livejournal indicating the blogs she has been doing for Lifetime TV's web site will not be posted for the final two episodes in support of the Writer's strike. She will post them on her livejournal when the shows have aired in Canada (the show is currently about halfway through the season on broadcast TV and the cable channel Space. It is not clear if Lifetime dropped the last two due to low ratings or if they didn't think they would go well with the Christmas movies they have scheduled for the next few weeks now that their Psychic shows have ended. They may also be available on iTunes.

Torchwood on BBC America - Season Two on the heels of BBC2!
BBC America has announced that they will start airing season two of Torchwood on January 26th, shortly after the BBC starts airing the series on BBC2. This is an indication of BBC America getting much more aggressive in their programming and acquisition of shows. Having Torchwood being their highest rated series ever is probably a factor as well, and this should make it do even better for the channel with a very short time span between the BBC airings and the US airings. If there's a pre-emption in the UK, BBC America might even get ahead of BBC2. The BBC, as usual, hasn't yet indicated exactly when they will start the new season of Torchwood, but you can likely be certain it will be sometime before January 26th.