Fall TV Blog

Get ready for more tears! But the healthy ones as Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels gets her own show on NBC next year, the network announced Tuesday.

In addition to The Biggest Loser, Michaels will star on Losing It With Jillian, an eight-episode series slated for 2010. The famed take-no-prisoners trainer will travel the country, living with families for a week and thoroughly examining the choices they’ve made that have caused them to be unhealthy and unhappy.

“When your health is out of balance everything else suffers — finances, relationships, work and family dynamics,” Michaels says. “I’m moving in with families across the country, getting down and dirty and rooting out bad habits in every corner of their lives that are preventing them from health and happiness.”

Michaels will get some help along the way from celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who will offer tips on cooking with healthy ingredients and teach families about nutrition.

“I love the idea of Jillian crisscrossing America to actually move in with unhealthy families in desperate need of her tough love wake-up call,” says executive producer Ellen Rakieten. “It’s the knock on your door that could save your life.”

Excited about helping families, Michaels encourages PEOPLE to “go to NBC.com/casting and get my bed ready, America, ’cause I’m heading out and you never know, I might just end up on your doorstep, so watch out!” (Casting information will be up on their site very soon.) –Cynthia Wang

Tell us: Are you ready to lose it with Jillian?

Mitchell Haaseth/NBC

Get ready for more table flipping — and some political backstabbing! The Real Housewives of New Jersey will return for a second season, while a new group of women in D.C. will become Real Housewives, Bravo announced today.

The Housewives of New Jersey’s season 2 will air in 2010, but the network hasn’t announced which of the women from its first season — Danielle Staub , Dina Manzo, Jacqueline Laurita, Teresa Giudice and Caroline Manzo — will be back.

Meanwhile, the network also revealed that it has chosen Washington D.C. for its next Real Housewives location. That show, the network’s fifth franchise, will also air in 2010.

“A place for power and politics, Bravo scouted the D.C. area to identify the city’s alluring and discriminating residents, the women who have their pulse on the most important cultural events, political galas, gallery openings and fundraisers in Washington society,” Frances Berwick, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Bravo Media, said in a statement. “The season will bring viewers inside the lives and homes of movers and shakers in the community, all connected in different ways to the political arena. The D.C. wives, cast to be determined, will move comfortably from fundraisers to discussing everything from the economy to high fashion.”

The Real Housewives of D.C. follows the women of Orange County, New York City, Atlanta and New Jersey. –Jason Lynch

Tell us: Which is your favorite Housewives show?

Bravo

Three of Bravo’s familiar reality-star faces are getting their very own series. The Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano and Top Chef’s Fabio Viviani will all star in new shows about their professional and personal lives, according to Variety.

Fans of Frankel will be able to follow her career as a natural foods chef in New York City (and, we suspect, the Hamptons) as well as her love life on a still-untitled show. Camera crews will shoot Siriano, who won season 4 of Runway when it still aired on Bravo, as he sets up a new shop and markets his fashion line. And Viviani will star in Fabio: A Catered Affair, which will document the Italian chef and his business partner Jacopo Falleni as they try to grow their restaurant and catering company.

J. Graylock/JPI; Theo Wargo/WireImage; Bryan Bedde

In a stunning announcement, TLC said Tuesday morning that as of Nov. 2 Jon Gosselin would no longer appear on the popular reality series Jon & Kate Plus 8 — and the program would undergo a name change, to simply Kate Plus 8.

“Given Jon’s recent antics, there was no way the show could continue to portray him as a doting Dad, not while all this other crap was going on,” a source close to Jon Gosselin tells PEOPLE.

“Jon will still be seen on the show from time to time,” the source adds.

The series first debuted on April 16, 2007, and experienced a ratings spike once the Gosselin marriage became troubled earlier this year. This past season the couple announced they would divorce.

The fifth season premiere attracted a record 9.8 million viewers, making it the most-watched show of that evening including those on broadcast TV.

But after a six-week hiatus from new episodes, only 4.2 million viewers tuned in to see Jon & Kate on Aug. 3, and only 1.7 million reportedly watched last Monday.

Kate Gosselin recently completed a stint as a guest host of The View, sitting in for Elisabeth Hasselbeck during her maternity leave.

Gosselin has also reportedly taped a pilot for a talk show costarring Food Network star Paula Deen.

Goodbye, The N, and hello, TeenNick — and Nick Cannon.

The actor/comedian/TV host was announced Tuesday as the chairman for Nickelodeon’s soon-to-be re-branded channel for teens — formerly The N, and now TeenNick — and celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ellen DeGeneres, Sharon Osbourne and, yes, Mariah Carey, all appear in a new promo to congratulate him on his new gig.

“I started my career here at Nickelodeon and am so excited to be back, serving as an integral part of TeenNick as the in-house voice and representative for teens everywhere,” Cannon says in a statement. “TeenNick is their network and I am here to make sure this is an ultimate destination for and about them.”

The N officially becomes TeenNick on Sept. 28.

It’s a two-year deal for Cannon, 28, who will not only be in front of the camera, but making behind-the-scene decisions for the channel, which launched him to stardom with All That and The Nick Cannon Show. His first order of business will be to produce and host the TeenNick HALO Awards, an hour-long special that will feature Cannon and his famous friends as they surprise teens and recognize them for their good deeds. The special is scheduled to premiere in December. –Michael Y. Park

After 72 years on the air, Guiding Light is over.

Longtime fans said goodbye to their favorite dramatic and dysfunctional families, the Spauldings and the Lewises, on Friday, when CBS aired the soap’s final episode after many seasons of marriages, divorces, remarriages, scandals, back-from-the-dead encounters and numerous miracles — seven! — that had paralyzed characters walking again.

But beyond the melodrama, Guiding Light bolstered the careers of many of Hollywood’s most famous stars. Before Footloose, Kevin Bacon played alcoholic teen T. J. ‘Tim’ Werner in 1980. James Earl Jones was one of the first African-American actors to have a regular role on a soap, when he starred in the 1960s. Heroes star Hayden Panettiere played a young Lizzie Spaulding from 1996 to 2000. And die-hard fans will even remember when Calista Flockhart had a minor role as a babysitter in the late ’80s.

As soap operas struggle to remain profitable and reality shows provide a heaping portion of heartache and backstabbing, the dimming of Guiding Light truly marks the end of an era. But before you put away your bonbons and that box of Kleenex, here is one last clip of the longest-running TV drama in history. In it, Josh and Reva (played by Robert Newman and Kim Zimmer), Springfield’s longtime on-again, off-again couple, finally reunite — presumably for good this time — in front of the town’s iconic lighthouse. –Amy Keith

Tell us: Are you sad to see the end of Guiding Light? What are you favorite memories of the soap?

Jay Leno introduced his prime-time variety/talk show Monday at 10 p.m., and it turns out that Jay Leno at 10 p.m. wasn’t much different from Jay Leno at 11:30 p.m.. But did anyone expect him to alter his DNA and come out sounding like The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart? Eager, hard-working, upbeat, Leno remains Santa’s largest elf — and it’s Christmas, whether you want it or not.

What’s groundbreaking is the show’s time slot. The Jay Leno Show is a major programming gamble for NBC. The network is clearing the 10 p.m. weeknight of episodic series and bringing in the former Tonight host only months after he retired. (His first guest, Jerry Seinfeld, referred to The Leno Show as “your ‘I didn’t get fired by NBC’ program.”) The network has pitched the show as a no-lose proposition, so cheap it could be watched by no one and turn a profit. Leno apparently remains a valuable commodity, and a relatively safe one, even in a time when talk shows more and more are enjoyable chiefly as a source of online video highlights. That’ll be the way millions end up watching the most anticipated, and disappointing, bit: Leno’s very short interview with that silly Kanye West.

Creatively, though, it’s all a big empty gesture: a bold new experiment with nothing new. It’s just early late night. And this should interest me why? (more…)

Parenthood needs a new parent.

Maura Tierney announced Thursday that she has dropped out of the upcoming NBC drama series due to conflicts between the show’s production schedule and her treatments for breast cancer.

NBC is in the process of recasting her role as a harried single mom of two (Dianne Wiest played the part in the 1989 film which the series is based on).

Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

Fall is for sweaters, colorful leaves and new TV! From singing students to political wives caught in a scandal, Hollywood is bringing out a handful of new shows this year. Which one will you watch? Courteney Cox Arquette returns to TV with her sexy new comedy Cougar Town (ABC), which debuts Sept. 23, about a middle-aged woman trying to rediscover herself and her sexuality in the wake of a divorce. Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Katie Cassidy will join some familiar faces on the CW’s reincarnation of Melrose Place, debuting Sept. 8. The Good Wife stars Julianna Margulies as a woman whose husband (played by Chris Noth) is at the center of a political sex scandal. Technically, Glee (FOX), a musical comedy about a high school glee club, isn’t new — the pilot aired in May after the finale of American Idol — but its first season continues Sept. 9. And on Sept. 24, the creators of Lost debut Flashforward (ABC), a mysterious show about what happens when the entire human population blacks out and sees a glimpse of the future.

ABC; The CW; CBS; FOX; ABC

Embattled reality-TV mom Kate Gosselin will mix it up with the ladies of ABC’s The View as a guest host on Sept. 14 and 15, PEOPLE has learned.

The star of TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8 will be filling in for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who will still be on maternity leave when The View returns from its summer-rerun schedule on Sept. 8.

Gosselin, 34, whose separation from husband Jon has dominated the headlines throughout the summer, will no doubt help the talk show hit the ground running in the ratings as it begins its 13th season. (more…)