With television coming back from its “winter break” lets take a look at some new television and webTV news.

Over at the Television Critics Association’s press tour this morning, FOX revealed that they renewed Bones for a ninth season. They implied but did not outright say that it would be the final season of the long running crime drama, I guess it depends on the rest of FOX’s future slate of shows. The series stars Emily Deschanel as doctor  Temperance “Bones” Brennan, a “socially inept” forensic anthropologist who uses her unique skill set to solve long cold cases along with her partner FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, portrayed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s David Boreanaz.

Bones joins a bunch of other shows that the network has already renewed, including American Dad, Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and The X Factor. The only show I actually care about on FOX at the moment is New Girl, which stars Emily’s sister Zooey. New Girl keeps getting better and funnier with every episode. Hopefully they announce a renewal soon.

Well it took longer than expected, but it looks like Prospect Park is pulling through with its revivals of canceled ABC Soaps One Life to Live and All My Children. News was leaked last month that the company had closed deals with the DGA and SAG/AFTRA. Now comes word that PP has hired Executive Producers on the shows,  Jennifer Pepperman on OLTL and Ginger Smith on AMC, both of whom worked on the shows in the past, and the two show’s creator Agnes Nixon has signed on as a consultant. A few AMC cast members have signed on to the show, including Lindsay Hartley, Vincent Irizarry and Debbi Morgan. Even more interesting is the new plan for airing the soaps. Both OLTL and AMC will be half an hour long and air four days a week on The Online Network, with recap shows every Friday. Production begins in Stanford, CT in February. Maybe we’ll start seeing episodes as soon as March? Keep your fingers crossed!

While on the subject of soaps, lets shift online where the third and forth episodes of Lenox Avenue have been released over on its official website. The series is described as a “sexy soap-opera-style drama” that follows three male friends, Owen (Al Thompson, “A Walk to Remember”), Sellars (Dorian Missick, “Southland”), and Vaughn (Ryan Vigilant, “Gossip Girl”), who are navigating the complex dating scene while dealing with the pressures and messiness of their careers and friendships. The series is set in and spotlights the beauty of Harlem. In the third episode, Owen encounters a mysterious new woman while Sellars learns some stuff about his wedding. Then in the forth episode Vaughn learns that the single life is not nearly as easy as expected.   Find out more over on the show’s Facebook page.

Spoiler Alert: (If you DVRed the ABC network finale for All My Children and have not watched it, or were planning to watch it this week via Hulu, than skip down to the Talking Dead news…) After 41 years of storytelling in the fictional city of Pine Valley on ABC, the network sends the show off in a depressing way. Sure, the series *might* be continuing online thanks to Prospect Park, but it will be a very different show with lots of new faces in the mix. I look forward to seeing how the show changes and grows online in ways broadcast TV held it back.

But lets focus on the finale and the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger. Who in their right mind thought that would be a good idea? After 41 years of stories, I think the audience deserves an actual finale. This is where the characters are as we close this chapter of their lives. We did not need a “Who did JR shoot?” mystery to cap off the series. Nor did we need  unresolved issues of who is the mystery woman that David Hayward brought back to live, or will Erica and Jackson make up? The ending felt rushed, choppy, and worst of all, incomplete. I truly hope that Prospect Part treats All My Children with the proper respect that it deserves, because ABC has not done that in the past few years.

I love The Walking Dead. I’ve followed the comic since close to the beginning and I dig the series (even thought I feel like the season finale was a major miss step in an otherwise awesome season). But I honestly have no desire to watch a bunch of people sit around and talk about the episodes. AMC has announced The Talking Dead, a live talk show hosted by Chris Hardwick that will feature people talking about the episode of the show that just aired. Um… okay. Instead of wasting money on useless things like this, it would have been nice for AMC to not slash The Walking Dead‘s budget down or push out showrunner Frank Darabont. Please just focus on the show and making it as good as possible instead of trying to milk the brand for any pennies that you can get out of it.

Okay, so I’ll try to post something other than a “save this show” type of article tomorrow, but today I could not help it. Mondays are Chuck and it seems like the “We Give a Chuck” Twitter campaign has had some positive responses with retweets by Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. We will see if any other sponsors were impressed by the fans.

Due to my lack of Internet connection, I have not really been able to respond to the announcement by ABC that they would be canceling All My Children in September followed by One Life to Live in January. I think this is a huge mistake and would make one of the most unique forms of entertainment even closer to extinction. If you love them or hate them, there is no denying that Soap Operas are special. Most of the ones left have been on the air close to or longer than 40 years. Continuing stories that have never taken a break, new every weekend of the year with towns of characters that grow and evolve over time. Sure, the stories might be over the top, and sometimes downright bizarre, but soaps have also had groundbreaking stories dealing with everything from teenage pregnancy to rape, and even featured interracial couples well before anyone else had the guts to. They have been endlessly entertaining for countless fans.

These two classic shows are being replaced with talk shows. Cheap to produce cookie cutter garbage. This is obviously just the network’s desire to cut costs regardless of the product they put out. Well, it looks like it might slightly backfire, as one of ABC’s sponsors is also a big fan of AMC and OLTL. Hoover has pulled all of their advertising from ABC programs and has issued this statement:

To all the loyal ABC soap fans,

I want you to know from me personally that we hear you loud and clear. My wife and mother are both passionate viewers of All My Children and One Life to Live, as are many of my colleagues here at Hoover. We were and are as disappointed with this news as you are.

In fact, we will discontinue our advertising with ABC this Friday, 4/22. We’re making every attempt to pull our spots from these programs sooner.

Because we feel that’s not enough, we also want to help get your voice heard with ABC. So, we’ve set up a special email address, SaveTheSoaps@Hoover.com, to help pull together the mass emotional outpouring of support for our beloved ABC soaps and get it to our contacts at ABC. Please, send your emails to us at SaveTheSoaps@Hoover.com, and we’ll get every, single last one of them to ABC.

We’re 150% committed to doing what matters most to you – so if there’s anything else we can do to help or you have any ideas, please email this address, and we will respond to you personally.

Thank you for standing up for what matters to you! We need more of that in this world.

Brian Kirkendall
Vice President of Marketing
Hoover

With companies like Hoover getting behind fans, there might actually be a chance that we could save AMC and OLTL. We have some time before they’ll be over, but the question is, how do we go about saving them?