Second (and Third) Windows: NBC Gets Creative with Cable Nets

Ah, the days of vertical corporate integration. Makes you nostalgic for when companies only had that one broadcast platform. But lately, it's been that media conglomerates seem to have entire portfolios of channels to manage and spread their programming (especially when it's created in-house from their wholly owned studios) across multiple networks.

Such is the case with NBC, which announced that it would schedule weekly second windows for new series Bionic Woman and Life on Sci Fi and USA respectively. Bionic Woman will reair its Wednesdays at 9 pm episode on Sci Fi on Fridays at 7 pm, beginning September 28th; Life will encore at midnight ET, early Monday mornings, after its initial bow on NBC Wednesdays at 10 pm.

If that weren't enough, USA and Bravo will air special blocks of programming on October 6th and 7th, offering viewers another opportunity to catch their dramas, including Journeyman and Chuck, which don't come from studio sibling NBC Universal:

USA: Saturday, October 6th
1 pm: Friday Night Lights (2nd season premiere)
2 pm: Chuck (pilot)
3 pm: Life (pilot)
4 pm: Life (2nd episode)
5 pm: Journeyman (pilot)
6 pm: Bionic Woman (pilot)

Bravo: Sunday, October 7th
Noon: Chuck (pilot)
1 pm: Chuck (2nd episode)
2 pm: Journeyman (pilot)
3 pm: Life (pilot)
4 pm: Bionic Woman (pilot)

Additionally, Sci Fi will reair the pilot episodes of Chuck and Journeyman as well, if you didn't already catch the first three airings or so, while Bravo is scheduled to air marathons of 30 Rock on Sunday, September 30th and Friday Night Lights on October 5th, as a lead-in to the critically-acclaimed, if ratings-starved series' second season premiere on NBC that evening.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Big Brother 8 (CBS); Smallville (CW); Ugly Betty (ABC); Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (FOX)

9 pm: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); Grey's Anatomy (ABC); Don't Forget the Lyrics (FOX)

10 pm: Without a Trace (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Men in Trees (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

10 pm: Tim Gunn's Guide to Style on Bravo.

See the style maven make it work on his own fashion series, where he and supermodel Veronica Webb take on one hapless fashion victim and make them over into a sartorial superstar.

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

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In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...

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