As we previously reported, NBC has given new season order for 30 Rock, The Office and Community while, according to a recent interview with NBC network president Angela Bromstad, a fifth season of the beleaguered Heroes is still undetermined. In addition, the CW has ordered a 10th season for Smallville.

Now, Fox has officially renewed the J.J. Abrams sci-fi procedural Fringe for a third season. The show had perfoemed reasonably well but was not a ratings powerhouse. Still, it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t get renewed, especially given its J.J. Abrams connection and the fact that Lost is ending this season.

Two big reasons for Fox to keep it around for another year. Plus, any show with the great John Noble, the hot Anna Torv and the cool Leonard Nimoy should be on the air as long as it wants to be.

The fate of Jack Bauer and the CTU team of 24 is still up in the air due to falling ratings and the show’s considerable expense to produce. Fox president Kevin Reilly recently told The Live Feed:

“It’s a very tough call. It’s a huge part of our legacy, and there’s not a lot of shows that could do a 9 share against the Olympics. Tremendous sales asset for us still; a show we’re so very proud of creatively. So it’s not an easy call.”

Well, if our own Shannon Hood has anything to say about it, that call should be an easy one.

According to Variety, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the prolific writer-producers involved with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek and Fox’s series Fringe, have signed an exclusive three-year deal with 20th Century Fox TV. As part of the deal, which officially starts March 1, the duo will bring in show ideas, recruit writers to work with them and also create their own projects, either by themselves or with others.

According to the article, 20th Century Fox TV chairman Dana Walden couldn’t be happier with the deal. “We’ve been pursuing this deal for quite some time,” said Walden. “They would elevate any type of development. But they were very thoughtful about the kind of commitment they were making. They didn’t want to overpromise.”

As for the writer/producers themselves, they are equally as excited. “We’ve been excited about going back into TV, but wanted to wait until the feature side of our company was on its feet,” Kurtzman said.

“One of the things that drew us back to TV was the idea that we could do the kind of stories that we’re not known for in features,” said Orci. “From sci-fi to procedurals to medical genres, those are all the kind of shows that we love.”

For TV, the prolific pair are already overseeing CBS’ reboot of Hawaii Five-O, which recently got a pilot order. They are also producing a new animated version of Transformers for the Hub, the new Discovery/Hasbro joint venture that is set to replace Discovery Kids later this year. Even though they are still involved with Transformers, let’s hope their TV projects during this new deal are more like Fringe and less like Transformers.

The year 2010 is here! With a new year comes resolutions to make, new goals in mind, and new schedules to follow. But it also means some brand new TV for us all to enjoy.

January 14th

This night brings the return of some of our favorite shows here at The Flickcast including 30 Rock, Bones, Fringe, Supernatural, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, Private Practice and The Mentalist.

All these shows have been on hiatus, some for almost a month, so with these ratings giants this is sure to be the biggest night on TV all month, no matter what channel you’re watching.

Chuck

Everyone’s favorite geek-turned-spy is back, and Chuck is better than ever. After downloading the Intersect 2.0, we’ll see Chuck perform karate chops AND Spanish Guitar in his quest to keep his family safe and lead a normal life.

Chuck returns for its third season on January 10th with a two hour premiere, and a brand new episode the day after!

American Idol

Regardless of how you feel about this show, you can’t deny its cultural impact and the success it has produced. However, the fun in watching the first few weeks of American Idol is not the talented singers or the tense eliminations.

It’s watching all the people who really can’t sing try their hand at making it big and failing miserably. Let’s face it, with the economy in the can and the current political climate, we all need a little schadenfreude. Idol returns on January 12th on Fox.

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Sure, people complain about Fox for it’s repeated canceling of shows involving Joss Whedon and/or Terminators, but at least the network is now stepping up and offering a boost to the J.J. Abrams co-created show Fringe. The Futon Critic reports Fringe will return from it’s winter hiatus on January 7, but then that following Monday, Fox will air a new episode after a new episode of House.

The duo will be facing off with some heavy competition in the form of NBC’s Chuck and Heroes, ABC’s The Bachelor, and CBS comedies like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. Then in February, the Fringe will take a seven-week break to allow the mid-season drama Past Life, starring Kelli Giddish (All My Children) and Richard Schiff (West Wing) is about “an unlikely pair of past-life detectives who investigate whether what is happening to you today is the result of who you were before.”

Fringe will then return on April 1. According to TV Guide, as of the December 4 episode, “Snakehead”, Fringe had it’s highest ratings since the season premiere, with an audience of 6.9 million viewers. So, it’s good to see not only the show succeeding, but Fox putting their faith into it.

Fringe, much like some of the new hour-long dramas on FOX, has been picking up quite a bit of steam this season. Things have been heating up quite a bit with Agent Dunham and the mysterious Massive Dynamic, as well as some interesting developments between Walter and Peter.

We’ve got some brand new clips from tonight’s episode, “Earthling”, for you. In the first, Walter (John Noble,) takes on a puzzling investigation where victims inexplicably disintegrate into ash. He and Peter (Joshua Jackson) discuss the trials. In the second clip, Agent Dunham (Anna Torv) and Agent Broyles (Lance Reddick) discuss this week’s strange killer, and how it could be connected to the others.

Catch the two exclusive clips from tonight’s episode right after the jump. Be sure to catch “Earthling”, airing tonight from 9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT on FOX.

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Marvel’s chief fanboy, Joe Quesada, was at this year’s Big Apple Comic-Con to talk about what’s going on in the Marvel universe.  With the recent accusation of Marvel by Disney it’s hard to deny the company’s success. So, just how does Marvel continue to compete against DC it’s competitors?  According to Quesada, “The way we differentiate ourselves is by not sucking.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief claims “not sucking” is a sound business strategy. Okay, I can’t argue that point. From a business perspective not sucking, or at the very least sucking less then your competition, should be somewhere in the business plan and/or mission statement.

Unfortunately for Quesada, someone at Marvel hasn’t read said business plan.  If they had we, the fans, would not have been forced to endure Ghost Rider, either Fantastic Four film or the trilogy of reboots that was The Punisher, The Punisher and The Punisher: War Zone.  Quesada should probably send out a memo to the staff regarding his suck less initiative just as a reminder.

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I’m not sure if this news should be taken as good or bad, but it seems writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are officially off Transformers 3.  The dynamic duo of writing are probably two of the biggest names in Hollywood scribe circles these days having penned the fist two Transformers movies and this past Summer’s Star Trek reboot.

When asked why they are leaving Orci stated: “The main reason we would move on is because we risk getting stale and comfortable. If you only sing one song for too long, you miss the opportunity to sing news songs. We’ll see.”

With the pairs departure all the writing duties at this point fall to Ehren Kruger along with whatever Michael Bay wants to contribute (more explosions!).  This may not be such a good thing as Kruger is attributed for adding a lot of the comedy to the scripts which I felt did a disservice to the overall tone and pace of the story.

Getting back to my good/bad comment above,  I think it’s both.  It’s bad in the sense if there was anything positive about either movie (of which there was little as far as I can tell) it probably came from these two writers.  It’s bad because without Kurtzman and Orci the third Transformers film can only go downhill from here.  Not that it has far to go to hit rock bottom.

On the flip side, this will certainly free up the pair’s time to work on the sequel to Star Trek and continue producing their hit show Fringe. Even in Kurtzman and Orci’s absence I’m certain the next Transformers installment will go onto make a load of cash which makes it even more surprising the two would make an exit.  That said, I have to respect them for turning down a huge payday in favor of their craft.  My hat is off to you both.

Transformers 3 hits theaters July 1, 2011.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt have to go it alone again. They take on a bunch of new, and returning, topics including Fantastic Fest in Austin, new television shows including Cougar Town, Community, FlashForward and returning shows like The Big Bang Theory, Lost, Fringe and Dollhouse.

In addition, they discuss Ryan Reynolds confirmation of his appearance in Green Lantern and Deadpool, the career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Billy Crystal’s recent projects, Megan Fox on Saturday Night Live, Transformers 3, the A-Team reboot, and much more.

Plus, Chris and Matt make some great picks this week including Matt’s pick of the indie comic The Stuff of Legend and Chris’ pick of Scott Sigler’s sci-fi/horror novel Infected.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

Thanks for listening.

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Television network ABC has effectively staked their claim to rule Thursday nights, if the return numbers from The Hollywood Reporter are any indication. But instead of trying to make sense of those numbers, let’s break it down in a more digestible format, and what you really need to know is that ABC crushed the competition.

Both Grey’s Anatomy and the season premiere of Private Practice won their respective time slots while FlashForward tied with CBS’ Survivor in theirs, translating to an almost clean sweep. While most of the other shows couldn’t produce the same viewership, they managed to stay the course and not drop too much. CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigations and The Mentalist, Fox’s Bones and Fringe and The CW’s Vampire Diaries and Supernatural all enjoyed different levels of success.

Left in the cold, however, is NBC and their sinking line-up of programming. Parks and Recreation, Community and SNL Weekend Update Thursday managed to produce poor numbers. Even fan-favorite The Office only managed to do “average,” leading to the former home of “Must See Thursday” placing fourth among the top-tiered networks.

The new kids on the television block are going to be just fine, if the early return numbers are any indication. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the debuts of new shows this fall have bucked the last two years’ trend of low premiere numbers. NBC’s The Jay Leno Show, Fox’s Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show, CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles and ABC’s three-headed monster of Cougar Town, Modern Family and FlashForward have all benefited from large turnouts.

Even with the oncoming onslaught of new and “fan-favorite” programs, the CW’s Vampire Diaries continued to show promise. But not all shows are sitting pretty as the law of averages always seems to have an opinion on, well, everything. ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy – formally a ratings juggernaut – has shown signs of slipping, and you can include genre staples NBC’s Heroes and CW’s Smallville into that mix as well.

For whom the bell tolls? Fox’s Fringe and ABC’s Desperate Housewives have dropped to the point that their respective networks are beginning to sweat a bit, and the departure of William Petersen from CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigations has had a similar effect on that show’s ratings. If returns don’t improve, these shows could end up like CW’s TBL: DOA.