Airdate: Damages

Nine will launch one of its hot new acquisitions, Damages on Sunday September 16 at 9:30pm.

The legal drama stars Glenn Close, Australia's Rose Byrne and Ted Danson.

Each series is promising to focus on a different legal case, in which Close plays a shrewd attorney seeking litigation damages.

The series launched in the US in July.

Nine will follow the pilot screening with no less than FIVE 'encore' screenings, within the same week!

A second episode will also air before regularly screening it Wednesdays at 9:30pm.

Press Release:

The electrifying thriller DAMAGES, the most talked about new drama in years, premieres on the Nine Network on Sunday, September 16 at 9.30pm.

Set and filmed in New York City , this gripping series – acclaimed as like no legal drama ever seen on television – features a powerful star line-up headed by Emmy and Golden Globe winner Glenn Close as ruthless and brutal litigator Patty Hewes, and Australia ’s Rose Byrne who plays ambitious law graduate Ellen Parsons.

Other central characters include rancorous billionaire businessman Arthur Frobisher, played by Emmy Award winner Ted Danson; Tony Award nominee Tate Donovan who stars as Patty Hewes’ loyal colleague, Tom Shayes; Zeljko Ivanek as Frobisher’s cunning lawyer Ray Fiske; and siblings David (Noah Bean) and Katie Connor (Anastasia Griffith). David is Ellen’s kind-hearted fiancé and his sister Katie is an insecure restaurateur.

DAMAGES begins with a distraught Ellen Parsons (Byrne) running out of a building into the streets of New York half-naked and covered in blood. Who or what is she running from?

The story then shifts back six months to when Parsons is offered a job with the law firm Nye, Everett & Polk. However the position is unexpectedly withdrawn when they discover she has also been invited to go for an interview at the high-profile firm Hewes & Associates, led by Patty Hewes (Close).

Patty Hewes, a relentless litigator, is the lawyer of choice for clients battling corporate titans. She is fighting businessman Arthur Frobisher (Danson), accused of an illegal stock sale that saved his fortune but ruined his employees. Ignoring efforts to settle out of court by the tycoon’s lawyer, Ray Fiske (Ivanek), Patty plans to send Frobisher a costly message. But when the devastated employees vote to accept the settlement, a furious Hewes explodes on Shayes (Donovan) for failing to find out about their decision earlier.

Ellen discovers that her fiancé’s sister, Katie Connor, was working as Frobisher’s chef when the crooked stock sale went through. She suspects she has found a crack that could blow the case wide open – but Frobisher is an investor in Katie’s new restaurant and she is reluctant to do anything that could jeopardise it.

Ellen begins to fear she is caught up in a conspiracy that Patty Hewes has engineered to apprehend Frobisher and walks deeper into the trap she has set for him. But nothing is as it seems ... and Ellen finally realises she can trust no one.

In an exclusive deal with BigPond, viewers who miss an episode of DAMAGES on Channel Nine can catch up on-demand via BigPond TV on their Telstra Next G mobile.

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Returning: Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

As previously announced, Nine is to return Who Wants to be a Millionaire as a 30 minute, 5 night a week programme.

The show will soon re-appear in the 7pm timeslot with eddie McGuire hosting. Temptation is likely to be rested, but may return as a 5:30pm show. This is yet to be confirmed.

Millionaire has previously had short-lived incarnations as a thirty minute programme, but asking viewers to settle for Eddie 5 nights a week on a long-term basis is a big ask. To help spice the show up, Nine is adding a fourth 'lifeline' called "Switch" in which the contestant can dump a question in favour of another, at random.

Press Release:

Australia’s greatest quiz show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, is returning with a fresh new 30-minute format in a new 7.00pm timeslot – five nights a week on the Nine Network, with Eddie McGuire back as the quizmaster.

To whet the appetite of viewers, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire will resume with a special one-hour presentation before moving to its regular new timeslot, delivering all the excitement and edge-of-your-seat drama it’s famous for.

Eddie McGuire will bring his innate ability to create suspenseful television into lounge rooms around the country as Australia ’s top-rating quiz show presents everyday people with a golden opportunity to become instantly rich and follow in the footsteps of the only two million-dollar winners to date – Rob Fulton (October 2005) and Martin Flood (November 2005).

Faced with a series of questions with multiple-choice answers, contestants have to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions in order to experience the exhilaration of winning $1 million.

To help contestants along the way there are now FOUR “lifelines” which they can call on to nudge a step closer to $1 million – Phone A Friend, 50/50, Ask the Audience, and a new one called Switch. With the Switch option contestants can pass on a specific question and receive a new question.

The Nine Network is now calling for contestants from Melbourne and Sydney. For the chance to cash in on your knowledge, log on to www.ninemsn.com.au/millionaire and follow the prompts.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: returning soon to Channel Nine. Lock it in! ..

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Gone: ER

A little surgery to Nine's schedule will see ER removed from Monday nights - effective immediately.

It will be replaced by CSI.

The long-running drama had only recently returned to programming, but this week only attracted 600,000 viewers.

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Sponsors pull from TEN show

They say all publicity is good publicity, though few shows have 'enjoyed' the pleasure of commercial sponsors pulling their ads from a show.

It's bound to drive more viewers TEN's way, but nor is it a move they would necessarily welcome.

Holden and Holeproof have said they will not allow their products to be promoted during episodes of Californication which has been running for just over one week on TEN.

The racy, cable-produced series from Showtime depicted a nun performing fellatio on the lead character played by David Duchovny, and scenes involving sex, marijuana and vomiting on art. The show carries appropriate classification warning in the 9:30pm timeslot. Interestingly, few protests were aimed at Seven for the opening episode of Ugly Betty in which oral-sex was implied in a 7:30pm timeslot (someone popped up from under a desk, clearly having satisfied a principal character).

Protests against TEN's show (some of which appear as comments on this site) will likely give the show a much-needed boost for its current Aussie launch.

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