Neil Patrick Harris has been tapped to host the Emmys for a second time.  CBS announced today that the How I Met Your Mother star will emcee the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards this fall, marking a return to the program after hosting the 2009 Emmys to widespread critical praise.  Harris is an excellent showman and will no doubt do an excellent job hosting the ceremony.  This news comes on the heels of the announcement that Harris will also be hosting the Tony Awards June 9th on CBS, marking his fourth time overseeing the Broadway-geared ceremony.  Hit the jump to watch Harris’ opening musical number from the 2009 Emmys.  The 65th Annual Primetime Emmys will air on September 22nd on CBS.

Fresh off this morning’s announcement of its fall 2013-14 schedule, CBS has unveiled trailers for some of its new series.  Briefly:

• We Are Men – An ensemble comedy starring Jerry O’Connell, Kal Penn, Tony Shalhoub, and Chris Smith as four single men living in a short-term apartment complex.
• Mom – The new multi-camera comedy series from executive producer Chuck Lorre starring Anna Faris as a newly sober single mom raising two children.  Allison Janney plays her estranged mother.
• The Crazy Ones – A single-camera workplace comedy from executive producer David E. Kelley starring Robin Williams as an advertising genius.  Sarah Michelle Gellar plays his daughter.
• The Millers – A single-camera comedy series starring Will Arnett as a news reporter whose mother (Margo Martindale) moves in with him after splitting from his father.
• Hostages – A new drama series from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer starring Toni Collette as a surgeon who is thrust into a political conspiracy when her family is taken hostage by a rogue FBI agent played by Dylan McDermott.  Tate Donovan also stars.
• Intelligence – A midseason dramatic thriller series starring Josh Holloway (Lost) as a high-tech intelligence operative enhanced with a super-computer microchip in his brain.  CSI veteran Marg Helgenberger also stars.

Hit the jump to watch the trailers, and leave your feedback in the comments section.

Leading up to this year’s game-changing season finale of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, creators/showrunners Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had been teasing that the ninth and final season would see the show’s narrative take a dramatic shift.  Well, following the events of the season eight finale, we now have confirmation of just what kind of shift is taking place and it’s a rather curious move on Bays and Thomas’ part.  Hit the jump to read on, but beware that there are spoilers for those who have somehow managed to remain unaware of what happened in the season eight finale.

Unlike its broadcasting cohorts, CBS doesn’t typically use its upfronts as a time to frantically throw the everything and the kitchen sink out there in the hopes one sticks.  CBS knows its audience, and it’s steadily successful because of it.  What is so interesting with this year’s upfronts then is that they actually did shake things up a little: they didn’t pick up another NCIS spinoff, and they overlooked Beverly Hills Cops.

Instead, CBS is adding two single-camera comedies (The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams, and We Are Men with Kal Penn) and a limited series run of Hostages, a Jerry Bruckheimer production.  Though most of the CBS schedule will look familiar (crime shows, canned laughter comedy), these new additions add a level of interest to CBS’s schedule not usually seen.  Hit the jump for the schedule details.

CBS has released the first full trailer for the limited series adaptation of the Stephen King novel Under the Dome.  For those unfamiliar, the supernatural thriller pits local folks against each other when they discover that their vacation town in Maine has been cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious force field.  Comic book/TV writer Brian K. Vaughan (Lost) is a writer on the project and the pilot was directed by Girl with the Dragon Tattoo helmer Niels Oplev Arden, so the behind-the-scenes talent bodes well for the show.  This trailer does a swell job of appealing to genre fans, as we get a look at the cast of characters that will inhabit the town under the dome along with some intense action thrown in for good measure.  This all feels very Lost-like, so hopefully that’s a good thing.

Hit the jump to watch the full trailer.  The series stars Dean Norris, Mike Vogel, Jeff Fahey, Rachelle Lefevre, Britt Robertson, and Keith Harris.  Under the Dome premieres on CBS Monday, June 24th.

The first footage from the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome has been released.  As probably the most anticipated new show coming out this summer, the first look includes scenes from the episodes as well as some behind-the-scenes interviews with King, the creative team, and several of the actors.  Not too much has been revealed about the adaptation, but from what could be gathered during their WonderCon  panel and this first look, it looks like this could very well be a riveting, suspenseful, and imaginative interpretation of the novel.

King himself has been very involved, but also vocal about his support for the show to deviate from the novel and explore other avenues with the characters and the story.  With Brian K. Vaughan (Lost) at the helm of the show and a talented cast that includes Rachelle Lefevre, Mike Vogel, Dean Norris, Britt Robertson, and Keith Harris, I’m expecting a solid and gripping thirteen episodes.  The series will premiere sometime in June.  Hit the jump for the first look.

Whereas NBC is desperately scrambling for viewers (after falling behind Univision in some recent rankings), CBS, the most dominant of the Big Four networks continues to show its programming stability by renewing almost all of its series, including:

• Freshman Sherlock procedural drama Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu
• The excellent series The Good Wife, which has been on the bubble for years (however, with a new syndication deal CBS surely sees more dollar signs and viewers by keeping it on the air)
• Comedies Mike & Molly and 2 Broke Girls
• The many procedurals: NCIS: LA, Person of Interest, The Mentalist, Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods.

Two series that haven’t made the cut yet though are Criminal Minds (because of cast negotiations) and the Dennis Quaid vehicle Vegas, which hasn’t ever seemed to find its audience.  For more on these shows (and the ones these nine series join in the ranks of already renewed), hit the jump.

A brief roundup of a few TV casting reports:

• Will Arnett has signed on to star in the untitled CBS sitcom created by Greg Garcia (Raising Hope).  Not a great sign for Arnett’s current obligation, Up All Night.
• Steve Zahn will star in Influence, the latest drama from Kyle Killen (Awake)
• Rachel Lefevre is now the female lead in the CBS series adaptation of Stephen King‘s Under the Dome.

Hit the jump for details on each project.

We’ve got a couple of TV casting stories of note to share this afternoon.  Fresh off yesterday’s news that Rupert Grint will lead the CBS comedy pilot Super Clyde comes word that another Harry Potter alum is heading to The Eye.  THR reports that Jason Isaacs has been tapped to star in the CBS drama pilot Surgeon General.  The actor will play the titular surgeon general of the U.S., a widower with two teen girls who is much more interested in the nation’s health than the political aspects of his job.  Samuel Baum (Lie to Me) will write and executive produce.

Isaacs is no stranger to network television as he starred in last year’s critically acclaimed NBC series Awake.  Sadly, the show failed to become a ratings hit and was subsequently cancelled by the network.  Isaacs is a wildly charismatic actor and Surgeon General sounds like a swell outlet for his talent, so hopefully the pilot is a success and CBS orders the show to series.  Hit the jump for casting news concerning CBS’ adaptation of the Stephen King novel Under the Dome.

Ron Weasley is heading to the small screen.  Rupert Grint has been set to lead the CBS pilot Super Clyde, which centers on a young man who decides to become a superhero.  Grint will play Clyde, a fast-food worker and avid comic book reader who considers himself borderline agoraphobic with mild to severe anxiety issues.  Clyde wishes he were a superhero himself, and when he inherits a $100,000 a month inheritence from his deceased eccentric uncle, “he decides that the cash will be his secret super power and will use it only for good and reward the good-hearted.”  So it’s like a My Name Is Earl reboot with a dash of Batman thrown in for good measure.  Hit the jump for more.

We’ve got a couple of interesting TV casting stories to share this evening.  First up, prolific character actor Kevin Pollak has joined the cast of CBS’ upcoming Beverly Hills Cop pilot.  Eddie Murphy is producing the hourlong series alongside Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Last Resort), and Brandon T. Jackson (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) was cast in the lead role of Axel Foley’s son last October.  Now THR reports that Pollak is set to co-star as Rodney Daloof, the in-house lawyer for the Beverly Hills Police Department.  The character is described as “incredibly risk-averse, a stickler for the rules, and a loud-mouthed bully,” so yeah, it sounds like Pollak should be able to knock this one out of the park.

The series is envisioned as a police procedural with a comedic element, and Murphy will be reprising his role as the senior Foley in the pilot with the possibility of recurring should CBS pick the pilot up to series.  Hit the jump for news concerning Peter Sarsgaard taking on a major role in the upcoming third season of AMC’s The Killing.

I would normally write off a TV series adaptation of Stephen King‘s Under the Dome simply because the book reminds me of the plot for The Simpsons Movie.  It doesn’t help that the series is on CBS, Home of the Lowest Common Denominator (except for How I Met Your Mother).  But Under the Dome has a secret weapon: Brian K. Vaughan, creator of Y: The Last Man and a writer on Lost.  Tonight during the Super Bowl, CBS aired the first promo for the show, and it doesn’t give away anything revelatory other than bringing the show to the attention of the year’s biggest audience.  It also point you to a website where you can put your home “under the dome”, and the site is surprisingly creepy.

Hit the jump to check out the TV Spot, and click here for what CBS President Nina Tassler had to say about the show.  Under the Dome premieres this summer.

When director Ruben Fleischer’s 2009 film Zombieland turned out to be a huge hit, talk immediately turned to a prospective sequel for the comedy.  Producers weren’t exactly lacking for ideas for the follow-up, since Zombieland was originally envisioned as a weekly TV series before it was reimagined as a feature film.  While Fleischer recently told us that the chances of Zombieland 2 coming to fruition are very slim, it now appears that the TV show might be coming back from the dead.  Reports surfaced in late 2011 that CBS was mulling over a Zombieland TV series, and now some casting calls for the show have leaked online that appear to confirm that the show is indeed in development.  Hit the jump for story and character details on Zombieland 2.0.

As part of the CBS portion of the TCA Press Tour, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler took some time to talk about current and upcoming shows for the network.  During the interview, she spoke about how recent violent events might impact their decision-making process for the coming pilot season, the confidence they have in sophomore series Person of Interest, what made Elementary the right show for the coveted post-Super Bowl spot, the renewal status of How I Met Your Mother, and their plans for Under the Dome, from Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and Brian K. Vaughan, and why summer is a good spot for it.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

The producers of the wildly popular CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother finally have an answer as to the fate of their series.  Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas began writing the current eighth season as if it would be the show’s last, and they’ve been patiently waiting for the network to come down with an answer regarding whether or not they needed to plan for one more season, or wrap things up in May.  Dealing was complicated as contracts for both Bays and Thomas as well as the entire cast were up at the end of this year, but CBS made no secret of the fact that they would be keen on ordering another full season for the ratings-smash show if all the deals could be renegotiated.

Now it looks like the long-awaited answer to the statement posed in the title won’t come until 2014, as How I Met Your Mother has been renewed for a ninth and final season.  Hit the jump for more details.