By: Valerie Milano

The Television Critics Association’s  summer  press tour continued with Matt Blank, Chairman and CEO of Showtime Networks celebrating the huge successes they’ve enjoyed this past season.  “Showtime continues to thrive with resounding successes in every part of our business, and particularly original programming, where we’ve produced one of the most successful lineups in all of television and more 2010 Emmy nominations for our original series than any other premium network, including nominations for “Dexter,” “Nurse Jackie,” Edie Falco, Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, and John Lithgow. And our digital media group was named a primetime Emmy Awards finalist for our “Dexter” interactive efforts, all very important to our marketing of our shows. It has been a great year. Michael C. Hall, Toni Collette, and John Lithgow were all recognized with Golden Globes Awards earlier this year and, as you know, Toni for best actress in a comedy series in the Emmys last summer.”

Showtime also continues to air feature films and have quite a line up in store. “Twilight Saga: New Moon”, “Inglorious Basterds” and “The Hurt Locker” are scheduled soon, and theatrical presentations will air in agreement with Dreamwork Studios. Returning for another season will be “Weeds” with special guest Richard Dreyfus in several episodes as well as Alanis Morrissette and Jennifer Jason-Leigh. “Californication”, “United States of Tara” and “Nurse Jackie” were picked up and of course, “Dexter” returns.  The 5^th season of “Dexter” brings guest appearances from Julia Stiles, Jonny Lee Miller, Peter Weller and Marisa Doyle Kennedy.

Adding to the upcoming season are new programs with fabulous stars. Blank said, “We’ve
also committed to ten episodes of what we think is really going to be a fun half hour for us: a comedy series called “Web Theory” The project comes to us from Emmy Award-winning actress Lisa Kudrow and was developed from her Web comedy series. It’s a first for us.” Also the star packed “The Big C”, andpremiering January 9, “Shameless”  with William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum. Replacing “The Tudors”, (“we are fresh out of kings for the moment, with the possible exception of Don King on “Showtime Championship Boxing”) is the hour long series “The Borgias” starring Jeremy Irons. “I think it was five years ago in May, I went over to Dublin the weekend we were beginning production on “The Tudors.” And I think, from talking to a number of our program executives who are here today who were in Budapest last week as we began production on “The Borgias,” there’s that same feeling of anticipation and that this is something that will be really special and help to brand our network further in this category.”