Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is set to premiere on Fox January 14, 2008, at 8p.

“We came around thinking this is a golden opportunity to make ‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ part of the huge surge of excitement in January,” said Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman, referring to the network’s January rating surge from the return of “American Idol” and “24.” “Fortunately, Sunday night is doing fine with our animated comedies, so we could do that.”

“Terminator: Sarah Connor” stars Lena Headey (”300″) as Sarah Connor, who, along with her son John (Thomas Dekker), battle attackers from the future. Linda Hamilton played the role in the first two features.

Huh. Pretty smart programming move, actually.

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You’ve got to watch this all the way through to the end when it gets kinda creepy reeeeal fast.

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NBC announced yesterday they are going taking the interesting step of offering free downloads of their most popular shows.

Jeff Gaspin, the president of the NBC Universal Television Group, said, “The shift from programmer to consumer controlling program choices is the biggest change in the media business in the past 25 or 30 years.”

NBC makes many of its popular shows available online in streaming media, which means that fans can watch episodes on their computers. Under the new NBC service, called NBC Direct, consumers will be able to download, for no fee, NBC programs like “Heroes,” “The Office” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on the night that they are broadcast and keep them for seven days. They would also be able to subscribe to shows, guaranteeing delivery each week.

But the files, which would be downloaded overnight to home computers, would contain commercials that viewers would not be able to skip through. And the file would not be transferable to a disk or to another computer.

The files would degrade after the seven-day period and be unwatchable.

I’m fascinated to see how this turns out. Unlike one of the folks quoted in the article, I don’t really see this as a horrible move by the network. Time could prove me wrong, but this seems like an intelligent alternative to iTunes.

Another eyebrow raising tidbit:

Mr. Gaspin noted that none of this meant that NBC was moving away from its traditional model of a nightly schedule of programs supported by advertising. He pointed to sales of television sets, driven by high-definition equipment, which are soaring to levels, he said, that surpass those of the biggest booms in color set sales.

Wow…really…?

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Apparently an Air America radio host is claiming that Stephen Colbert stole a Klingon joke from him on a recent show. I’m not buying it - either this is another of Colbert’s publicity stunts or Colbert and his writing staff are nerdy enough to develop his own Klingon joke. Judging by the man’s obsession with Lord of the Rings, I’m opting for the latter as my pick in this fight.

Cenk Uygur of Air America’s morning show “The Young Turks” insisted on his program Wednesday that Colbert used his joke on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” Uygur posted a video on YouTube comparing his joke — which he claims he first told on his September 7 radio program — with a segment that aired on “The Colbert Report” four days later.

In both jokes, Uygur and Colbert suggest that the Republican presidential candidates sounded like Klingons from “Star Trek” while speaking about the value of honor.

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At this rate, “Heroes” is going to be the biggest thing on the planet inside of another year. Del Rey has announced that they’ll be publishing a prose novel featuring the breakout character of the show, Hiro, attempting to travel back in time in order to save his lady love, Charlie.

The couple shared only a few moments of screen time last season before Charlie (Jayma Mays) was murdered by a serial killer. However, part of the show’s plot line is that Hiro (Masi Oka) is able to move back and forth in time and was able to spend several months with Charlie before she died.

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If you were looking for proof that it was a slow news weekend, CNN has it right here. The 24 hour news network ran a piece on some dude in New Mexico who dropped “tens of thousands of dollars” on an exact replica of Adam West’s Batmobile. Sigh.

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Well, this is a remarkably simple and basic idea that I wish I’d thought of. Zap2It has recently launched a section of their site that simply serves as a hub for people who want to watch legitimately streaming video from all the major networks.

If this sounds utterly simple, that’s because it is, but it’s so unassuming it’s brilliant. Basically, Zap2It has created pageviews and ad revenue for themselves by centralizing the links for all the major streaming channels online, removing the need to go to every network site and maneuver through their often annoying mazes of links, flash animations and confusing layouts. Just choose a show, click on one or two hyperlinks and bam - you’re watching the latest episode. Simple and convenient. Nice.

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Bonus “Origin of the Watcher” clip after the jump!

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