360AM: Oct. 4 Programming, Online News & More

• PROGRAMMING

ABC‘s Private Practice and NBC‘s Bionic Woman were the only two fall broadcast premieres last week to break into TiVo‘s Top 50 Season Passes ranking.

Bravo‘s first ever live finale, for Top Chef 3 last night, drew 3.08 million total viewers and was #1 on cable in tis timeslot. Winner Hung Huynh, his fellow competitors and judges return for a reunion special next Wednesday at 10pm. In other programming, Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio welcomes Billy Crystal Monday night; Queer Eye makes over an arty family Tuesday night; Joy Behar guest-judges new series Better Half, Wed. at 11pm. Finally, Bravo’s also casting for Step It Up, its new dance reality competition series.

Comedy Central will premiere The Root of All Evil, a new series on pop culture that starts in March and features The Daily Show commentator Lewis Black.

HBO renewed its sex-filled couples’ therapy series, Tell Me You Love Me, for a second season and greenlit two drma pilots: 1%, about biker gangs, from Michael Tolkin; and Patient 2344, about a near-future medical research lab, which is being exec produced by Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis. [Hollywood Reporter]

Lifetime premieres the 2nd season of Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead on Oct. 12 as a part of a new Friday night primetime reality lineup that also includes America’s Psychic Challenge.

MTV‘s boy band reality series, Making Menudo, premieres Oct. 25; and landmark Unplugged special with Nirvana is being released in its entirety Nov. 20 on DVD, featuring two songs not included in the TV version.

NBCU‘s broadcast and cable networks will be the first official TV partner of the International Consumer Electronics Show. They’ll broadcast live from the floor during the annual CES confab in Las Vegas (Jan. 7-10).

The NHL Network started rolling out this week across cable systems; more details here.

Verizon‘s FiOS1 local TV channel in Washington, D.C. will carry pro and college sports games provided by Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic‘s CSN+ overflow channel. The 32-game CSN+ schedule kicks off with the MLS matchup between D.C. United and the Kansas City Wizards, this Friday night. FiOS1 already offers the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network‘s telecasts of Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals games.

VH1 Classic airs an original interview with Mick Jagger on Sunday and marks what would have been John Lennon’s 67th birthday on Tuesday (Oct. 9) with a "Day of Peace" programming that includes three documentaries and clips from Yoko Ono.

The RIAA won its first court case against an alleged illegal downloader. Jurors ordered Charter Communications‘ broadband subscriber Jammie Thomas (aka TereaStarr) to pay $222,000 in damages to the six record companies whose music she was determined to have illegally shared on the Kazaa P2P network. [AP | CBS]

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts’ alma mater, Wharton, published this article on TV networks embracing Web video, social networks and digital media. The kicker: "If Viacom thinks that shutting down its content on YouTube will get people to go to Comedy Central, it is wrong. People will stay on YouTube and watch cats lip synching."

Forbes interviews Fox Digital Media president Dan Fawcett on iTunes, Hulu and more.

Liberty Media’s John Malone is fighting a $750 million tax bill from the IRS. [Rocky Mountain News]

Teletrax tapped former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson and former PanAmSat SVP Dave Berman as consultants to develop TV sports rights and content management opportunities. The Medialink-owned Teletrax recently signed a deal with MLB to test its digital watermarking and broadcast monitoring service. • Return to today’s Cable360AM top stories >