· After cutting Jay Leno out of his burning 10 p.m. time slot, the network is already greenlighting six pilots from the pros who created Ally McBeal, House M.D., Without a Trace and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Among the prospective series, another David E. Kelley legal drama called Kindreds, about a "curmudgeonly ex-patent lawyer and his group of misfit associates as their lives come together to form an unconventional kind of law practice." Also on the docket, Jerry Bruckheimer's action procedural Chase, about "a real-life group in the American Southwest, who follows a fugitive apprehension team of U.S. Marshals that tracks down the nation's most notorious criminals. Sex and the City executive producer Cindy Chupack is working on a romantic comedy for the network entitled Love Bites and Steve Carell is exec producing a revamped version of Rockford Files. [THR]
Larry David tries marriage counseling, Stan Lee tries primetime, and more TV Bites after the jump.
· Oxygen's hit reality show that combines competitive weight loss with disco, Dance Your Ass Off has found a host in Melanie "Mel B" Brown a.k.a. Scary Spice. The former Spice Girl and Dancing With the Stars competitor is replacing Marissa Jaret Winokur, who hosted the show's first season. [Reuters]
· Barry Sonnenfeld's ABC family sitcom pilot Funny in Farsi now has its star: Iranian actor and comic Maz Jobrani, who co-starred on Knights of Prosperity and appears in a recurring role on Better Off Ted. [Reuters]
· Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Larry David and Charles Barkley will mediate marital disagreements beginning March 14 on Jerry Seinfeld's new NBC show The Marriage Ref. The celebrities will serve as panelists next to the actual Ref, comedian Tom Papa. [zap2It]
· NBC is not thinking positively about the upcoming Winter Olympics from Vancouver, which the network fully expects to lose money on. Maybe that's just what happens when you pay $820 million for the rights, compared to $613 for the rights to 2006's games. [AP]
· Comic book legend Stan Lee will make a cameo on an upcoming episode of CBS's The Big Bang Theory. [IF]
· David Hasselhoff's loss is Howie Mandel's gain. The Deal or No Deal host will replace the Hoff on America's Got Talent on NBC. [zap2It]