It appears that FX believes Westerns are in after the network has added the post civil war drama Reconstruction to its catalog.  The new show revolves around a civil war veteran who returns to his hometown in Missouri and struggles to rebuild his life.  Director Peter Horton hopes to draw parallels between current events such as the recent economic collapse and attempts to rebuild a war ravaged Iraq.  This should ad an interesting twist as FX continues to develop more quality programming.

Reconstruction won’t be the only Western to make an appearance on FX.  Lawman, a contemporary Western starring Timothy Olyphant follows a Marshall’s attempts to clean up a small town.  The show was recently picked up by FX and won’t air until sometime next year.  Trailer Embedded below Warning, some strong language.

After purchasing DIC Entertainment for a cool $83 million last year Cookie Jar Entertainment has positioned itself to launch its new online component, Jaroo.  Jaroo is an ambitious project with a similar goal as Hulu, to provide ad-supported televisions shows online for free.  Using DIC Entertainment’s expansive library of children’s shows, Cookie Jar hopes to capture what it believes is a substantially untapped market, young children.

Jaroo is set to launch with 500 episodes of 50 different television shows and is in the process of digitizing an additional 6,000.  Some of the series that are currently available for launch include the classic Inspector Gadget, Madeline, and the Adventures of Zelda.  Needless to say with a catalog that expansive Jaroo will soon be a heavy-weight in its division.  Cookie Jar hopes to continue expanding through partnerships with major networks in order to bring more shows to its online service.

Despite being canceled a mere two weeks before its new season began, Southland has managed to secure itself a spot on TNT.  The addition to TNT’s lineup originally only aired 7 episodes and was contracted for an additional season set to air this Fall on NBC.  In an unexpected move NBC chose to cancel the show only weeks before it was set to begin airing its second season.  As a result TNT has purchased the rights to the first season as well as 6 episodes that had already been produced for the second season.

This is an interesting move that is sure to be beneficial to TNT.  The cable network will air all of Southland‘s previously aired and unaired episodes in order to test the series’ profitability.  Pending positive ratings TNT will be in position to continue production of the series or let it fall by the wayside.

FX has become renowned for its ability to produce hit show after hit show over the past few years.  Within the next year however, audiences will have to bid farewell to long running favorites, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me.

In the wake of this loss FX has recently approved an astounding six out of six pilots that were recently screened by the network.  These newcomers include The League, a comedy about Fantasy Football enthusiasts who sometimes take things a bit too far, and Archer, an animated series centering on a hardheaded secret agent with mother issues.

With this continued growth FX is becoming an increasingly more competitive network and has its sights set on continuing to do so.  News Corp., FX’s parent company reported an $812 million profit projection for this year from FX and expects that to grow to around $80 million over the next two years.

NBC is looking to beef up their already large repertoire of comedy by tapping the comedic talents of Adam Carolla.  The premise of this new comedy will center on a contractor (Carolla) dealing with his wife leaving and trying to maintain balance in his life.

Carolla is set to executive produce along with Kevin Hench (The Man Show, Ace in the Hole).  Time will tell whether or not Carolla will be able to keep this TV series afloat.  Considering his most recent work consists mainly of cameos in other television shows and straight to DVD movies, it will be tough to stand out on a network already saturated with great comedy.