News Bullets

• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's William Petersen (Gil Grissom) will spend an extra week performing Dublin Carol in Steppenwolf's Upstairs Theatre. The play has been extended through January 4, 2009.

• Petersen was awarded the 2008 Heritage Award at the Larry Sloan Awards in Chicago on December 1.

• The Star Tribune reported that CSI: New York's Hill Harper served as keynote speaker at the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) of the Greater Twin Cities annual meeting in Minnesota on November 28. The actor, motivational speaker and author is also an advocate for BBBS. Harper expressed the importance of "spending time with young people."

• Petersen will become the 42nd member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's ensemble. "I've known many of these Steppenwolf guys for 30 years," Petersen told the Chicago Tribune. "The place feels like home for me. I was very honored to be asked."

• Some people in Hollywood wonder if the election of Barack Obama might speed up the process of including more racial diversity among individual lead roles on American dramas. The timing of Laurence Fishburne's first appearance as the new lead character on CSI was not planned to coincide with Obama's ascendance, but studio executives hope that might help with the transition. David Stapf, president of the CBS Paramount Network Television studio, said Fishburne's selection wasn't about race. "If you have a chance to get an actor like that, you go for him," Stapf said. "It wouldn't matter what ethnicity he is." (Source: The New York Times)

• Country rock singer JoCaine said the most proud moment of his career was when his music was featured on CSI. "We played on six episodes and I was running around the house," he told Metromix Detroit.

• A woman in Hagerstown, Maryland with the same name as CSI executive producer Carol Mendelsohn is surprised when people recognize her name. "[I]t's not a (household) name. It's a name that just rolls up at the end of a program," the Maryland resident said. The woman also said that CSI is "one of my favorite shows." (Source)

• Harper described President-Elect Barack Obama as "fundamentally the same person" he was when the pair attended Harvard together and said that Obama "was extremely committed to public service and working to improve the lot of life of people." Harper spoke about the fact that Obama turned down a high-paying job after graduation to return to Chicago to make a positive difference in the community:

  Barack did not let his experiences at Harvard change him. He came there with a purpose and even though he excelled there and had all this new opportunity come his way when he graduated, he left having that same purpose. He’s been on purpose and on his purpose his entire career, which I think is brilliant. I am so happy that the American public could see through the rhetoric during the campaign.

  The original quotes are from KansasCity.com.

• CSI's lead-out program, the freshman series Eleventh Hour, has received an order for five more episodes. The show averages 12 million viewers each week and a 3.3 rating/9 share in the vital 18-49 demographic. With the extra episodes, the total for the show's first season order will be 18.

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