News Bullets

• Has the popularity of TV crime dramas peaked? In the Baltimore Sun, CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said it hasn't, pointing to the success of new CSI: New York lead-in Criminal Minds. But Law & Order creator Dick Wolf said "there are too many procedurals," and predicted most of them would be cancelled over the next couple of years. But he added, "I certainly don't think any of the Law & Orders or CSIs fall into that category."

• TV Guide's Ask Ausiello column recently featured an explanation from CSI showrunner Carol Mendelsohn as to why a rumored Sara-Grissom motel scene wasn't included in "Gum Drops," as originally planned.. "[William Petersen] had a death in the family and the script was rewritten to accommodate his absence," Mendelsohn said. "The scene itself was episode-specific, since the case being investigated took place several hours outside of Vegas, which placed Grissom and Sara in a hotel overnight. But stay tuned to see if the story line reemerges in a future episode!"

• According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) will be one of three Greek-Americans being honored next week during the Elios Society The Hellenic Charity Ball dinner-dance and awards ceremony. The evening raises funds for the Society's charitable foundation, which provides youth and education programs on Hellenic culture and heritage. Thanks go out to Divine Providence for this!

• MSN's CareerBuilder.com has calculated that in real life, Gil Grissom's annual salary would probably be about $44,000.

• In honor of Halloween, Millennium Park's Lurie Garden will be home to a dozen large pumpkins today and tomorrow, intricately carved with the faces of famous Chicagoans, one of them being Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor).

• Interested in a real-life forensic career? AOL's Paul D. Rosevear recently looked at the real-life qualifications you'd need to fill the shoes of each of the characters on the original CSI.

• British tabloid the Sunday Mirror claims that local TV presenter Jenni Falconer was spotted flirting with Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) the National TV awards afterparty.

• The Swedish Kanal 5 will resume airing new episodes of CSI: New York on Monday the 7th of November, beginning with "ReCycling," according to the European CSI forum.

• Jonathan Togo Online has new screencaps of Miami's Ryan Wolfe appearing on a fourth-season episode of Ed and in a commercial for DirecTV.

• Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, also responsible for the CSI franchise, will be teaming with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gary Ross to create a medical drama called Invisible. Details on the show, which has attracted the interested of NBC and will deal with a rebellious medical researcher tracking a mysterious illness plaguing the country, can be found at FilmStew.

• Robert Bianco at USA Today clearly isn't a fan of CSI: New York, as the TV critic recently wrote that the only reason NY couldn't be said to be going through a sophomore slump, is that that would imply it had some height to slump from. "The surprise isn't that [it's] bad; it's that [it's] managed to become even worse."

• The CSI: New York first-season DVD set was recently awarded a B+ grade by UGO.com reviewer Brian Tallerico.

• DavidCarusoFans.com has a photo from the upcoming CSI: Miami / CSI: New York crossover episode, taken from InsideTV magazine.

• Screencaps from the original CSI's "Shooting Stars" are now available at the William Petersen Attic.

• And Eddie Cahill (Det. Flack) fan site Behind Blue Eyes has new screenshots from "Dancing With The Fishes."

• More screencaps from that episode are available at Past My Shoulder.

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