‘The Walking Dead’ Smashes Ratings Records For FOX UK (Again), ‘Talking Dead’ Opens Strong
The Walking Dead is continuing to grow its audience here in the UK. Despite a dip in the ratings for the series in the United States, the sixth season premiere of the AMC zombie drama smashed ratings records for UK broadcaster FOX UK with an average overnight audience of 877 000 viewers. Additionally, the Chris Hardwick fronted Talking Dead got off to a strong start last night, pulling in an average overnight audience of 205K viewers. 
BBC One has rounded out the cast for New Blood. Mark Addy (Atlantis) and Anna Chancellor have been tapped for co-starring roles opposite series leads Mark Strepan (The Mill) and Ben Tavassoli (No Offence) in the seven episode contemporary cop drama from Foyle’s War creator Anthony Horowitz, TVWise has learned. 
In a surprise move, the BBC has announced that Director of Television Danny Cohen is to step down from his post and exit the corporation later this year. Cohen has been serving as Director Of Television for the past two years and in that time has been responsible for all the channels under the BBC's remit including the iPlayer and commissioning across drama, comedy and factual. Prior to taking up post he served as Controller of BBC One and before that Controller of BBC Three. 
Matt Lanter is set for a run in with the FBI. The former 90210 star has booked a guest starring role on the second season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation spin-off CSI Cyber, which counts Patricia Arquette and Ted Danson amongst its cast members. Lanter will play an "attractive hacker" and really intriguing guy, who lives his life through the Internet and builds relationships with the people whose lives he hacks into. He hacks into people’s lives, then they become part of his life. 
Murder In The First and The West Wing alum Taye Diggs has landed a recurring role on Fox's freshman drama series Rosewood, TVWise has learned. Diggs will play Dr. Mike Boyce, a world-renowned infectious disease doctor based in Miami and the longtime best friend of Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, who is brought in to consult on a case and catches the eye of Detective Villa, much to Rosewood’s surprise. 
While Blindspot was the first series to swing a back nine order, Minority Report is the first series to have its order cut in lieu of a cancellation. Fox has trimmed the order for the feature film sequel by some three episodes, cutting the size of the first season (and likely series as a whole) to some 10 episodes. Fox is saying that, even with the poor ratings, all ten episodes of the series will air and it is still in contention for a renewal, but I'm told such an outcome is extremely unlikely.