Some big news from NBC:

• Knight Rider returns as a series. It’ll air Wednesdays at 8PM. No word on whether Val Kilmer will still play KITT.
• Merlin, a new series about Camelot, will air Sundays at 8PM. Better have a two-tuner DVR to grab that and The Simpsons, Family Guy, et al.
• Matthew Broderick will be in the season finale of 30 Rock. The show, of course, has been renewed.
• The Office is getting a… well, they’re calling it a spinoff, but I don’t see how you can have a spinoff when supposedly none of the current cast will be in the new show, and it will be in a different location. Sounds more like a copycat show to me. A special Office episode and the copycat pilot will air right after the Superbowl. Like last year, the first episodes of the season will be an hour long.
• SNL will have a spinoff called Thursday Night Live. It will consist of a half-hour of political sketches leading up to the election.
• Heroes is of course coming back. The new season will start with a 2-hour episode on Sept. 15th, following one of those lame hour-long clip episodes that Lost is always doing.
• Life is coming back! Annoyingly it will air Fridays at 10PM, but that’s what DVRs are for. I never watched this on TV, but caught them all online (you can, too – the whole season). Now I’m hooked. I really like the main character, and the supporting cast is great. Sara Shahi looks gorgeous when she’s not in butch cop mode, and I’ve always liked Adam Arkin. My big hope is that Christina Hendricks will return. She’s a beautiful redhead with a body that would make Barbie jealous. Seriously, one of the best bodies in the history of bodies… Where was I? Oh yeah, to top it off they’re getting Donal Logue as the new boss. If you’ve never seen The Tao of Steve, in which he stars, rent it now. A great guy movie.
• Scrubs is not coming back! Well, not on NBC – it’s expected to move to ABC. Looks like it’s getting replaced by the Office copycat and Last Comic Standing. Whatever.
• Over the summer, NBC is creating a bunch of webisodes for Chuck, Heroes, and The Office. Hopefully they’ll be in HD; Yvonne Strahovski and Hayden Panettiere deserve nothing less.

More at Variety.