While lately Bacon’s best-known for the cheesy Hollywood name-association game built around the once-prolific actor, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the former star of Footloose is reportedly willing to deal himself into the X-franchise.

No word on which villain he’s play, although considering they have Emma Frost in this story, Bacon might be a nice fit for Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club. Time will tell.

But that’s not all; the producers are also reportedly negotiating with Fox to expand Glee’s future seasons from the standard 22 episodes to 25-episode orders. The reason behind this has more to do with merchandising that storytelling, however.

You see, each of Glee’s soundtracks have become instant iTunes best-sellers and the physical CDs even sell well enough to impact the top of Billboard album sales charts. Glee recently also surpassed a record held by U2 for the most charting singles in history… or something like that.

By expanding a season order of Glee from 22 episodes to 25, producers figure to add an additional soundtrack release to each season of Glee they produce in the future.

This season has seen Glee spawn three volumes of musical soundtracks based on season one, as well as a standalone EP-sized soundtrack for the special “Power of Madonna” episode. A volume four soundtrack is expected over the summer, sometime after the season finale airs.

That’s four full-sized soundtracks, plus one Madonna-power EP soundtrack. By adding three additional episodes, that number could expand from five to as many as six or even seven soundtrack releases per season, counting special EP releases in the vein of the Power of Madonna EP.

The point is, the multimedia approach to Glee is helping both the producers and the network make money hand-over-fist through non-traditional revenue streams, and an early green-light on the third season helps keep costs low before stars and producers start asking for improved contracts. Of course, if the ratings are still strong mid-way through the third season, producers can always avoid expensive re-negotiations with most of the cast by the very nature of the show: Glee’s biggest breakout star, Lea Michele, portrays a high school sophomore in season one, so a season four would be unlikely anyway; so long as new cast members are added every season and current stars are cycled out as they “graduate,” the show can avoid becoming overly expensive to produce by constantly being a launching pad for new talent, rather than a long-term showcase for any one star… even Lea Michele.

Setting Glee in high school among the Acneticin-needing crowd, therefore, was a wise way for producers to structure the show for long-term success.

Of course, the fact that Glee’s ratings significantly improved in the second half of the first season, following American Idol, played no small part in securing that third season renewal early. If all goes well, Fox may even have Simon Cowell’s new musical talent showcase, X-Factor, to pair with Glee in the fall!

Some affiliates are balking at the heavy hand Fox is employing, considering no deal in finalized yet and that affiliates would make more with reruns of The Office and other proven syndicated hit shows. Even the best joint supplements won’t ease the limb-pulling going on, but in the end, you just know that it’s going to happen; Fox is the biggest network without a signature late night talk show, and O’Brien’s profile has never been higher.

How the development plays into the storyline of the rest of the season remains to be seen, but at the end of the first part of the season, Sylvester was vanquished and promised glee-club coach Will that she’d go on a brief vacation, come back tan and rested and “more committed than ever to bring you down, Will Schuster.”

The principal may want to get a solid sexual harassment insurance quote, because it’s a half-decent guess that Sylvester gets Figgins in the compromising position to gain leverage to regain her power position over Will. Still, we’ll have to wait until Glee’s April debut to see just how it all plays out!

While Davies is allegedly willing to consider such a change for US audiences, the actor who originated the role on the BBC version, John Barrowman, isn’t excited by the prospect, regardless of whether he’s tapped to reprise the role, play it out via security cameras, or not involved at all0.

Barrowman has said, “The last thing I would want would be for Jack to become this heterosexual, straight hero. He’s an omnisexual guy. He likes men, women, aliens, whatever. I think we should continue going down that route.”

Fox is currently the US network showing the most interest in a US adaptation of Torchwood. Whether Captain Jack remains gay/omni/metro or not, however, the biggest challenge to adapting the show to US audiences is redefining the series concept; on BBC, the show was a direct spin-off of Doctor Who, and Torchwood is actually an anagram of the words Doctor Who; without a US version of Doctor Who to help explain the origin and purpose of Torchwood, the show could come off as a cheap imitator of Fringe or X-Files.

Unlike some stars who prefer to spend their spare time hawking auto insurance quotes, Harris found a gap in his HIMYM schedule to fit in a guest spot on the musical comedy, Glee, allowing him a chance to show off his singing ability once again after a dazzling and humorous performance in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible, as well as a musical number extolling the virtues of suits earlier this season on How I Met Your Mother.

Glee returns on April 13 on Fox.

Watros becomes the first Wilson romantic interest since the death of Amber a couple years ago, a season finale that sent both House and Wilson spinning all through last season and much of this season.

So get out your plasma mounts and DVRs… House is worth getting Lost in!

How well the show will wear over time will be the next big test; NBC’s Chuck was a hot show in its first season and only barely survived to a third season, though it is definitely a welcomed respite from an otherwise dreary NBC lineup this season, now that Chuck is back!

Hopefully, Glee will wear well, and will be wise enough to graduate its cast off the show, and cast wisely their replacements, each and every season. No one wants to see these 22-year-olds playing 15 when they’re 26-year-olds playing 19 and somehow still in high school, like the Sweathogs.

While the whole NBC blow-up is enough to make anyone need the best cholesterol medication available, in the end I think O’Brien is the funniest of the three. Best of luck, Conan!

So is Simon going into RV repair? Not on your life; he wants to bring over his latest show, X-Factor, from Great Britain to the US. However, since Fox is the most interested buyer at the moment, don’t be surprised if they link purchase of X-Factor to a condition of Cowell remaining on Idol in some form.

It’s been a bumpy ride for Idol the past few months. First, Paula Abdul’s contract is not renewed; then, Fox chooses the worst possible replacement – a stand-up comic and talk show host with no musical background, Ellen DeGeneres – to take Abdul’s place.

Now no Simon?

The old adage stands true; don’t mess with success! Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Fox is doing…

Previously, Fox had already announced renewals for Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. The new season of American Dad will be the sixth season. Networks like Fox who feature prime-time animated fare often make decisions for next season far earlier for animated shows than for live-action shows, due to the long production cycles in putting such shows together.

Personally, I’ve always mildly preferred American Dad to Family Guy since about the second season on, and The Cleveland Show is still growing on me, but at the moment seems the weakest of the three. Either way, with all three shows having their futures assured, MacFarlane can now go off on that ski vacation he’s been waiting to take for so long.

Really? Unfortunately, yes, really…

If DeGeneres were being selected as a judge for NBC’s Last Comic Standing, that would make perfect sense to me. She’s a former stand-up herself and while she may not be the funniest stand-up ever, she certainly knows what funny is, and what it takes to make a stand-up comic great.

Trouble is, DeGeneres is not a singer, not a musician, not a former band member… she’s just NOT a music person. So what qualifies her at all to judge aspiring singers? Nothing. The choice is entirely based on her celebrity status and, given the straight vs. gay upset result in last season’s AI finale, probably a political decision as well.

Hey, there are plenty of gay and lesbian singers out there who have real music backgrounds; want to make up for last season’s finale? There’s plenty of choices out there who would be a better fit than Ellen DeGeneres.

Again, if this were Last Comic Standing, I’d love to see DeGeneres as part of the judges’ panel. But it’s not. It’s American Idol; it’s about singing and music, and as a judge for THAT, DeGeneres is shockingly under-qualified.