Alan Cumming Drops Out of Spider-man Musical

Actor Alan Cumming has dropped out of the upcoming Spider-man Broadway musical to take a role on hit the TV show The Good Wife, according to a new report.

The GoldenEye star was set to play the villainous Green Goblin in the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark production at New York City's Hilton Theatre. But Cumming has pulled out after landing a regular part opposite Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife, according to www.PerezHilton.com.

The superhero stage show, which features a score by U2 stars The Edge and Bono, has been hit with a string of problems - it was due to begin previews in February but the performances were scrapped. Bosses maintain they aim to open the musical in 2010 but a new launch date has not yet been set.

The show suffered another major blow when lead actress Evan Rachel Wood quit last month, citing scheduling difficulties.

Cumming has previously spoken of his frustration over the delays.

Fall Season Spawned Some Winners

Though cable TV has been grabbing the spotlight in recent months, holiday cheer is spreading at the big broadcast networks.

The good news: More new shows are sticking than in recent years; just a few have been yanked because of low ratings. The bad: Another fall has come and gone without producing a blockbuster cultural phenomenon.

"There's a lot of good, not a lot of great," says CBS program planning chief Kelly Kahl. "But given where we've been, a lot of good is a good thing," he says. With last fall plagued by the lingering effects of a writers' strike, "there was a void of quality shows coming out of last season."

Overall TV usage is down slightly from last fall, when the election heightened interest and drew crowds to cable news. But the overall picture for the big broadcast networks has brightened: Combined, the five are up 3% from last fall, slowing years of steady erosion. Big growth for NFL games and the World Series also helped.

CBS' NCIS: Los Angelesand The Good Wife, paired on Tuesdays, are the top newcomers this season. Fox's Glee and ABC's Modern Family, FlashForward and V opened strongly, though ratings for the two fantasy dramas have trailed off in recent airings.

Fox won its first November sweeps race among younger viewers and is up 18% this fall.

"It's generally a stronger season," says John Rash of Minneapolis ad firm Campbell Mithun.

Only ABC's Hank, CBS' Three Rivers and CW's The Beautiful Life were canceled after a handful of airings, though ABC's Eastwick and Fox's Brothers are on their way out. "You're looking at fewer cancellations than you've seen year-to-year," says Brent Poer of ad firm MediaVest in Los Angeles, but few shows "are reaching the cultural zeitgeist" on network TV.

The new ratings math is that shows considered modest successes would have been canceled a few years ago. "It's far riskier to replace them than to stick with something you know," Poer says. Networks need "to put time and investment into some of these shows to build an audience, because there's not a lot in the pipeline to replace them," a function of cost-cutting at CW and NBC, where The Jay Leno Showis faring poorly compared with the dramas it replaced.

In past years, serialized shows such as Lost and Heroes suffered from long breaks designed to avoid excessive repeats. But the networks will again test viewer loyalty by stalling the returns of FlashForward, Lie to Me, V – and after tonight, Glee – until March or later. "It's a problem when you lose momentum," says Shari Anne Brill of ad firm Carat USA. "It's quite a bit of a wait for a show to come back."

Fall TV Premieres: Tuesday Night

On this first day of Fall, we welcome back an old favorite and three new series to the Tuesday night line-up. Here are today's season and series premieres.

THE FORGOTTEN (ABC 10:00 pm): ABC enters into the case-of-the-week genre with Christian Slater as Alex the leader of a group of civilian volunteers who try to ID the remains of victims long after cops have given up. The whole story of the victim will be depicted on this show.

THE GOOD WIFE (CBS 10:00 pm): Julianna Margulies returns to TV as Alicia, the devoted wife of an imposed-upon civil sergeant (Chris Noth). In the opening sequence, the politician (Noth) holds a press conference where he responds to allegations of sexual misconduct and resigns in disgrace, while his wife (Margulies) stands by his side. This is the one to watch tonight!

NCIS (CBS 8:00 pm): The 7th season premieres with Ziva (Cote de Pablo) surviving last May's cliff-hanger. Her slowly evolving relationship with Tony (Michael Weatherly) will never be the same after her near-death experience. We also find out what happened to Gibbs' (Mark Harmon) boat.

NCIS: LOS ANGELES (CBS 9:00 pm): Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J star in this NCIS spin-off where they portray (G. Callen and Sam Hanna) as naval officers tracking high-value targets as on the "mother" show.