• by David Kaplan , April 13, 2005

Following TBS and its Time Warner sister network TNT's upfront presentation, Eagles frontman Don Henley sarcastically dedicated a song to rival media empire News Corp's Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, to loud hooting from the audience.

Hooting--the good kind--is what TBS tried to emphasize in its unveiling of its fall season. Touting itself as television's "very funny" network, it held its upfront presentation Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, showing off several new series and announcing the network's participation in a major Las Vegas comedy festival that will serve as the basis for a two-hour special program in November.

Courteney Cox Arquette, David Arquette, Daisy Donovan, and Pauly Shore were brought out to preview their upcoming shows on TBS. Following that, comedian Dane Cook provided some hilarious stand-up, which then led into a brief concert for the network's guests by The Eagles, who had just finished a sold-out stint at the Garden.

As for TBS's 2005 lineup of comedy series, there's "Minding The Store," starring Shore as a man who tries to get his mother's comedy club back on track, and a second season of "The Real Gilligan's Island."

Rounding out the funny stuff was an appearance by executive producers Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette (the former "Friends" star and her husband have a company called Coquette Production) celebrating their new series featuring British comedian Daisy Donovan, who will have nine episodes of "Daisy Does America," a series in which Donovan hits the road to become an All-American Girl, to win American audiences over.

TNT then previewed a series of three original movies coming to the network.

The first is a sequel to last year's movie, "The Librarian," starring Noah Wyle of NBC's "ER." In last year's movie, Wyle played a brilliant man with 22 academic degrees who is "hired to protect the repository of humanity's greatest secrets, all hidden beneath the monolithic Metropolitan Library." He will now protect the network's goal to make a highly rated sequel.

Next is "Pleading Guilty," based on a novel by Scott Turow, that follows the story of an ex-cop and recovering alcoholic now serving as a partner in a top-drawer corporate law firm.

TNT's third movie in development is "Avenger," based on a novel by Frederick Forsyth, which concerns a small-town lawyer and former Special Forces operative who hires himself out to those seeking to avenge the violent murders of loved ones.

As for its summer series, TNT has "The Closer," which is about a female police detective who moves from Atlanta to Los Angeles to head up a special unit of the LAPD charged with investigating high-profile crimes. Kyra Sedgwick took the stage to talk about the series, which premieres on TNT Monday, June 13, at 9 p.m. (EST/PST).

Another series coming this summer to TNT is "Wanted," in which an elite team of crime fighters from various federal and local law enforcement agencies comes together to form a covert, undercover strike force. It will premiere Sunday, July 31, at 10 p.m. (EST/PST).

And in a preview of 2006, and of what it calls its "limited series," "Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories Of Stephen King" is adapted from King's anthology of 20 short stories--with subjects that include murderous revenge, dead rock stars, zombies, an evil toy, and a wicked stepfather, to name a few. The series is set to premiere on TNT in summer 2006.

As for the Henley dedication for Murdoch, the song was "Dirty Laundry," which the Time Warner faithful applauded energetically.