By Karen Moul

What distinguishes The Voice from other talent competitions, such as American Idol or America's Got Talent?

For starters, the celebrity judges aren't judges at all, they're coaches. In the first two weeks, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton and Maroon 5's Adam Levine drafted their teams based solely on singing ability. In the next phase of the show, the coaches will groom their singers but will also pit them against each other in head-to-head battles, cutting their teams down to the strongest vocalists.

The Voice is also distinguished by not pretending to be about raw, undiscovered talent. The creators make no apologies for including contestants who have already released albums or sung professionally. The most recognizable performer is Frenchie Davis, a contestant on season two of American Idol who has also performed on Broadway. Javier Colon has released two albums with Capitol Records, and Kelsey Rey was a YouTube sensation. But don't consider them favorites to win – they're up against an array of talented newcomers who wowed the audience, and at this early stage the competition is wide open.

This morning Fox announced its 2011-12 schedule (below), listing both its fall and mid-season lineup. Some plans are still in the works, but some things have been decided:

House will return for an eighth season, expected to be the final one. Bones will be back for a seventh season, as well as its spin-off The Finder. Glee and Raising Hope will also be returning, as well as Fringe, which was announced earlier in the season.

Fox has officially cancelled four series: Lie to Me, Human Target, Traffic Light, Breaking In, and The Chicago Code. America's Most Wanted will no longer be a regular series, but there will be four two-hour specials. Neither of the pilots Locke & Key nor Exit Strategies has been picked up by the network.

Some of Fox's new programs include Simon Cowell's The X Factor, the highly anticipated new J.J. Abrams show Alcatraz, the drama Terra Nova, the new comedy The New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel, as well as the new sitcom I Hate My Teenage Daughter. There will also be two new animated series, Allen Gregory in the fall and one based on Napoleon Dynamite in the spring. The drama Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland may also be picked up mid-season.

There have also been trailers released for the series.

For more information on some of these upcoming series, especially those sci-fi and fantasy related, stay tuned to SciFi Vision and @scifivision on Twitter.

NBC has recently revealed it's Fall and Mid-Season Lineups. One of the shows that SciFi Vision will be covering is the new upcoming drama Awake, starring Jason Isaacs. No date has been announced yet, but here is the official press release and some video clips we received, as well as a description of the show and some other video clips directly from NBC.com.

'AWAKE' (formerly REM)
"Awake" is an intriguing drama about a detective (Jason Issacs, "Harry Potter," "Brotherhood") who finds he is leading an arduous double life that defies reality. When Detective Michael Britten (Issacs) regains consciousness following his family's car accident, he is told that his wife Hannah (Laura Allen, "Terriers") perished but that his teen son, Rex (Dylan Minnette, "Saving Grace"), has survived. As he tries to put the pieces of his life back together, he awakens again in a parallel reality in which his wife is very much alive -- but his son Rex died in the accident. In order to keep both of his loved ones alive at one time, he begins living two dueling realities in parallel worlds, which churns up confusion -- in one moment, Michael and his wife debate about having another child to replace their son, while in the other reality, he is attracted to his son's tennis coach, Tara (Michaela McManus, "The Vampire Diaries"), to fill the void from the loss of his wife. Trying to regain some normalcy, Michael returns to police work and solves crimes in both worlds with the help of two different partners -- Detective Isaiah "Bird" Freeman (Steve Harris, "The Practice") and Detective Efrem Vega (Wilmer Valderrama, "That '70s Show"). Also starring are Emmy Award winner Cherry Jones ("24") and BD Wong (NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") as therapists in each respective world. The series is produced by 20th Century Fox Television. Kyle Killen ("Lone Star") and Howard Gordon ("24") are executive producers. David Slade ("Twilight: Eclipse," "30 Days of Night") also serves as executive producer and directed the pilot written by Killen.

Directly from NBC.com's official Awake website:
Lots of people find themselves leading some kind of double life... but none quite like this.

Below are some new trailers from the new NBC lineup.

Also, be sure to follow #NBCUpfront2011 for live tweets from the Upfronts today.

NBC just announced its Fall and Mid-Season Lineup as well as the 2011-12 Primetime schedule. Below is the official press release from NBC.com as well as some other information, such as show descriptions and the schedule that SciFi Vision received today. More information will be forthcoming as we receive it, especially on the science fiction and/or fantasy based series.

With a Commitment to Innovation, Strategic Positioning and Season-Long Strength, NBC Reveals Its 2011-12 Primetime Schedule
May 15, 2011 at 13:00

Fall and Mid-Season Lineups Feature New Dramas "Smash," "Prime Suspect," "The Playboy Club," "Awake," "Grimm" and "The Firm"

New Comedies Are "Up All Night," "Whitney," "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," "Free Agents," "Best Friends Forever" and "Bent"

NEW YORK CITY -- May 15, 2011 -- NBC has introduced its 2011-12 primetime schedule, showcasing six new dramas and six new comedies from a roster of renowned hit-makers that includes Steven Spielberg, Lorne Michaels, Brian Grazer, Tom Werner, John Grisham and Peter Berg, among many others.

The season's new dramas are "Smash," "Prime Suspect," "The Playboy Club," "Awake," "Grimm" and "The Firm"; and the new comedies are "Up All Night," "Whitney," "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," "Free Agents," "Best Friends Forever" and "Bent."

By Jamie Ruby

Alison Haislip is probably best known for her work on G4, where as a correspondent she has covered everything from E3 to Comic-Con, and where she also is also a cohost of Attack of the Show! Haislip's newest endeavor is as the Social Media Online Correspondent, also known as the V Correspondent, for NBC's new reality competition, The Voice.

Haislip recently talked to the digital press about her work on the series.

This weekend marks not just the release of the highly anticipated Thor in theaters, but also a smaller budget version of the Norse myth called Almighty Thor, premiering May 7th, on Syfy. The Marvel version may have a much larger budget (Almighty Thor was shot for around $500,000 and in an impressive twelve days), but Syfy's version has something that Marvel's doesn't. Cody Deal, an amazing new comer, whose enthusiasm and charm are enough to make Almighty Thor, a different take on the myth, worth a watch.

Deal was born in Oklahoma. After only a few years he and his family moved to the small Midwestern town, Sedan, Kansas. He graduated in 2004 as valedictorian as well as a 1st-Team All-Star athlete.

Deal was an athlete for most of the early part of his life and had a desire to play in the NFL, and went to Butler College in El Dorado on scholarship in both basketball and football. Unfortunately, his sports career camed to an end when he fractured his hand and forearm during football and also sustained other injuries from his other hobby of free-diving.

It was then that Deal and his brothers began creating short films, a step up from their younger years of filming their own 'Pay Per View' wrestling matches. His mother suggested at this point that he should take acting seriously, but Deal did not take her advice and moved to Wichita, and later, to Las Vegas to pursue a modeling career.

While Marvel's Thor is premiering in theaters across the country, Syfy will be premiering their own version, Almighty Thor, this Saturday, May 7th, at 9/8c pm. The film follows Thor as he is forced to become a warrior and hero to retrieve the Hammer of Invincibility and save Asgard and The Tree of Life. The film, which was written by Eric Forsberg and directed by Christopher Ray, stars new comer Cody Deal as Thor, Richard Grieco as Loki, Patricia Velasquez as Jarnsaxa, and Kevin Nash as Odin.

Cody Deal and Christopher Ray recently sat down with the digital media, including Scifi Vision and Media Blvd, to talk about film.

KABOB DREK MANU, TERRANS!

ANCIENT ALIENS THREATEN THE SURVIVAL OF EARTH IN GARY MORGENSTEIN'S NEW COMEDY MAD MEL AND THE MARRADIANS, PREMIERING MONDAY, JULY 11 AT 12TH ANNUAL MIDTOWN INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL

DIRECTED BY AWARD-WINNING CARLO FIORLETTA

New York, NY – May 10, 2011 – Angry aliens. Doomed Earth. Another day in New York. In Gary Morgenstein's (Ponzi Man, A Tomato Can't Grow in the Bronx) sci-fi political romp Mad Mel and the Marradians -- premiering Monday, July 11, opening night of the 12th Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival -- the fate of the human race depends upon an egotistical author whose phony scholarship has stumbled upon a deadly plot by the ancient alien race, the Marradians.

Fandom Access: Exclusive Interview with Eric Forsberg  - 5/4/11
Interview by Jamie Ruby and Karen Moul
Written by Jamie Ruby

Almighty Thor follows the title character, played by Cody Deal, as he becomes the hero that we know him to be today. The movie will premiere tonight on Syfy. The writer of the film, Eric Forsberg, joined Fandom Access this week to discuss the movie.

The Almighty Thor is different than the marvel movie, because is based on the Norse myth as opposed to the comic books. "It's Almighty Thor; it's the Norse myth. There's a big difference between this Almighty Thor and the Thor Marvel movie that's coming out. That movie is based on the comic book, and that comic book took the character from the myth, and then created a story that imposed upon the character in order to create the identity of the human that was secretly Thor. And I didn't go that route at all; I went straight for the myth. The end of the world. One of the things about the Norse myths is that they're all about the Tree of Life supporting all the worlds on it until finally the fated and predetermined end of all time will occur in a great and final battle called Ragnarok. And when it's over, boom, the universe is gone. And so I took that theme and built on that and I have Thor being a young inexperienced god, the youngest son of Odin (Kevin Nash), and he because Ragnarok comes upon them is forced to step up to the plate and find the powerful god of the Asgard, or Valhalla, he has to find that god within him and really he fights and struggles through the whole movie to discover his inner power and he perseveres. So that's much more like the type of Thor that is in the myth than the comic book Thor."