The repo man says business is booming in a Channel 11 news report about the rise and tide of auto repossession -- the segment even features a cameo by Lil' Kim! Seems the rapper fell behind on at least four payments and when she refused to give up the keys to the $250K car, it was loaded onto a flatbed truck. She gave the repo men (who say the car is "not hers") about the......

Artwork by Rene Smith as seen on Gossip Girl. Last night as Gossip Girl returned to the airwaves, it brought some real LIC artists with it. In the fictional Bedford Avenue Gallery, as Blair plots to ruin Jenny Humphrey, she pauses in front of some pieces -- one of which belongs to LIC artist Rene Smith, who told us about how her art landed on Rufus Humphrey's walls.I heard that Gossip Girl rented art......

Photo via kaitlinyap's flickr. When last the teens of Gossip Girl were gossiped about, it was pre-writers strike and Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf were battling through the tough adolescent years: sex, car services and cocktails at The Plaza. Tonight the drama returns, with the first of five episodes that will close out season one. Serena, known IRL as Blake Lively, said that the advertising campaign (pictured) is accurate, and that every......

America's Next Top Model is back in New York and in its second episode, which airs tonight, things are getting a little bit real. The episode brings the fourteen newest model wannabes to the not always fashionable streets. After the troupe mingles with the tourists at their fashion show in Times Square, it's off to their first photo shoot. For regular watchers of the show you'll know there's always a theme to the shoots, well......

A look at some of this week's noteworthy television: Elmo’s Christmas Countdown (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., WABC 7) It is a brand new Sesame Street Christmas special complete with an all star guest list providing music and voices like ABC News anchor Charles Gibson voicing a news reading reindeer and Ben Stiller voicing an elf. From the sound of it doesn’t seem like it will wind up being an enduring classic like A Charlie Brown Christmas.......

More Rescue Me for Next Season Cable network FX has picked up the Denis Leary FDNY dramedy Rescue Me for a fifth season. The show which films in the city and all over the tri-state area will not be getting the standard cable 13 episode season as it has for the past four seasons, but instead will be getting a 22 episode run split into two runs. Bolaris is Officially Heading South After months of......

Some readers have wondered why people are tuning into Gossip Girl on Wednesday nights at 9PM, not only because the CW repeats its shows later on. The other 9PM television draw is Kitchen Nightmares on Fox. The show is the American version of chef Gordon Ramsay's British show named Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. In the show, Ramsay goes to struggling restaurants and whips them back into shape, alternately browbeating, inspiring, turning his nose up in......

Josh Schwartz left the sunny beaches of O.C. to bring his brand of teen drama to the gritty city. His new show, Gossip Girl, will premiere on the CW September 19th, and it's been filming all over town lately. The series, which was gabbed about in The Observer recently, is based on the young-adult books of the same name and puts the spotlight on "the struggle for social supremacy among teens from both sides of......

Thank goodness for good neighbors! There's a fascinating story behind the arrest of Asuncion DeJesus-Garcia, who is suspected of at least three sexual assaults in the Lower East Side and East Village. It turns out that the two people who noticed him on Wednesday actually recognized him because they helped stop the July 13 attack on East 12th Street! Fifty-three-year-old Marina Hartell and her boyfriend, 55-year-old Pedro Zevallos, who work in a neighborhood deli, had......

Switcharoo at CBS 2 This week, veteran anchors Jim Rosenfield and Dana Tyler, who were anchoring at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., switched newscasts with Chris Wragge and Kristine Johnson, who were anchoring the noon and 5 p.m. We think that moving younger talent to the higher profile 11 p.m. newscast is probably an attempt to get some younger viewers. Channel 2 has been the least stable of the local newscasts over the past ten......

Save Veronica Mars Campaign Does Not Effect Local Mars Bar Availability A campaign to send the CW’s Dawn Ostroff the entire American supply of the popular British candy bar in an effort to save Veronica Mars has not effected local Mars bar availability, despite claims by organizers that they “bought out all the available Mars Bars in the U.S.A.”. Visiting Meyers of Keswick in Greenwich Village earlier this week, we were able to purchase several......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 7th Heaven (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WPIX 11) Last year when the show was on the WB it had a series finale, but was brought back by the new CW. This time the show is over, finally. Funniest Mom in America 3 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Nickelodeon) Despite sounding like a sequel to a bad summer comedy, this is actually a Mother's Day special of a search for a......

Yesterday afternoon, a burglar's ransacking of a police officer's Bayside apartment led to a police chase that culminated with the SUV crashing into a mini-school bus. The SUV and bus collided on the Douglaston Parkway near Van Zandt Avenue, and 12 people, including eight children, the bus escort and the bus driver, were taken to hospitals for injuries. The driver of the stolen SUV tried to escape on foot but was chased down by police.......

While there's no video of Mayor Bloomberg's Inner Circle Dinner performance online yet (though there's a YouTube clip of someone taping the CW 11's New at Ten - complete with giggling at Mayor Mike), the Daily News' Daily Politics did post this commercial for "Mayor Poppins." Elizabeth Benjamin writes, "My favorite part is Mark Green, playing himself and uttering a line so quintessentially Mark Green it's scary." NY1 said the annual skit spoofed "issues......

It's yet another case of kids behaving badly - and then putting it on the Internet. Someone recorded a Bronx sophomore being beaten by a gang and then put the video on YouTube. The CW News at 11 spoke to students at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx who were there during the March 15 fight (select the video "Follow up to violent gang web video"). The students said that the sophomore was......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: New York City Ballet: Bringing Balanchine Back (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNET 13) Kevin Kline narrates this documentary following the journey of the New York City Balet to St. Petersburg, the birthplace of its founder George Balanchine, where they perform at the storied Mariinsky Theatre. Great Performances Garrison Keillor's New Year's Eve Special (Sunday, 10:00 p.m. WNET 13 and NJN) we all know about the other hackneyed New......

If it's almost Christmas, it's almost time to cozy up to WPIX 11's Christmas Yule Log, the televised bit of hearth warmth that momentarily replaces dreams of a "wbf" (woodburning fireplace, in apartment classified speak). Yesterday, amNew York had a great feature about the longevity of Channel 11's yule log tradition. The roaring fire created from a 17-second loop of a Gracie Mansion fireplace in 1966 by Fred Thrower and played every Christmas until 1989.......

Even though the network media upfronts don't mean anything - except to advertisers - because schedules can be shuffled and shows killed between now and fall, Gothamist is still excited, because it's about hope (Tina Fey's new show to be good, Veronica Mars to be picked up) and new seasons of shows we love (The Office, My Name is Earl...and, heck, we can't help but watch Grey's Anatomy). Anyway, there are a lot of NYC-set......

Gothamist understands that it's great for sports fans to see a hometown team in the playoffs. And we love Vince Carter. But WWORTV 9 aka, "My 9," is seriously killing us during the end of the traditional TV season by screwing over us Veronica Mars fans. With three episodes to go, My9 pre-empted VM for a Nets playoff game last week. Instead of replaying VM after America's Next Top Model on Wednesday (and this is......

Never one to be outdone by the New York Times, Murdoch's kids today also unveiled a new look. For flagship FOX station WNYW FOX 5. Check out the screenshots provided by Gothamist tipper, the ever-vigilant Toby: The Tobster points out that the new look and graphics brings the station more in line with the Fox News Channel. And cause everyone likes to laugh at others troubles, he also notes "The 5PM newscast was filled with......

Rejoice all you fans of Gilmore Girls / Veronica Mars slash fiction! Your dreams of saphic teen-friendly erotica are one step closer to fruition with the merging of the WB and UPN networks. CNN reports: Warner Brothers and CBS Corp. announced plans Tuesday for the creation of a new broadcast television network, called CW, that would replace the WB and UPN networks in the fall of this year. The new broadcast network will draw......