Tonight we have the premieres of ABC’s “Better off Ted,” MTV’s “Teen Mom” and SyFy’s new idiot box series, “Outer Space Astronauts.”

Add those to the finales of “The Biggest Loser” at 8 p.m. on NBC and “Scare Tactics” on SyFy at 9.

Sunday night’s series finale of “Monk” drew the largest audience ever seen on a basic cable drama with 9.4 million total viewers. The success carried over to White Collar, where the fall finale right after “Monk” drew 5.55 million viewers.

NBC picked up the full season order for “Community” and “Parks and Recreation” and scaled back the new sitcom “100 Questions” from 13 episodes to six.

CBS is making a drama based on the upcoming James Patterson novel, “Private.” Twentieth Century FOX will produce the drama about Jack MOrgan, a former Marine and CIA operative to takes over his father’s private detective business.

“Charlie Brown Christmas” is on ABC tonight!

A big night for USA Network with the series finale of “Monk” at 9 p.m. and the fall finale of “White Collar” at 10.

On Sunday, CBS has the finale of “The Amazing Race” at 8 p.m.

ABC will return “Flash Forward” on March 4, several months before its anticipated summer airing.

MTV gave “The Hills” a sixth season and its spinoff series “The City” a second, Variety reported.

The price is $5.8 billion for the 20 percent of NBC Universal held by Vivendi. GE will acquire this 20 percent and then immediately sell 51 percent majority control of NBC Universal to cable giant Comcast. The final word can come as early as Thursday. For its end, Comcast is expected to put up as much as $6 billion for control of NBCU.

On the ABC side, Charles Gibson’s last day as anchor of “World News” will be December 18. ABC will honor the storied newsman throughout his last week. Diane Sawyer will take over in January.

The third major network, CBS, confirmed what most of us knew: that its new medical drama, “Three Rivers,” was a flop. The show has been pulled off the schedule, though CBS has promised to compete production of the 13 ordered episodes. The Sunday time slot will be replaced by repeats of the previous weeks’ “Cold Case,” “Criminal Minds” and the smash new hit spin-off “NCIS: Los Angeles.”

FX, which has really come into its own lately, announced its midseason schedule. “Nip/Tick” opens its final season on January 6, and will air nine episodes over nine weeks. The final show will come March 3 — it’s also the show’s 100th. Also, the FX comedy “Archer” debuts January 14 at 10 p.m. “Justified” with TOmothy Olyphant starts in March.

The series finale of “Monk” is Friday. Last week’s episode garnered nearly 6 million viewers.

Finally this morning, we learned that ABC is working on a comedy with Nicole Richie playing a professional woman with a complex family life.

“Pit Bulls and Parolees” premieres tonight at 10 on Animal Planet. On Sunday, look for Dr. Drew’s sex rehab show on VH1 at 10 p.m., and another reality program, “Styl’d” to start off on MTV at the same time.

NBC is canceling its brand new drama, “Trauma,” with the production stopping after the initial 13-episode order. NBC has not said whether or not it will even air the remaining episodes. NBC did order six new mid-season episodes of “Chuck,” so it’s not all bad news. This expands the season to 19 episodes. “Chuck” was originally going to open after the Winter Olympics, but it may come sooner.

ABC announced that “Scrubs” will premiere with two episodes on December 1 at 9 p.m. The regular time period will be Tuesdays at 9. “Better Off Ted” will premiere December 8, and will regularly follow “Scrubs” at 9:30.

Syfy ordered 13 new episodes of “Being Human,” an American port of a British series based on three roomates — a ghost, vampire and werewolf — who lead double lives. The show will premiere in the summer.

Finally on this Friday, we know that NBC is working on a “Monk” ripoff with a few twists. Variety reported that a washed up magician with agoraphobia will be approached by an elite law enforcement group to use his talents to solve the hard cases.

A Buddhist temple in Thailand is offering the ultimate in soul cleansing rituals–rebirth.

Customers lay in a coffin while a Buddhist monk recites a dirge. The monks then tell the visitors to emerge from the coffin, having supposedly cleansed them of past sins. The visitors are then metaphorically reborn and ready to start fresh, in just a minute and a half.

All of this comes at a price of course; 180 baht, equal to about $5. Entrepreneurial monks are complaining about the state of the economy, which is the reason behind their charging money for the ceremonies.

Temples are starting to sell goods along with services, amulets and good luck charms run customers from 50 baht upward. Sometimes, monks auction off “limited edition” amulets to customers visiting the temple.

Doesn’t all this take away from the degree of spirituality in the temple?

I know they need money to keep the place running and all that, that’s fine. But paying for a ceremony that supposedly cleanses your soul probably shouldn’t have a price tag attached to it.

Paying for the amulets is fine, they are charms, people expect to pay for those, I’d pay for an amulet from a Buddhist temple in Thailand in a second.

It just seems like paying for the ritual would take some of the authenticity out of it. I know it doesn’t technically, but if it were me having my soul cleansed, I’d feel like it was a service more than a religious ceremony.