TV Bits: HBO Renews 'True Blood' And 'The Newsroom,' First Look At The Prison In 'The Walking Dead' Season 3

We look ahead to the new seasons of a few popular shows and more in this edition of TV Bits. After the jump read about:

With HBO it's usually pretty simple. They wait about two weeks to see how a new show is doing. If the ratings are okay and people are talking about it, it gets a second season pick up before the first season is even over. It's a smart way to do business because it gives the creative team incentive to keep the process going and it gives audiences a reason to invest their time because they know they're getting at least two seasons. It's happened with seemingly every single HBO show that's premiered in the last few years and now the same can be said for Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. Following its second episode, the show has been renewed for a second season. Its lead in, the ever popular True Blood, has also been renewed for what will be its sixth season and first without creator Alan Ball. Read more at TV Line.

At the end of the second season of The Walking Dead, the camera lifted up from the woods to reveal a huge, ominous looking prison that fans of the comic book know will serve as the setting for the majority of season three. Entertainment Weekly posted two new images giving us our first glimpse at the location and it doesn't exactly look friendly.

Here's what show runner Glen Mazzara had to say about the location, which will debut in the new season come October:

I'm incredibly proud of the prison. I think our crew has done a great job. It's a huge sense of scale and magnitude I haven't seen on any other show as far as construction. What's important to us is the prison itself is now a character in the show. It's a haunted house, it's scary, it's frightening, and there are parts of the prison that are always terrifying, that are always inaccessible to our group. It's not necessarily the blessing that the prison in the comic book turned out to be.

Finally, as if J.J. Abrams' latest show Revolution needed to sound cooler (Jon Favreau directing, sci-fi mystery plot, Giancarlo Esposito starring) it just cast Lost alumni Elizabeth Mitchell as the absentee mom of two of the story's young stars. The show, which will air on NBC beginning September 17, is about people struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world that runs without electricity. Thanks to EW for this scoop as well.

Walking Dead Image Credit: Gene Page/AMC