STEPHEN KING SERIES TO BOW ON CBS NEXT SUMMER

A Stephen King series that was originally set to air on the Showtime pay-TV channel will instead air on CBS’s free broadcast network. Moreover, the 13-episode series, Under the Dome, will skip the pilot stage and go directly into production, the network said on Thursday. Even more curiously, CBS announced plans to air it next summer — first-run dramas airing during the summer are a rarity — and said it will be accompanied by a “multi-platform window” — presumably meaning that it will have an Internet component. Under the Dome concerns a town that is suddenly and mysteriously sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome.