Television is a funny thing. When you've been watching it all your life, it not only takes on a habitual role, it can also become extremely personal. Everyone has "their shows" -- the shows they watch religiously, the shows for which DVR isn't an option, the shows they try to talk their significant others into liking, the shows that force them to ream out a blogger for merely suggesting that "maybe the show is slipping," ignoring the fact that the blogger really likes the show too, and if they could just meet face to face they would see that there's no need to call him that.

Taking that into account, it can be depressing, quite frankly, when the summer months arrive and all those shows we've been manipulating our schedules around are gone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be. The summer is an opportunity to leave that televisual comfort zone that we've spent so many years cultivating and seek new shows to add to our socially acceptable obsession. Here's a shortlist of shows premiering this summer that should be a cure for the "where's my show" blues.

It wasn't another "Susan Boyle moment," but singer Barbara Padilla closed Wednesday night's America's Got Talent from Texas with a performance that seemed almost too polished for what's supposed to be an amateur competition.

The wife, mother and cancer survivor stepped to the microphone to sing "O Mio Babino, Caro" from the opera "Gianni Schicchi." Most classical music fans associate that song with the immortal Maria Callas. While Padilla didn't necessarily challenge that diva, she did belt the performance out with impressive power and control.

Padilla is too pretty to play the "Boyle angle" of presenting a local slob who surprises everyone with her unexpected ability. Her hook is "the mom who beat cancer to live out her dream as a singer."

Reuters Canada is reporting that David Hasselhoff is in talks to reprise his role as the titular character Michael Knight in the updating of the classic series Knight Rider. In the new telefilm / back-door-pilot, Justin Bruening (All My Children) has already been cast as Mike Tracer, the estranged son of Hasselhoff's Knight, who never knew his father.

Just added is fellow soap-star Deanna Russo of The Young and the Restless. She'll play Tracer's former girlfriend Sarah Kamen. In the film, she sets out with KITT (that's the talking car) to find her father, recruiting Tracer along the way. Does she know he's the son of Michael Knight? Does Kitt? Maybe KITT is vampiric now and needs Knight blood to survive; Hasselhoff will be trapped in the engine block, barely alive. "FEED ME, MICHAEL!"