The Newsroom Is Coming Back Next Year

HBO's The Newsroom is coming back for a third season, confirmed the series star Jeff Daniels on Twitter late Tuesday night. "It's official. #Newsroom coming back for a Season 3," he tweeted. Cue the excitement?! Confusion?! Disgust?!

I'm not here to tell you how to feel about the show (at least today), but I will say that from Hollywood's point of view, the announcement doesn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, the only shocking thing was that the news was broken on Twitter by Daniels, whose character Will McAvoy pretty much hates the social networking tool.

In July, President of HBO Programming Michael Lombardo told reporters at the Television Critics Association's fall TV previews that "The odds are excellent... we’re enormously happy with Newsroom."

"Honestly the conversations with Aaron [Sorkin] this point are all about schedule," Lombardo continued. "I would be shocked if you weren't hearing an announcement soon."

Guess that scheduling took a little longer than he expected.

Typically, as BuzzFeed's Kate Aurthur pointed out last week, HBO's successful shows are renewed just shortly after their season premieres so it's a little strange it's taken this long. Still, ratings have been good — the season two premiere attracted 2.2 million viewers, which is four percent more than the show's series premiere — and Daniels did receive a Best Actor Emmy nomination (you can find out if he takes the prize home on September 22).

The third season will likely premiere summer 2014 and will cover the end of 2012 and early 2013 (this season ends on Election Night). But Sorkin's job won't be easy as that time frame covers both the Sandy Hook shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing. Of course, Sorkin could choose to focus on a recycled news story like he did with this season's Genoa plot line (a fictionalized take on a similar situation that happened to CNN back in 1998).

But let's be honest, we only really care about all the inter-office drama so I'm especially looking forward to all the hijinks those ACN ladies are gonna get themselves into next season. Will there be another love triangle? A love square? A love pentagon? Will Mac finally learn how to drive without hitting garbage cans? Has Sloan finally learned her lesson about taking nudie photos? And will Maggie finally realize that being a sad sack is not attractive (and let's face it, neither is short hair)?

Only time will tell.

Image: HBO