Summer vacation is over, football is back, and the weather is starting to cool off – the only thing missing to signal the start of fall is a new television season. Slowly rolling out over the next few weeks, this year’s lineup looks to include returning favorites, series finales, and some interesting new properties. Viewers will be spoiled for content, and helping to deliver this entertainment are a number of Full Sail alumni working throughout network and cable television in audio, production, and visual effects roles.

Boardwalk Empire got an early jump on the competition, with its fifth and final season premiering September 7 on HBO. The acclaimed gangster drama features 1992 Recording Arts graduate Ruy Garcia on it’s last run of episodes as sound designer. The work of the show’s audio team has seen it receive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series during each of its previous seasons.

2010 Full Sail Hall of Fame inductee Troy Devolld (1996 Film graduate) makes a return as story producer for the latest season of ABC’s reality competition Dancing with the Stars, launching September 15. Troy held the same title on the show’s 2006 season, and has built his career on other popular reality shows like The Osbournes, Basketball Wives, and The Bachelor.

Among this year’s new series is The Flash, a spinoff of the DC Comics adaptation Arrow which will debut on the CW on October 7. Focusing on the superhero of the same name, it features visual effects work from 2006 Computer Animation grad Seth Brower as compositor. Seth is also compositor for the Stephen King adaptation Under the Dome, airing its second season finale on September 22 on CBS.

As for Arrow, the superhero hit will enter its third year run on October 9. Grad Rob Price (Computer Animation 2009) has been with the show as a digital compositor since its pilot, and you can see his effects works throughout the upcoming episodes. Rob also just wrapped the final season of True Blood this summer.

Fresh off its three acting wins at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, American Horror Story comes back for a fourth season on October 8. Subtitled Freak Show, 2010 Film grad Daniel Kuzila was on set during the production as additional sound utility, helping to capture the unnerving audio tracks which have been instrumental to its sense of unnerving tension. We previously caught up with another Recording Arts grad, Judah Getz, who spoke about his work as ADR mixer for Horror Story’s preceding season.

There’s obviously a lot of exciting TV on the horizon, with these shows representing only a fraction of the options viewers will have to choose from as the year winds to a close. Other returning favorites coming in the fall will include The Blacklist (September 22) and The Walking Dead (October 12), not to mention the promise of more Game of Thrones and True Detective in 2015.