NBC's Schedule: From Supersizing to Superseries

James,

Omedetto! You'll be able to watch another season of FNL! (Since I know you were really cheering for that show.)

For all of NBC's talk of trying to constrain costs, they don't appear to have changed their ratio of scripted to reality shows much.

Their schedule still seems to follow no rhyme or reason though: Medium seems to to do best amongst middle age middle class women, so they intentionally schedule it to get killed by Desperate Housewives (while scheduling Lipstick directly after, as if to say "switch to NBC when you're done with Housewives!"). Life gets attached to one of the science fiction shows rather than SVU. And FNL and Las Vegas should clearly be swapped, as 10pm would fit Las Vegas better and FNL could get a lead-in from the family friendly reality shows.

On the other hand, I only give Chuck and Bionic Woman two months, tops, and doubt Journeyman will make it through the season. Heroes: Origins just seems... ill-considered, somehow.

Tom,

NBC did seem to start backpedaling on the cost-cutting on scripted shows almost as soon as they pledged it... still, they do have mostly reality or game shows at 8 p.m., as they had said they were going to do.

Still, no Apprentice, which appears to be neither officially canceled nor officially renewed... perhaps they'll clarify this afternoon if it returns in midseason. If anyone cares.

I was reading the CNN story on the NBC schedule and saw where Crossing Jordan got the axe. Thank God. That show was a stinker from the get go and only got worse with all of its multiple incarnations. I see where Miguel Ferrer will be on the Bionic Woman. Since I quit watching Crossing Jordan long, long ago....how did the write him out?

Studio 60 got the axe too...not that I gave a rip. All the angst (middle age to boot) and snappy "West Wing" dialogue just didn't fit a show about a sketch comedy show. I watched it once.

Chuck sounds like a regurgitation of the failed Jake 2.0.

"Life," is a drama about a detective given a second chance after spending years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Wow, how original! Yawn.

"Journeyman" is about a San Francisco newspaper reporter who travels through time to alter people's lives. Wow, another original series! Double yawn.

"The IT Crowd" is about a group of people who work in technical services at a large corporation. What, one or two shows before it goes stale? Triple yawn.

I'm giving up my day job. I'm convinced I can hit the big time coming up with original shows just like these. I'm thinking of a show about a group of friends who all have their individual oddities. They'll live somewhere like NYC, LA or Miami. The hook for the show will be that it isn't about anything. It is so original, how could it miss?

NBC doesn't seem to have a lot of respect for its viewers, and that disappoints me. They aren't giving quality shows (like The Black Donnellys) a fighting chance. They plan to bore us with original series that are merely repackaging or psuedocloning past hits. They get the audience hooked on a show and take it off the air for months at a time. They rely on gimmicks (a Heroes spin-off? why, god, why?). They pick up shows and move them without any apparant provocation, expecting us to follow them wherever, and rearrange our schedules to watch them. And when we instead decide to watch them online, or download them from ITunes, the networks then take them away and claim that nobody's watching them. It is really irritating, all I want to do is watch my shows in peace. In the grand scheme of things, of course, its just a TV network and we are just talking about entertainment shows, but it blows my mind how unreliable and unpredictable the networks are. . .

But kudos to NBC for giving us some hour-long office episodes!!! I love that show, and the extended-length episodes really give the characters a chance to shine - I think it is a show that could easily be worth an hour every week, so I am excited at 5 hour-long episodes for next season.

James -

Are you actually attending the upfronts, or are you just in your office receiving data from the reps?

idigress,

Both. NBC's starting at 3 pm--directly across the street from my office.

New program titles deserve to be in proper case. They should have [New] after each, instead of a silly comment like "New shows in CAPS (except for ER).

"How does the biz plan to pay for all this new material?"

It looks like NBC plans on having its cable offspring (USA, Sci-Fi) heavily pay for the rights to the repeats, which in turn (along with Heroes) is why the schedule seems so heavily weighted towards science fiction. Which, in retrospect, is not a totally bad thing - in the event of an early show cancellation, it gives them a chance to recoup some of the development money with the ad revenue from the airings on the cable network. And if the unaired episodes are eventually shown on the children, all the better. (Really, why aren't you angry Fox didn't have FX air the remaining Firefly and Drive episodes?)

I think it's rather funny that NBC has pawned a L&O off on USA, when I've argued since it premired that NBC/UNI should shift 'Pschy from USA to the big pond (NBC) - or air episodes on both networks. There's a lot of hours to fill in the programming schedule, and 'Psych seems like the kind of show that would play well in a 9:00 slot on a network. Maybe they should put it where "Chuck" is slated to go, since it really does look like a down-market version of "Jake 2.0" (no Christopher Gorham, no deal - ABC is lucky to have him).