TV Upfronts: Day One - NBC

For a true TV junkie, the upfronts serve as a chance to gorge oneself on the possibilities that the coming TV season will bring. Where are your favorite shows moving to? Which ones have been cruelly axed by their network? What new shows should you most be looking forward to? It’s a great time to love TV.

One thing that’s important to remember: This is basically a multi-billion dollar game of chicken, so these schedules are most definitely subject to change but for now, here’s what NBC has to offer starting in September:


Mondays
8 – Deal Or No Deal
9 – Heroes/Heroes: Origins
10 – Journeyman

Tuesdays
8 – The Biggest Loser
9 – Chuck
10 – Law & Order: SVU

Wednesdays
8 – Deal Or No Deal
9 – The Bionic Woman
10 – Life

Thursdays
8 – My Name Is Earl
8:30 – 30 Rock
9 – The Office
9:30 – Scrubs
10 – ER

Fridays
8 – 1 Vs. 100
9 – Las Vegas
10 – Friday Night Lights

Saturdays
8 – Dateline NBC
9-11 – Drama Series Encores

Sundays (September – December)
7 – Football Night In America
8-11 – Sunday Night Football

Sundays (January – May)
7 – Dateline NBC
8 – Law & Order
9 – Medium
10 – Lipstick Jungle

The Big News:
*The Office has been handed a supreme vote of confidence by virtue of its placement at 9PM on Thursday nights where it most likely will be staring down the formidable double barrel of Grey’s Anatomy and CSI. Although the ratings over the past season would not normally bear out such trust, The Office routinely draws in “the right kind of viewers” (i.e. – the 18-49 year-old demographic and the high-income household demographic), making it an attractive option for advertisers on a very important night. NBC has also taken the unorthodox step of ordering a 30-episode season, with five of those episodes being hour-long special episodes. The quality of the show slipped a bit this past season, so it should be interesting to see if this gamble pays off or if NBC has effectively signed the show’s death warrant.

*In an attempt to remedy the viewer drop that many serialized shows experience during extended breaks in original episodes, NBC has ordered six installments of a spin-off of Heroes, entitled Heroes: Origins. Heroes: Origins will air when new episodes of the original are on hiatus and will track a new “hero” each installment. At the end of the season, viewers will have a chance to vote on which new character will get to stick around for the following season of Heroes proper. A highly unusual way to combat repeats, Heroes: Origins is on the one hand an intriguing combination of scripted entertainment and reality programming (otherwise known as the lowest of lowbrow entertainment), and on the other is an idea that has failure written all over it, especially when you consider that Heroes is almost certain to experience a fan backlash in its second season. If you don’t believe that, just look at Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Prison Break, all of which were media and fan darlings in their debut seasons, only to be torn down by those same entities during their sophomore sets. Will Heroes be the exception to this rule?

*Before I say anything else, let me say thanks to NBC for renewing the pound-for-pound best show on television, Friday Night Lights. It definitely would have been easier for you to cancel it due to its low ratings, but then you’d be sending a message that quality doesn’t deserve a chance to find an audience, so you chose not to do that. Kudos to you. That being said, banishing it to Friday nights at 10PM (the death slot that nearly killed venerable workhorse Law & Order) and giving it the completely insipid and incompatible Las Vegas as a lead-in? What the hell kind of ridiculous decision is this?! It’s still better than cancellation but not by much, and I’d be very surprised if Friday Night Lights lives to see 2008. Sad, but probably true.

*Finally, didn’t Journeyman used to be called Quantum Leap? Just asking.

Back tomorrow with ABC's schedule. Until then...