Good and Bad Buzz on Fall TV

Throughout 10 seasons of Friends, would anyone ever have guessed that the future of NBC's vaunted Must-See-TV lineup would rest on the shoulders of dimwitted Joey?

Despite the fact that Matt LeBlanc's doofus hunk evolved into quite the scene stealer over the years, probably not. Yet, after all six major broadcast networks revealed their plans for the upcoming season at last week's annual upfront presentations in New York, Joey, LeBlanc's Friends spinoff that will anchor NBC's Thursday nights next season, emerged as one of the most talked-about new shows among potential advertisers.

The pilot episode of Joey, which was screened in its entirety (an unusual move during the clip-filled upfronts), elicited chuckles from most advertisers and media members who watched it during a packed Radio City Music Hall session.  Finding lovable lunkhead Tribbiani heading off to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career, with support from his sister (recently whacked Sopranos star Drea de Matteo) and his genius nephew (Road Trip's Paulo Costanzo), Joey was easily as funny as the worst episode of Friends (i.e., most of the last season), and about half as funny as the best (i.e., all the Thanksgiving episodes).

But in a season that will consist of 14 fewer comedies, across all networks, than the previous season (36 vs. last season's 50), with NBC, once the destination for sitcoms, going from eight sitcoms at the beginning of the 2003-04 season to just four for fall 2004-05, being good, but not necessarily great, may be good enough for Joey.

"[It's] positive and negative," says Stacey Lynn Koerner, executive vice president of Initiative Media.  "I didn't see it as being the big breakout hit that Friends was, or even the strong replacement for Friends, but [Joey] does have some equity as a character that's returning, and he is very likable as a character.

"I think they just have to do a little tune-up on the characters around him. There was some chemistry stuff that wasn't working, and I think they need to find a warmer way of portraying his sister. She didn't show any likable qualities, at least in the pilot, and in the end, you have to give people something they can connect with."

Still, overall, most ad execs and media seemed to agree that NBC and CBS, which both stressed strengthening their current schedules (versus adding an abundance of new shows), were the best bets for next season.

"CBS is only showcasing [five] new shows. That's a lot of stability. And one of their new shows is an extension of one of their existing series. CSI: New York is going to be a big hit...that's a no-brainer," says Koerner of CBS' latest addition to its forensic franchise.

More news that had advertisers excited after days of very long--several clocking in at more than two hours--presentations: fewer repeats. Most of the networks are jumping on the new year-round programming bandwagon--though none yet quite as aggressively as Fox--which will mean fewer repeats overall for viewers.

For example, fans of intense dramas 24 on Fox and Alias on ABC will have to wait until January for new seasons of those shows (and then will get the full run of the show without repeats), but the networks plan to "time-slot share" several dramas with other series to avoid repeats.  Steven Bochco's NYPD Blue, for example, will wrap up its 12th--and final--season in January, when Bochco's new drama, Blind Justice, starring Ron Eldard (ER) as a blind detective, takes over Blue's Tuesday evening time slot.

Two big winners already, heading into the new TV season, are big-screen scenemakers Mel Gibson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Not only has Oscar winner Gibson had this year's biggest cinematic hit with The Passion of the Christ, but he is producing three TV series that debut in the fall. UPN's drama Kevin Hill, starring Taye Diggs as a playboy attorney who sheds his swingin' ways when he has to raise his baby niece; CBS' coming-of-age drama Clubhouse, about a teen who gets his dream job as a batboy for a New York Yankees-like team; and Savages, an ABC comedy starring Keith Carradine as the single father of five rowdy boys (and based on Gibson's own experience as a father of five boys), all spring from Gibson's Icon Productions.

Prolific producer Bruckheimer, who adds to his CSI franchise with the Gary Sinise drama CSI: New York, will have six shows on the CBS in the fall: the original CSI; the Miami and New York spinoffs; Cold Case; Without a Trace; and a fifth installment of The Amazing Race. Bruckheimer's productions account for an astonishing one-fourth of CBS' schedule.

"Don't let anything happen to him," CBS honcho Les Moonves joked at the network's upfront. Bruckheimer, of course, is laughing all the way to the bank.

In addition to Joey, more new series getting the buzz from those attending the upfronts: the aforementioned Clubhouse, Kevin Hill and Blind Justice; the WB's family drama Jack & Bobby, about two brothers (raised by a single mom), one of whom grows up to become the President of the United States; and House, a Fox drama about a cantankerous doctor (Hugh Laurie), who has no bedside manner but is committed to solving the most baffling medical mysteries--by means legal or otherwise--to save his patients' lives.

"[House] was very compelling, very quickly," Koerner says.

And then there were the more groan-inducing new shows: ABC's reality series Wife Swap, in which, just like the title says, women swap lives and families...in the name of fun and prizes, and NBC's Father of the Pride, an animated sitcom about a family of tigers that work for Siegfried and Roy in their Las Vegas show. The series, which was created before Roy Horn was attacked by one of the tigers in his show last year, languished in development hell after the attack, and, from the creepy vibe most viewers seemed to take away from the clips NBC showed at the upfront, maybe it should go to hell. Er, back to hell. Uh, back to development hell--yeah, that's what we mean.

As for the not quite ready for prime-time series, lots of big names found themselves striking out in bids to become part of the TV landscape next season.

At ABC, the ratings-starved network that's relied on reality series like The Bachelor and Extreme Makeover as the only shows that have generated any real buzz, promising scripted pilots from John Stamos, Jennifer Love Hewitt and comedian Lewis Black didn't land a spot on the fall schedule.

And two comedies that were rumored to be shoo-ins for the ABC lineup as late as the day before the network's upfront--separate sitcoms starring pop star Jessica Simpson and her reality TV hubby Nick Lachey--were axed. The New York Times reports that Simpson's pilot, in which she would have played a singer turned TV host named Jessica Sampson, failed not because of Simpson's performance, but because the supporting cast didn't click and because execs were concerned that the format of the show didn't include Simpson singing.

Other big names that struck out with fall 2004-05 pilots: Chris O'Donnell, Ricki Lake and Kirstie Alley as the stars of CBS comedies, and Sandra Bullock and Lisa Kudrow as sitcom producers; a remake of Mr. Ed, a comeback sitcom for Valerie Bertinelli and an animated comedy based on the childhood experiences of Chris Rock at Fox; remakes of Dark Shadows and Lost in Space at the WB; comedies starring Macaulay Culkin, Alyson Hannigan, Rob Reiner, Jeff Goldblum and Henry Winkler, and a reality show following the real-life Hollywood adventures of Austin Powers' Mini-Me, Verne Troyer at NBC; as well as comedies starring Jenny McCarthy, Tori Spelling, Charisma Carpenter and Shannon Elizabeth at UPN.

The bottom line of the weeklong fest of upfront doings--the Who, Lenny Kravitz, Gavin DeGraw and Phantom Planet were among the musical acts that entertained audiences in between programming announcements--is that the new season probably won't lead to much of a shift in the ratings race among the networks.

Or, as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel told the upfront crowd, "If this were high school, NBC would be the rich kid whose dad bought them a BMW. CBS would be the straight-A student who's going to Stanford. Fox would be the jock who's not too smart, but still gets the chicks.

"And we're [ABC] the fat kids who eat paste."