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"Joey" Doin' Pretty Good
Struggling actor Joey Tribbiani can rest easy. His current gig's good into next year.
NBC ordered a full-season's worth of Joey on Thursday, ensuring Tribbiani and his new TV clan will be around for at least 22 episodes.
In a September rife with poorly reviewed and modestly watched new sitcoms, the Friends spinoff is the first freshman comedy to be granted life into the spring. So far, the WB's Jack & Bobby, reelected by the network on Wednesday, is the only freshman drama to get a full-season pickup.
Joey is the third-most watched comedy of the still-young fall season, averaging 16.38 million viewers since its Sept. 9 debut.
Among sitcoms, only CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond (averaging 18 million) and Two and a Half Men (16.44 million) have played to bigger crowds. Among new shows, only ABC's Lost, which found another 17 million fans on Wednesday night, has proved a bigger early hit.
In a statement, NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly declared the network "excited about the creative direction of the show."
But what of Joey's commercial direction? Despite its apparently gaudy stats--NBC's favorite is that Joey attracts ad-friendly 18-to-49-year-olds--the sitcom has been steadily losing, not gaining, eyeballs.
The first episode of Joey attracted 18.6 million viewers. The third episode, airing last week, lured 14.9 million, a drop of about 20 percent.
Both numbers are far from the 21.4 million averaged by Friends in its swan-song season, and the 24.3 million hooked by the caffeinated comedy in its first season a decade ago.
Last year, not a single new NBC comedy was graduated into a second year--although, granted, the network started the fall with only two such shows. Once the showroom of Cheers and Cosby, the network has struggled mightily to build new Thursday comedy hits, instead launching duds such as Inside Schwartz and Coupling.
Matt LeBlanc stars in Joey as his old Central Perk self, now relocated on the West Coast.
To date, none of LeBlanc's Friends friends have stopped by for a very-special, ratings-enhancing visit. But there are sweeps to come...
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