On the NBC of the near future, there wouldn't be a place for Friends, Little House on the Prairie or The Cosby Show.

Not at 8 p.m. anyway. The network will stop producing comedies and dramas for the 8-9 p.m. hour, instead filling the time slot with cheaper game-show and reality fare, NBC Universal Television Group CEO Jeff Zucker told the Wall Street Journal Thursday.

The mandate is part of "NBC 2.0," framed by the network home of The Office as a "wide-ranging strategic initiative to assure future growth."

Translation: 700 jobs and $750 million in spending to be cut by the end of 2008. "Success in our business means quickly adjusting to and anticipating change," NBC Universal chairman and CEO Bob Wright said Thursday in a resolutely upbeat network announcement. "This initiative is designed to help us exploit technology and focus our resources, as we continue our transformation into a digital media company for the 21st century."

For NBC Universal employees, the 21st century will mean coping more and more with scary words like centralization, consolidation and, the most chilling of all, savings.

For NBC viewers, the 21st century will mean seeing more and more shows like Deal or No Deal and The Biggest Loser, and slightly fewer familiar faces on local and network news broadcasts, as some of the planned workforce cuts are expected to come from the ranks of on-air reporters.

For the few, the proud, the MSNBC viewers, the 21st century will mean cable news direct from shared space in New York, as opposed to the network's currently exclusive digs in Secaucus, New Jersey. The Garden State headquarters will be closed.

The 8 p.m. initiative, meanwhile, marks a significant turning point in network history, but not so much in present NBC operations.

Currently, NBC airs comedies and dramas in the 8-9 p.m. hour on only three of its seven nights. Of those, not one of the comedies is a bona fide Nielsen hit, and the lone drama, Friday Night Lights, is a critically respected Nielsen flop.

Make that, a critically respected, expensive Nielsen flop.

Per stats reported by the Wall Street Journal, Friday Night Lights costs $2.6 million per episode, compared to only $1.1 million for an hour's worth of Deal or No Deal.

In weaning itself off comedies and dramas at 8 p.m., NBC is following ABC, which more quietly has thrown in the towel on scripted shows in the once-revered "family hour." Ugly Betty is the only ABC comedy or drama to air at 8 p.m. this fall; the rest of the week, the network makes due with real-life tales of wife swapping, celebrity dancing, home building and college football. (It's also been airing Grey's Anatomy reruns on Fridays at 8 p.m.)

In a way, NBC's pullback from the 8 p.m. series is a return to its roots. In the 1940s and 1950s, the era of the variety show, it rarely scheduled dramas or comedies in the hour.

Later, though, the time period was filled by the likes of: Adam-12, Sanford & Son, Little House on the Prairie, CHiPs, Knight Rider, The A-Team, Diff'rent Strokes and The Cosby Show.

Friends, which ended in 2004, was NBC's last big comedy or drama hit at 8 p.m. And while in recent years the network enjoyed okay performances there from the likes of Ed and Providence, mostly it shuddered at the detonation of bombs like Whoopi, Miss Match and Hawaii.

Zucker did not say NBC was pulling its current 8 p.m. scripted shows, which include My Name Is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock and Twenty Good Years, only that NBC was going to stop developing new comedies and dramas for the hour.

As if to emphasize the point, NBC announced Thursday it was ordering 10 more episodes of its latest 8 p.m. game-show entry, 1 vs 100.

Though mired in third place in the ratings, NBC is on the upswing. No network has posted a bigger gain this fall among advertiser-friendly young adults than NBC.

Notably, the network's resurgence is directly linked to a show that airs at 8 p.m., at least in some time zones. Unfortunately for those who work in episodic TV, Sunday Night Football doesn't really need any writers.