TV Surveillance

My prognostications on the upcoming television season’s schedule comes to an end this week, and I have saved arguably the worst for last. Though the CW certainly sucks, it is and will always be a third-rate network that was spawned from two second-rate networks. NBC’s fall from grace is much more sad, considering it is the oldest network around.

NBC has been in a slump for a few years now, mostly because it has pushed horrible remakes of old shows in hopes name alone would get them to succeed (“Bionic Woman,” “Knight Rider”) and really has made a lot of questionable decisions in general (canceling “Journeyman,” not giving “Friday Night Lights” enough play and driving “The Office” into the ground).

And yet, at the same time, the network still has five of the best shows on network television in “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “Southland,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Chuck.” But by almost canceling “Lights” and “Chuck,” NBC has shown its ineptitude.
This season’s schedule is very, very promising, with one major question mark, but with NBC things are always at least interesting.

New shows

The Peacock network has four legitimately interesting new shows on the slate. “Community,”  a comedy starring Joel McHale of “The Soup” and Chevy friggin’ Chase looks fantastic, and it’s a shame that we’ve waited this long for a show based on community college.

“Parenthood”  is a family drama that is loosely based on the Ron Howard film of the same name, which seems lame on the surface because NBC has crashed and burned with remakes. However, one of television’s best writers, Jason Katims, is running the show over there and the excellent cast adds to my piqued interest.

“Trauma”  is an “ER” meets “Third Watch” type program that looks to have an excessive amount of explosions, but with money tight, it might be hard to keep the coolness factor high, especially if no one watches. Finally, “Day One,” a miniseries that will follow people trying to recoup after a world-altering event occurs, should be great because it has a short, one season shelf-life and therefore will not have a drawn-out plot.

But the biggest news for NBC is that it has given Jay Leno the 10 p.m. hour every weeknight, in an attempt to keep Leno  from going to ABC after they more or less forced him out and also to keep costs low (it’s obviously easier to do a talk show each night than pay $1 million per episode for a sci-fi drama). This is probably the ballsiest move a network has made in a long time, and even with low expectations, I can’t imagine it working the way NBC hopes.

Old shows

The biggest hubbub leading up to the schedule announcements was whether “Chuck” would be picked up. The critical and fan favorite survived, but only after show sponsor Subway felt the rush of thousands of the show’s fans coming into their restaurants and voicing their love for both the show and the sponsor. Sadly, we won’t see the show until February  2010, but at least it’s coming back.

NBC has also cut back the number of episodes that we’ll see of “Heroes,”  which can only mean good things for all of us. The show is off the rails and will probably be canceled if the ratings for this run don’t at least stay steady. I think that’s a win for us.

The other thing to note about NBC’s schedule is how it is divided so nicely, with many shows getting shorter orders than the normal 22 episodes. Though NBC takes a lot of risks, this is one I think will pay off. Shorter seasons mean three things: better, tighter writing, more shows survive and NBC saves money by not paying the production costs for another nine-plus episodes.

 Final analysis

Though it has been down in the dumps, this could be the year NBC rebounds a bit. Its new stable of shows is very impressive, and if we aren’t barraged with too much Jay Leno garbage, I think things go well for the Peacock.