Networks Hope to Keep Old ‘Friends,’ Make New Ones

The annual television scheduling free-for-all gets underway today, as networks prepare prime-time lineups for a fall season that will see several familiar faces return, the quiz shows “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and “Weakest Link” take a seat on the sidelines, “Friends” end its storied run and at least a pair of new shows with Miami as a backdrop.

None of the networks was confirming scheduling plans Sunday--treating sitcom choices and potential time-period shifts like government secrets, intent on keeping competitors guessing as to how best to counter their moves.

Still, industry sources say NBC, which will finish the current season in first place, will launch this week’s presentations to advertisers in New York today by announcing a revised fall schedule that includes just five new series, among them “Good Morning Miami,” a comedy set around a morning TV show from the creators of “Will & Grace,” which will join the Thursday lineup.

The additions also include a pair of Sunday-night dramas and two new sitcoms on Tuesdays, with “Just Shoot Me” said to be shifting to lead off that night and “Scrubs”--which could wind up being the sole survivor among comedies NBC introduced this season--landing the historically perilous Thursday slot after “Friends.”

NBC approaches the fall with perhaps a greater-than-usual sense of urgency, seeking to establish programs that can shoulder the “Must-See TV” mantle as “Friends” heads into its final year.

Toward that end, sources say, NBC has assembled a lineup that will leave four nights of the week unaltered, viewing stability as an asset in the crowded TV environment--especially with ABC and Fox each concluding disappointing seasons and destined to implement more sweeping lineup changes.

In fact, ABC--whose ratings dropped more than 20% this season--is expected to overhaul its lineup with changes to every night except the Saturday movie. The revamped schedule, to be presented Tuesday, will probably leave “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” off (after the show occupied four hours in prime time just two seasons ago) while the network tries to reclaim its roots by offering family-oriented comedies at 8 p.m. across the week.

That could include moving “The Drew Carey Show” from Wednesdays to Monday nights, paired with the Carey-hosted improv show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” creating an hour that would precede “Monday Night Football” in other time zones and follow it on the West Coast.

All the networks are seeking to impress media buyers and boost their share of the more than $7 billion that advertisers will commit as part of the so-called “upfront” market.

As for NBC, the network enters the fall campaign with plenty of proven hits but knowing that its comedy misfires of the last few seasons could soon catch up with it. TV’s top-rated show, “Friends,” will end in 2003, and Tuesday anchor “Frasier” is preparing to begin its 10th year.

The success or failure of NBC’s new shows, then, will help determine how long NBC’s Thursday lineup can continue to proclaim itself “Must-See TV,” especially with the CBS drama “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” taking a bite out of the NBC audience, beating “Will & Grace” and “Just Shoot Me” by a substantial margin.

With “Just Shoot Me” relocating to Tuesday, where “Frasier” remains popular, NBC will have two established programs to help introduce the new comedies “In-Laws,” about newlyweds who move in with the bride’s parents, played by Dennis Farina (best-known for tough-guy roles, such as in “Crime Story”) and “Designing Women’s” Jean Smart; and “Hidden Hills,” about suburban couples, whose ensemble cast includes the well-traveled Paula Marshall.

“Good Morning, Miami,” meanwhile, features Mark Feuerstein (who previously starred in the short-lived NBC sitcom “Conrad Bloom”) as the new wunderkind producer of a low-rated morning show. The series comes with a few footnotes, among them that NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker might have a special affinity for the material, having himself once been the wunderkind producer of NBC’s “Today.”

For whatever reason, Miami seems to be the hot prime-time destination this season, with several series candidates set there, among them the CBS spinoff “CSI: Miami,” starring “NYPD Blue’s” David Caruso.

The new NBC dramas include “American Dreams,” a nostalgic coming-of-age story set in the 1960s--a period NBC successfully tapped with the miniseries “The ‘60s”--using “American Bandstand” as a backdrop. Dick Clark is one of the producers, and another former “Blue” regular, Gail O’Grady, plays the 15-year-old protagonist’s mother.

The other is “Boomtown,” a Los Angeles-set crime show featuring Donnie Wahlberg, Mykelti Williamson and Jason Gedrick, expected to follow “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” on Sundays.

NBC has also ordered a potentially controversial series about the drug trade, “Kingpin,” said to be similar to the movie “Traffic.” That program will be held until later in the season, as will “Mister Sterling,” characterized as a sort-of updated “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” with Josh Brolin as an idealistic young senator.

Continuing a trend that has seen networks increasingly supply their own programming, seven of NBC’s eight new shows for the fall or midseason are produced at least in part by the network’s production arm, NBC Studios.

Among programs expected to be left off the schedule, meanwhile, is “Watching Ellie.” That would make Julia Louis-Dreyfus the third “Seinfeld” co-star to strike out with a comeback sitcom, following Michael Richards and Jason Alexander.

NBC has canceled “Leap of Faith,” which temporarily occupied the post-”Friends” slot and, like “Watching Ellie,” premiered behind a promotional avalanche during the Winter Olympics. Also missing is the quiz show “Weakest Link” (though a half-hour syndicated version continues to play on local TV stations) and the comedy “Three Sisters.”

ABC’s lineup was still in flux, but the network is expected to schedule at least eight new series and move several existing shows to different time periods, including the first-year sitcoms “According to Jim” and possibly “The George Lopez Show,” which has been renewed. Two long-running ABC comedies, “Spin City” and “Dharma & Greg,” have reportedly been canceled.

The network’s strength once rested on family comedies such as “Roseanne” and “Home Improvement,” and its roster of new shows clearly seeks to recapture that niche. It includes John Ritter as the protective father of teenage daughters in “Eight Simple Rules,” comic Bonnie Hunt playing a talk-show host and mother in “Life With Bonnie,” a “Bridget Jones’s Diary”-esque sitcom about a plain secretary tentatively titled “Less Than Perfect,” and “I’ve Got You,” an interracial romance from writer John Ridley (“Three Kings”), starring Duane Martin and “ER’s” Ming-Na.

Among ABC’s new dramas are “That Was Then,” about a 30-something man who travels back in time to high school; and “Push, Nevada,” billed as an interactive mystery, with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck among its producers.

Notably, all six of those programs are produced by Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC and supplied 26 of the network’s 30 new series candidates.

CBS will present its schedule Wednesday and Fox on Thursday. In addition to “CSI: Miami,” CBS’ new additions are expected to include sitcoms starring Mark Addy, the portly “The Full Monty” co-star; and Alfred Molina, playing a famous novelist trying to forge a relationship with his grown daughter, in a show from former producers of “Frasier.”