Leading off, wearing no. 4, NBC

We've got videos! And audios! And baby pics!  Read on.

I'm covering the upfronts from Chicago this year.  Why Chicago?  It just worked out that way.  The downside: I won't get to see the NBC, CBS, Fox or CW upfronts in person; there are no other media people attending the upfronts in Chicago; and I missed a chance to attend the "Survivor" finale and, thus, have some QT with the eventual winner, who happened to be from my area.

The upside: There's less stress in Chicago; I have to watch the ABC upfront via closed-circuit even when I'm in New York; and last night I had some QT with my brand new baby grandson, born in Chicago at 12:40 Monday morning. (Here's what the full-throated bambino sounds like.)

All in all, I'll take Chicago.  This year, at least.

The NBC upfront was held, as it often is, at Radio City Music Hall, across the street from Rockefeller Plaza, and beamed — in lovely high-definition — to Chicago and L.A.  The room was completely filled with advertising types.  Well, they are the target audience.

Now, ask yourself this question: How long would I willing to put up with a corporate presentation, one that — even with all the professionally done pretaped bits, a couple of celebrity appearances, and a great seat in a great hall — basically is little more than a PowerPoint with music?  If you answered "an hour and a half," congratulations, you are Kevin Reilly's target viewer.  Reilly turned in a 1-hour-25-minute performance Monday. "We're going to spare you some of the song and dance," Reilly said as a picture of his head superimposed on an Irish jig dancer, his leg kicked impossibly high, flashed on the screen behind him. "Although," Reilly said, "I was looking forward to my Irish dance number. Damn you, McPherson!" Although Reilly's joke was meant as a tip of the hat to ABC's Steve McPherson, who stole everyone's thunder during a wicked dance number at ABC's upfront presentation last year, in reality NBC's new upfront look owes a huge debt to CBS.  It was Leslie Moonves and his crew who raised the bar for production values of the upfront presentation, and it was nice to see NBC dump the usual barrage of pointless graphs and charts (which would be more effective in handout form) and just get to the show.

And a show it was, with flashy graphics, tight scripting (even Jerry Seinfeld read off the prompters in the back of the hall), and even its own musical score, which built to an emotional swell near the end of the presentation, as Reilly built his sales pitch to a crescendo (for a moment there, I thought they might pass the hat around Radio City).

So NBC is in fourth place, and if it doesn't watch its back, may soon be in fifth place — no, not behind the CW, are you kidding me, behind fast-rising Univision — and Reilly manned up to it in a way. "We returned to the NBC standard of quality," he said, with Peabodys for "Friday Night Lights" and "The Office." He referred to "30 Rock," whose players supplied the opening pretaped bit, as "a classic in the making."  But if the network now has "more class," he admitted, it still needs "more mass."

And how do you get "more mass," other than cancelling "The Biggest Loser," which he declined to do? You invite producers to take "The Bulk-Up Challenge." In other words, you tell producers of your few hit shows — "Heroes," "The Office" and "My Name Is Earl" — that you want more episodes. That's not as innovative as it might seem. Browse epguides.com and you will find that many hit shows in recent years, at their creative peaks, got orders for more than 22 episodes a season. "The Office," for instance, got an order for next season for 30 episodes, which sounds amazing, except that it's only six more than last season, and five of those will be glommed onto existing half-hours as full hour episodes. So when Reilly said Monday "We'll have a virtually uninterrupted schedule" for "The Office," I would invite you to subtract 25 weeks from 39 weeks (the length of the 2007-08 season) and judge for yourself.

Next, we watched a clip reel of "Heroes," which Reilly touted as having "saved the world and brought millions of viewers" to NBC.  Except that the ratings started to dip toward season's end, a development blamed not on any fault of the producers but on the long midseason vacation the show took.  So here's what's going to happen next season: "Heroes" will air 24 episodes more or less in a row, starting in the fall, and then it will go off the air and be replaced by "Heroes: Origins," which I could've sworn that NBC had sold to us last year as a webisode thingy.  But no, this will be prime-time television, as a group of no-names compete for the right to appear on the real "Heroes" the following season.  Viewers will decide via online vote.  An interesting idea, and half-confirmation of the rumor that had been floating around that season two of "Heroes" was going to feature an all-new set of ordinary humans turned superheroes.

Speaking of which, here's the part of the show where Reilly unveils all his new pilots.  See if you can detect a trend.  First, there's "Journeyman," the network's "highest testing drama in five years," where an ordinary newspaper reporter (played by Kevin McKidd) in San Francisco suddenly gains the power to travel through time:

Then there's the remake of the 1970s hit "The Bionic Woman" in which Jamie Sommers (played by Michelle Ryan),  here is portrayed as an ordinary goth chick who suddenly gains superpowers after she's maimed in a car wreck:

(And yes, online ironists, those are approved NBC videos appearing on YouTube.) And then we have "Chuck," in which an ordinary tech-support guy becomes Master of the Universe when government secrets are accidentally downloaded into his brain:

That's to go with "Life," a more conventional drama about a cop released from prison after serving time for a crime he didn't commit, and a midseason pilot for "Lipstick Jungle." There is a midseason sitcom pilot that NBC picked up but declined to screen at the upfront. Which means for probably the first time in the history of the upfronts, NBC — a name once synonymous with half-hour comedy — didn't have a single new sitcom to show to advertisers.

Still, "Chuck" looks amusing — "The 40 Year Old Virgin" meets "War Games," perhaps — if the premise can be sustained for 22 episodes, and both the action-packed "Bionic Woman" and intriguing (if "Quantum Leapish," without the weirdo sidekick) "Journeyman" show promise.  "Lipstick Jungle," with Brooke Shields, looks pretty good, too.  "Bionic Woman" is noteworthy, too, as it represents a return by Miguel Ferrer to the creepy-guy roles he embodied so well before getting caught up in that "Crossing Jordan" mess.

Then Reilly came out to introduce a clip reel of unscripted fare with this line: We would be stronger than a couple of our competitors if not for one or two unscripted hits. Well, yes, and if the Olympics were held every year you'd be sitting pretty, too. But anyway, I didn't see much here to suggest NBC has got either class or mass coming its way in teh unscripted department.  A show called "Baby Borrowers" will follow teenage couples as they are asked to raise, in rapid sequence, a baby, a toddler, an adolescnt, and a really old guy.  "World Moves," from Randy "Dog Check It Out" Jackson, is a dance competition.  And "Singing Bee" is a twist on "Name That Tune," if anyone still remembers that show, where contestants must supply accurate lyrics to familiar songs (think "Bohemian Rhapsody").

Oh, and a dating show in which tennis stud Mark Phillipoussis is given a bevy of beauties to choose from.  Half are in their early 20s ... and "the rest are forty and fabulous ... Will he choose a kitten or a cougar?" Cue the cougar sound effect.

That was followed by some song and dance about NBC's online plans, which, as Phil Rosenthal pointed out earlier this week, failed to materialize last season.  But I'd watch "Jay Leno's Garage," at least once.  Jerry Seinfeld came out to promote his  new interstitials, which will appear during breaks next season, promoting his new "Bee Movie," which means it's paid programming. Later Reilly crowed that "Seinfeld is back on NBC," which I think is making a bit too much of this.

Here's part of Jerry's routine.  Bashing NBC never goes out of style, does it?

The "Sunday Night Football" crew came out and repeated their bit from last year, where they competed to see who could chuck their football into the first balcony of the Radio City audience. Keith Olbermann joined them.  He said four words.  Bob Costas said bringing the MSNBC star onto the football show was "part of our ongoing efforts to see if he can say something nice about Bush ... even if it is Reggie Bush of the New Orleans Saints."

At which point KO said, "He's a great leader."

Dick Ebersol came out to brag on the Beijing games, even though they're not until after the 2008 upfront presentation.  There will be twice the number of hours telecast from Beijing (2,400+) than there were from Athens, with much of the new content going online.  Ebersol estimated  50-60 percent of the prime time broadcasts on NBC will be live.  And Michael Phelps will be live the first eight nights of the Summer Games, which commence, wouldn't you know, 8-8-08.

Then out came NBC sales chief Mike Pilot, which is almost as good as having a research chief named Poltrack.  Normally the sales guy speaks first at an upfront, because he's inept at reading off a prompter, or sounds like a jock doing a radio ad.  But Pilot was great — he's the best executive  I've heard at one of these things in years.  Too bad he has to deliver all that boring, jargon-filled adspeak.

Reilly came out to wrap things up, as the music swelled ("We're committed to bring all these platforms together to solve any marketing challenge you have," although my notes are ambiguous whether Reilly or Pilot said that; either one could've). He then invoked the great Pat Weaver, inventor of the commercial spot (which replaced single-sponsor TV advertising in the 1950s while he was running NBC), as if to suggest that NBC, the network that knows to keep promising shows on the air instead of cancelling them, is also up to solving the business challenges ahead, yada yada.  And then a nice hand for Bob and Suzanne Wright, the outgoing chairman and first lady of NBC.  Behind them sat Lorne, who seemed to look ironically at the camera as he clapped.

And then a brief recap of the talking points, and then Reilly said, "Let's go get some shrimp." By the way, they do have after-parties in Chicago, too, though I was on my way out the door to see the grandbaby and only had time to grab a mini-quesedilla the size of a toast point.  I bit into it, and tasted shrimp.

Comments

[Roy]

"Which means for probably the first time in the history of the upfronts, NBC — a name once synonymous with half-hour comedy — didn't have a single new sitcom to show to advertisers."

NBC had no new comedies in the Fall of '76, '79 and '80.

--roy

[T Dog]

And those were years NBC was in the ratings basement - just like now. (By the way, I hope you enjoy your stay here in our wonderful city, Aaron. Thanks for coming!)

[Aaron]

T Dog, I have lived more of my life in Chicago than I have in Kansas City.

Of course, next year that will change.

[Aaron]

A reader writes....

I wanted to make a comment about you and Paul comparing/contrasting "Friday Night Lights" with "Hill Street Blues" in regard to NBC and finding an audience, etc. You even talked about the early role of cable.

I find it worth noting that while NBC outwardly used the good show they were keeping until viewers realized what they had, former NBC head Brandon Tartikoff gave somewhat of a different reason. In Tartikoff's autobiography, The Last Great Ride, Tartikoff explained that HSB was a show that families with cable tuned in for. Given that they had around 30 other oprions at the time, NBC felt that was important and kept the show.