No New Sitcoms? At NBC, It's No Joke

"Heroes" will produce 24 episodes and, when the show takes a break in the spring next year, NBC will fill the time slot with something called "Heroes: Origins," which the network touted as a spinoff, introducing new characters in the "Heroes" universe. One lucky character will join the series as a regular the following season, based on votes cast by viewers on the "Heroes" Web site.

"Friday Night Lights" has been moved to . . . Friday nights, NBC suits having finally bought into their own blather that this drama series is about "so much more than football." The network had resisted putting the series, about the religion that is high school football in a small Texas town -- you saw the movie, right? -- on Friday night when high school football games are played, fearing the show would lose a big chunk of its potential audience.

But since no one is watching this show anyway -- it's averaging 6.2 million viewers this season -- it appears NBC decided "what the heck." According to Reilly, network researchers had discovered that, statistically, the number of people who attend high school football on Friday nights is not significant relative to the number of viewers in the country. Plus, he added, there's also a bingo night and a church night in America, but "you can't get caught up in those details." Now he tells us!

Even so, NBC is hedging its bets by moving "FNL" to 10 p.m., by which hour, in theory, high school football games are over. Except in the middle of the country, a.k.a. TV Suits Flyover Zone, where prime time starts early and "FNL" will air at 9.

So desperate for buzz is fourth-place NBC that it announced Monday with fanfare that Jerry Seinfeld is returning to the network as writer, producer and star of 20 1-to-3-minute-long promotions for his new DreamWorks feature film, "Bee Movie." NBC is calling them "unique live-action comedy 'minisodes' " that will give viewers a "glimpse at Seinfeld's behind-the-scene antics during production of the movie."

Seinfeld, who got the 90-minute NBC presentation's biggest applause, reminded advertisers that it has been nearly 10 years since his hit sitcom aired on the network.

"I had the No. 1 show -- we were the No. 1 network!" Seinfeld gushed, twisting the knife. "People watched what NBC put on the air or lived in fear of the consequences."

He acknowledged people have asked him to do another TV show but said he didn't think he could come up with a program that included both worms and one-legged dancers. "Sometimes I feel like the whole industry just packed up and joined the circus," he said. This from a guy who's selling NBC infomercials for his new animated flick, in which he plays a disillusioned bee.

As announced on Mother's Day, all three "Law & Order" series are returning to the "networks of NBC Universal," but only "Law & Order: SVU" is on NBC's fall schedule, Tuesdays at 10. The mothership show, "Law & Order," won't debut until after NBC's Sunday football package has wrapped for the season. "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" will air first on NBC Universal-owned USA network, then repeat on NBC where, as they say, if you didn't catch it the first time, it's "new to you."

It's unclear where "CI" will air on NBC's prime time; maybe Saturdays between 9 and 11 p.m., where the network has scheduled Drama Series Encore Theatre.

NBC's one and only fabulous time slot in which to grow a new series, Mondays at 10, after "Heroes," has been bestowed on "Journeyman" -- a new romantic mystery about a San Francisco newspaper reporter, played by Kevin McKidd of HBO's "Rome" fame, who inexplicably begins to travel through time and alter people's lives.

One reporter wondered why they had made the lead a newspaper reporter.