'Quarterlife' Equals 1/22 of a Season on NBC

"Quarterlife" -- the much-ballyhooed broadcast-TV pilot to Internet series to broadcast-TV series about a hot 20-something blogger and her hot-but-sensitive friends -- is moving off the NBC lineup after just one broadcast, in which it posted the network's worst numbers in the Tuesday 10 p.m. time slot in at least 17 years.

The show never got a chance to debut in its regular Sunday berth. NBC decided Howie Mandel and real people screaming at briefcases was a better idea, so "Deal or No Deal" has taken that time slot this weekend.

Navel-gazers expect NBC Universal to announce "quarterlife" has been moved to the company's Bravo cable network, where an audience of 3.1 million would cause champagne to be broken out.

That's how many people watched Tuesday's broadcast-TV debut of the series. The crowd included just 1.3 percent of the country's 18-to-49-year-olds -- NBC's target audience.

Yesterday, "quarterlife" co-creator Marshall Herskovitz issued a statement saying, "I am happy to say that the reports of 'quarterlife's' demise are exaggerated. We're deeply grateful for NBC's efforts to make 'quarterlife' a success on network television. However, I've always had concerns about whether 'quarterlife' was the kind of show that could pull in the big numbers necessary to succeed on a major broadcast network."

These concerns are not in evidence on NBC's Web interview with Herskovitz, in which he and NBC Co-Chairman Ben Silverman waxed enthusiastic about the show's upcoming unveiling on NBC -- the interview clearly was done before Tuesday night. Silverman noted the show had not yet reached its critical mass, audience-wise, "which it will, once the network window further enhances it."

Herskovitz raved about the lead actress, who, he says, is so accomplished that to play the character she has to "change who she is." For instance, he explains, the character is a slob but in real life, the actress is a neat freak. Now that's acting.

"We make stars and our audience is going to discover these incredible performers," Silverman tells Herskovitz as they sit in comfy chairs in some generic office-like place. "You created the college common hall for the postgraduate set."

Before Tuesday's botched premiere, "quarterlife" could be found on various online platforms, most notably MySpace. NBC struck a deal to pick it up in the early days of the Hollywood writers' strike.

The day after the NBC premiere, Herskovitz told an audience at a Harvard Business School conference that "it never should have been a network show."

"It's too specific . . . from the first three minutes, I knew it wasn't right," he told the confab, which was covered by the trade paper the Hollywood Reporter.

And while as of late yesterday, NBC had not announced its plans for the remaining handful of "quarterlife" episodes it had ordered, Herskovitz hinted that they would wind up on one of NBC Universal's cable networks. (Dibs on Bravo.) "It is important to remember that 'quarterlife' has already proved itself as a successful online series and social network with millions of enthusiastic fans," Herskovitz said. "We live in a media world today where many shows are considered successful on cable networks with audiences that are a fraction of those on the Big Four. I'm confident that 'quarterlife' will find the right home on television as well."