Listen Up, CW Fans: There's News for the Few of You

NBC has kinda sorta pulled out of the annual "Upfront Week," when the broadcast networks take turns unveiling their prime-time slates for next season to advertisers and reporters in Manhattan. The network instead will be one act of the NBC Universal 2.0 Big Top presentation of all its media properties on its traditional day of Broadcast Upfront Week in mid-May.

Suits from the other networks are falling all over each other in the race to declare their upcoming upfront presentations the cheapest and most lacking in bells and whistles of any planned by any broadcaster that week.

Into this death march, enter Turner Entertainment, which announced yesterday it would crash Upfront Week, traditionally the exclusive purview of the broadcast networks. Turner Entertainment is going to unveil its TNT, TBS and TruTV lineups the same day CBS usually holds its dog-and-pony show in the afternoon at Carnegie Hall.

Turner Entertainment Networks President Steve Koonin said Turner is making this move to demonstrate its lineup of networks "is the strongest on television in terms of solid branding, reach and audience deliveries."

Besides, he added, "everyone in the industry realizes the broadcast business has been on a steep decline for years -- this year in particular." He's assuming advertisers sucking up shrimp and downing martinis at the networks' clambakes that week will notice "our networks provide an alternative that is getting better and better."

Contenders for TNT's lineup include the recently greenlit lawyerly drama "Raising the Bar," from Steven Bochco, and modern-day-Robin-Hoods drama "Leverage," from Dean "Independence Day" Devlin. TNT also is considering "Truth in Advertising," starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh; a multigenerational family drama, "Generations," from John Sacret Young and Robert Redford; and a small-Midwestern-town-in-the- 1950s drama from the "Hoosiers" and "Rudy" team of Angelo Pizzo and director David Anspaugh. Plus, "Technophobia," a drama about a bucolic town where technology is scaring the locals, and an untitled crime drama based on Tess Gerritsen's novels. And, a DreamWorks drama about a female newspaper reporter who discovers a magic lamp with an actual genie inside and uses it to discover how different people use the lamp's power to make wishes come true. Hopefully, she'll start with the guys in charge of the paper's circulation.

TBS, the comedy network, is developing a sitcom adaptation of Jane Ganahl's best-selling memoir "Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife." If it were being developed for a broadcast network, the story of "one woman's roller-coaster ride through middle age" would be changed to a roller-coaster ride through her late teens. But it's not, and Elaine Pope ("Seinfeld") is adapting. Also in development, a comedy about a woman whose husband walks out, leaving her with two kids and a struggling business. TBS is also developing late-night shows with the Jim Henson Co. and Robert Townsend.

* * *

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the night before potentially make-it-or-break-it primaries in Texas and Ohio, chose to make her last televised push on . . . Comedy Central.

She appeared live via satellite on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," her first appearance on the faux news show since 2003.

Stewart called today's primaries the Ultimate Last Final Showdown, unless Clinton wins Texas or Ohio.

"Tomorrow is perhaps one of the most important days of your life and yet you've chosen to spend the night before talking to me," he said. "As a host I'm delighted; as a citizen I'm frightened. Your response?"