NBC banks on youth for fall lineup

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 16, 2000

Aiming to solidify its inconsistent Must-See TV franchise, NBC will move the Emmy-winning comedy Frasier to Tuesday nights this fall, signalling a shift toward youthful promise over proven quality.

NBC also tinkered with its morning lineup, announcing plans to extend the highly rated Today show to three hours, and delaying the lackluster Later Today to 10 a.m.

As the 2000-01 TV season begins, Will & Grace will take the 9 p.m. Thursday slot held by Frasier the past two seasons. Once the home of mega-hit Seinfeld, that spot has long been the cornerstone of a blockbuster night that includes top-rated Friends and ER.

"We'd like to build a new generation of 9 p.m. viewers," said Garth Ancier, president of NBC Entertainment, in a conference call Monday. "Will & Grace is going into its third year, versus a show like Frasier, going into its eighth year. We're big fans of Frasier, but Will & Grace is a show about the future."

NBC also plans to cut Dateline NBC from five to three nights per week, canceling the Maury Povich-hosted game show Twenty One. Its new shows will include DAG, a new comedy featuring In Living Color alum David Alan Grier, and a self-titled sitcom starring Seinfeld's Michael Richards.

Longtime marginal performers such as Suddenly Susan, Veronica's Closet, Stark Raving Mad and Jesse went to cancellation heaven, along with NBC's entire Saturday night lineup.

The biggest potential mess of the new season was averted Sunday, when NBC agreed to pay each of the six cast members of Friends $40-million during the next two years to bring back the highest-rated comedy on television.

NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa told advertisers he's trying to rebuild the network's quality, particularly on Thursdays, where weak sitcoms were often shoehorned between proven performers, such as Friends and ER.

"One of the priorities for Garth and I was to get rid of weak shows and raise the bar," added Sassa, who hoped youth-oriented shows would blunt the success of ABC's older-skewing hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. "Who says you can't buy Friends?"

Ancier and Sassa unveiled the new lineup Monday at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, in a multimedia presentation that included Richards, the cast of the hit freshman drama The West Wing and an opera-themed opening number by the Will & Grace cast.

NBC's fall slate offered few other surprises, including a sitcom featuring former Wings star Steven Weber, a family comedy similar to Fox's Malcolm in the Middle dubbed Tucker and a new nighttime soap from Beverly Hills 90210 creator Aaron Spelling called Titans.

Despite the recent publicity about diversity issues, Grier's DAG is the sole new show with a non-white star and one of only two new shows with minorities in the core cast. (Weber's is the other.)

Prompted by the Summer Olympics, Nielsen Media Research has pushed the 2000-01 season's start from September to Oct. 2, but NBC executives couldn't say when their new shows would start.

ABC and the WB network will announce their schedules today, CBS and Pax TV on Wednesday and Fox and UPN on Thursday.

NBC's new schedule:

Monday: Daddio, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Deadline, Third Watch. Tuesday: The Michael Richards Show, Tucker, Frasier, DAG, Dateline NBC. Wednesday: Titans, The West Wing, Law and Order. Thursday: Friends, The Steven Weber Show, Will and Grace, Just Shoot Me, ER. Friday: Providence, Dateline NBC, Law and Order: S.V.U. Saturday: Movies. Sunday: Dateline NBC, Ed, movies.

- Material from Times wires was used in this report.