NBC: Help Wanted

In the NBC parking lot I left my car to view the network's upfront presentation via satellite, I saw this book on the ground: "Before You Quit Your Job."

Which I suppose sums up the work environment at the once-indomitable, now-beleaguered network.

The network unveiled its 2006-07 schedule today with a lot less of the attendant hoopla it usually musters for this event. Where, in the past, NBC regaled advertisers and media with musical numbers and comedy routines, today, it just trotted out "The Office's" Rainn Wilson ranting in a kind of spooky fashion after being introduced as NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly. Later, B.J. Novak, also of "The Office," declared, “I may be the highest paid temp on TV -- except for Kevin Reilly."

Perhaps Novak had a better look at NBC's new shows than we did, because a couple looked genuinely promising. The whole upfront presentation was pretty no-nonsense -- kind of like the gloomy one ABC threw a couple of years back where Stephen McPherson sort of glumly took his lumps, but then introduced "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." Stars introduced their new series willy-nilly and free of context; Reilly showed up at the end to explain how the scheduling would work (usually, executives present their lineups in an orderly, night-by-night fashion).

The cut-down of Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" bristled with the same sort of furious energy as "Network," and it features an absolutely unbeatable cast -- Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, D.L. Hughley, Sarah Paulson, Steven Weber, Timothy Busfield and Nathan Corddry of "The Daily Show." (Although the equally unbeatable Lisa de Moreas of the Washington Post says she hears the pilot is only good, not great.) Tina Fey's "30 Rock" -- also about a network sketch-comedy show -- appears to be pretty funny. Alec Baldwin stars as the president of "NBC-GE-Universal-KMart."

The downside on both of those shows, of course, is that audiences aren't as enthusiastic about shows set in Hollywood as the Hollywood creators who make them are. And can Fey pull double duty and keep up the quality writing for both "30 Rock" (in which she also stars) and "Saturday Night Live" (in which she also stars)?

"Friday Night Lights," adapted from the book and subsequent film of the same name, also seems to hold promise, though the pilot seems overstuffed with incident and, again, sports-themed shows tend to struggle to hold an audience, which is why the network was so careful to insist that it's about community, family, apple pie, ad infinitum, rather than high-school football.

"Kidnapped," a serialized, close-ended series -- it will wrap up its storyline at the end of the year and, if it's still around, cook up new extended plotlines with (many) new characters for subsequent seasons -- faces tough competition from "House" and "The Unit." "Heroes" looks plenty contrived and arbitrary; it concerns a bunch of "ordinary" people with "extraordinary" powers who have to save the world. From what, exactly, is unclear. (Last year's mythology-heavy "Lost" copycats didn't do well; why try to revisit that well?) The John Lithgow-Jeffrey Tambor sitcom "20 Good Years," on the other hand, has a wobbly concept (two guys decide to approach life with a just-do-it mentality) and generic, sitcom-y writing.

Of the midseason shows, "Raines," starring Jeff Goldblum as a detective who chats with the murder victims whose cases he investigates, looks, well, dumb, though he's funny in it. (Does the network really need another "Medium?") The highly touted "The Black Donnellys" from Oscar-winning "Crash" writer-director Paul Haggis, about Irish brothers in organized crime, looks more heavy on atmospherics than anything else (then again, it might be a show so nuanced that a cut-down doesn't do it service). The network didn't offer looks at its midseason comedies, "Andy Barker, P.I.," starring Andy Richter (and executive-produced by Conan O'Brien), or "The Singles Table," which sounds like just another generic "Friends" ripoff.

The network spent an inordinate amount of time touting its new broadband service, which will offer scads of digital entertainment tied into virtually every show on the air, as well as piles of original content. It's breathtakingly ambitious -- in fact, probably way too ambitious; NBC looks as though it's throwing every last damn home movie made by any of its employees online. Web-isodes of "The Office" and Conan O'Brien cartoons look like fun; behind-the-scenes glimpses at "The Tonight Show" and other series just feel bloated and self-indulgent. And when Jeff Zucker announced the online "Celebrity Horoscopes," he declared that it takes people's obsession with stars to a whole new level, which can hardly be considered a good thing. Pretty soon, they'll be filming the people filming the behind-the-scenes sequences and putting that online, too. Maybe they'll film the technies actually uploading the films to the web. What about filming the meetings where they discuss what other detritus they can clog up the cyberworld with?