NEW YORK — NBC, the fourth-place network, officially raised the curtain on its new fall schedule Monday, and there were surprisingly few performers standing on its stage.
The struggling network is banking on five new dramas, one new comedy and a handful of reality programs to help boost its rankings in an ever-crowded entertainment marketplace.
"I take comfort not in quantity but quality," said Kevin Reilly, NBC's president of entertainment.
Reilly made his remarks at a morning news conference, a prelude for this week's "upfronts." The weeklong springtime ritual of rolling out new fall programming relies on an often elaborate song-and-dance to stir up advertiser enthusiasm.
The fewer programs are a deliberate strategy in a new age of television, Reilly said. Like other traditional media, television has been raked by the gradual and ever worrisome erosion of its once huge audience at the hands of everything from cable's niche programming to sophisticated computer games. "Everybody is down," Reilly said.
Had the network picked up more new shows, Reilly said, NBC probably couldn't have promoted them.
"For networks in down cycles," Reilly said, "loading up on product is not necessarily a recipe for success, particularly in this day and age with the fragmented audience where you simply can't market them."
The new shows include "Journeyman," "Chuck," "Bionic Woman," "Life," "Lipstick Jungle" and "The IT Crowd."
Just as vital as what NBC is unveiling this week is what NBC decided to keep. The network renewed two shows: its comedy-within-a-comedy, "30 Rock," and its gritty look at small-town life, "Friday Night Lights." Both shows scored with critics and developed an almost cultish following.
Both shows foundered in the ratings, but Reilly said scheduling was partly to blame -- something he hopes to rectify this fall. "30 Rock" moves back an hour from 9:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on the network's Thursday comedy night -- away from the audience-crushing force of ratings monsters "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI."
Meanwhile, "Friday Night Lights" shifts, appropriately enough, to Friday nights at 10.
"I must have had a billion people ask me why isn't it on Fridays," Reilly joked. "The mystery is over."
Reilly assured journalists that perhaps "30 Rock's" single most important actor, Alec Baldwin, who portrays a ruthless corporate executive, was committed to staying. Baldwin, who won a Golden Globe award for the role earlier this year, had suggested he wanted to leave television after his abusive voicemail message to his preteen daughter gained nationwide publicity.
