CBS Remains the Class Act of Upfront Week; Turner Networks are Also on Top

Leave it to CBS to make the biggest news of Upfront week. That would be its double-barreled decision, announced yesterday, to next season slide its long-running Thursday staple Survivor to Wednesday and, even more shocking, relocate its hottest show, The Big Bang Theory, from Monday to Thursday to lead off that night. Nobody saw those moves coming. In fact, nobody even guessed they would happen. Earlier in the day, Turner Broadcasting wowed the audience of advertiser and agency executives at Hammerstein Ballroom with an impressive production that every year feels more at home amid the broadcast networks' Upfront events. Read more on both events.

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There had been rumblings that CBS was planning to move at least one of its aging CSI shows, which alone would have generated all kinds of talk and a lot of headline action. As it happens, CBS decided to move two of them (CSI: Miami from Monday to Sunday, CSI: NY from Wednesday to Friday), but that news barely registered amid the shock of the Survivor and Big Bang changes.

So stunning were these moves, in fact, that when CBS' 2010-11 schedule first flashed on screens at the network's annual Upfront press breakfast, a number of hard-nosed reporters in the 19^th floor conference room at Black Rock actually gasped. (I've probably been to a dozen of these breakfasts over the years and I had never once heard a gasp.)

"If there was a time to talk about moving [Survivor], this was it," Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment told reporters, noting that the show's just-concluded 20^th cycle (Heroes vs. Villains) is widely regarded as one of its best, and that its ratings were up over the previous year.

As for Big Bang, Kelly Kahl, Senior Executive Vice President, CBS Primetime, asserted that "nothing is setting the world on fire on Thursdays at 8," a dismissal, whether intentional or not, of NBC's medium-hot Community, which will return for a second season in that time period next fall. Kahl recalled the days "when comedies ruled Thursday night," clearly referring to NBC's long ago Must-See TV franchise, which included (at different times) such classics as The Cosby Show, Cheers, Family Ties, Friends, Frasier, Mad About You and Seinfeld, rather than NBC's more recent comedy efforts on the night.

For the record, at this early stage CBS' 2010-11 fall schedule looks rock solid, with very few exceptions. This was reinforced later in the day at the network's annual Upfront presentation at Carnegie Hall. It was a fast-moving, first-class affair. Tassler, as always, proved the most enthusiastically engaging of all Upfront hosts. Happily, all of the stars of CBS' new series and many from its returning shows were out in force, some taking bows from the audience, others taking the stage -- most memorably Jim Parsons as his Big Bang character Sheldon Cooper, who met William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk on Star Trek and star of the Twitter-inspired new fall comedy $ # * ! My Dad Says. ("I have so much to ask you," Parsons-as-Sheldon exclaimed. "I have so many answers," the ever-cool Shatner replied.) Smartly, CBS didn't saddle any of its talent with the mind-numbing banter that the poor actors over at the Turner Upfront had been made to utter earlier in the day.

Speaking of the Turner presentation, which this year was devoted to new and returning comedies on TBS and dramas on TNT, every year this impressive production feels more at home amid the broadcast networks' Upfront events. The collective talent on the Turner roster is truly impressive; in fact, at the end of yesterday's show, when the stage in the Hammerstein Ballroom was filled with stars from both networks, I couldn't help but note that these were people that television viewers really want to watch. Many of them were made famous by big broadcast networks, especially Conan O'Brien, who will launch a new late-night talk show on TBS in the fall.

O'Brien opened the event with a hilarious video in which we saw that he had gotten fat, let his hair go, grown a beard and largely bottomed out after his combustible departure from NBC, followed by the expected funny remarks about that experience. "If anyone in this room can explain what happened four months ago I'd love to hear it," he laughed. "The plot of Lost is more plausible than my life!" He then jazzed the audience with a rousing rendition of On the Road Again (with many lyrics changed to reflect his situation). Following O'Brien, the casts of TBS' veteran sitcom My Boys, its upcoming comedies Glory Daze (featuring Disney tween sensations Kelly Blatz and Drew Seeley) and Are We There Yet? (starring Ice Cube and Terry Crews of Everybody Hates Chris) and its new animated series Neighbors from Hell (featuring vocal performers Molly Shannon and Will Sasso) all took to the stage to talk about their shows, and then it was time for TBS' other late night star, George Lopez.

"Sixty years ago a redhead and a Latino made television history!" Lopez recalled. "This fall Coco and Loco will do it again. We're a same-sex Lucy and Ricky!"

The parade of TNT stars that followed included Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer); Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander (from the new crime drama Rizzoli & Isles); Jason Lee, Alfre Woodard and DJ Qualls (from the very promising detective drama Memphis Beat); Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer (from the new hour-long legal comedy Franklin & Bash); Dylan McDermott and Logan Marshall-Green (Dark Blue), Ben McKenzie, Regina King and Michael Cudlitz (Southland); Ray Romano, Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula (Men of a Certain Age); Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan (HawthoRNe); Timothy Hutton, Christian Kane, Gina Bellman, Aldis Hodge and Beth Riesgraf (Leverage) and Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood (from next summer's spectacular Steven Spielberg alien thriller Fallen Skies), among others. Sedgwick was especially poised, elegant and articulate. (I suspect she refused to read the mindless jokes the rest of the TNT talent had been stuck with.) Following the presentation, they all went to the second annual Turner press lunch, which after only two years has become one of the must-attend events of the week for critics and journalists.

Click to view CBS' Fall Schedule.