NEW YORK — With fall in sight, ABC is inviting viewers to stay home and watch ABC as an energy- saving measure.
For this tongue-in-cheek promotion, National Stay at Home Week begins Sept. 21 — also the official start of the 2008-09 TV season.
If only sky-high gas prices would guarantee ABC a captive audience!
With the networks still reeling from the disruption of last winter’s strike by screenwriters, only 17 new series have been slotted for fall — about half the usual number.
And most of them have been unavailable for preview. Few new shows have been put in front of critics, who, in other years, would have been warming up the crowd.
Whatever the programming networks air this fall, there is likely to be drama, suspense and pratfalls as the networks race to adapt to a medium in flux.
The most eagerly awaited entry is “Fringe,” Fox’s paranormal thriller from J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Alias”). It also happens to be an exception to all the new shows no one’s seen yet: Its 90-minute pilot was screened over the summer and could be downloaded.
The premiere of “90210” will be kept under wraps until its Tuesday airing as a “strategic marketing decision,” the CW network recently said.
ABC is introducing just two new series. One, “Opportunity Knocks,” is a trivia-based game show. The other, a cop drama with a time-travel twist called “Life on Mars,” began as a British series.
Will global imports tighten their grip on the networks? CBS’s wedding woes comedy, “Worst Week,” and its science-driven crime drama, “Eleventh Hour,” also have been adapted from British TV. NBC’s mother-daughter comedy, “Kath & Kim,” sprang from an Australian hit. CBS’s “The Ex List,” a romantic comedy, was inspired by an Israeli series.
The Olympics and their explosive ratings are just a beautiful memory as NBC heads into a brand-new season, with a remake of the 1980s hit “Knight Rider”; the self-explanatory “Crusoe”; and “My Own Worst Enemy,” an action drama about a family man with a split personality.
Will the audience suspect the networks of holding out their best stuff for midseason, stuff like Fox’s spinoff from “Family Guy,” an NBC comedy starring “Saturday Night Live” alum Amy Poehler, and the return of ABC’s “Lost” and Fox’s “24”?
Long before then, the audience will be sizing up fall entries that also include a Fox comedy about a luxury Manhattan hotel, “Do Not Disturb,” and “Gary Unmarried,” a CBS comedy about a guy navigating his recent divorce.
CBS’s drama “The Mentalist” focuses on a consultant to the cops who has a keen eye for clues but a dubious past. CW weighs in with “Privileged,” about a sexy live-in tutor in posh Palm Beach, and “Stylista,” a reality show where competitors vie for a job at a fashion magazine.
Several proven hits — Fox’s “House,” NBC’s “Heroes,” ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” — are awaited by viewers with eagerness nothing new can match.
But is anything certain as ABC sets the stage for Stay at Home Week? Right now, the networks’ biggest show is a guessing game, the one they’re trying to win.
