Have upfronts become down and outs?

By Barry Garron

To me, there's always been something magical about this week, upfront week, when the networks officially roll out their fall schedules and begin selling ads for the next TV season.

It's like spring training for baseball fans. Anything is possible. Every rookie is a potential phenom, every veteran is on the cusp of a career season and every team has a shot at the World Series.

Upfront is full of that kind of hope. Every new series is a possible blockbuster hit and every new lead actor is a potential breakout star. Fox may win this season, thanks to "American Idol" and the Super Bowl, but just wait until next year. Right?

Maybe not.

Though I try to deny it, there's an air of defeat hanging over the upfronts this year. TV hasn't had a solid hit for a couple of years. Ratings are down. The writers' strike, for whatever good it accomplished for the writers, injured the industry so seriously that the patient has yet to recover. There are fewer pilots, more reality sludge. The wound may never heal right. And meanwhile negotiations with actors still are unresolved.

In big ways and small, most networks are dialing back their presentations and, it seems to me, their expectations. Why bother with gala affairs to toast with anticipation a new season of "The Biggest Loser" or "The Bachelor"?

NBC let the air out of its upfront balloon early last month with the announcement of a 52-week strategy. At the time, it promised a total of four new fall series: "My Own Worst Enemy," "Kath & Kim," "Knight Rider" and "Crusoe."

Smoothing out the business cycle may be the wave of the future, although year-round TV seasons have been tried before without much success. Still, it left NBC with nothing to announce Monday other than a new post-Olympics series from Ryan Seacrest, "Momma's Boys."

"Momma's Boys," according to the NBC press release "asks possessive mothers to choose the perfect bride-to-be for their sons." You see, the mothers and sons and prospective brides are all put in the same big house and, oh what's the use, just describing the concept is enough to make you ill.

Fox is up soon. It's canceling "Back to You" and renewing "'Til Death." ABC will announce that it is bringing in the producers of "October Road" to run David E. Kelley's "Life on Mars." That's like bringing in the owners of the local Putt Putt to handle the Masters Tournament.

More and more, there is less and less. If you step back and look at the larger TV picture, it's not hopeless. Increasingly, those who pan for programming gold on basic cable a being rewarded with more nuggets.

But for those of us to whom upfront week meant feeling the energy, passion and enthusiasm of the start of a new TV season, things may never be the same.