Up Close At The Upfronts

By James Poniewozik

Every May, TV-network heads invite thousands of advertising execs to the Manhattan upfronts to watch clips of the new fall shows, then hobnob at sybaritic parties. The goal: to sell ads "up front" with slick talk and boundless ratings predictions. It is a capitalist orgy where art and commerce have one too many vodka tonics and end up in bed. I swallowed the bombast (and the finger food) and lived to tell the tale.

MONDAY RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL If you set off a bomb here, millions of units of sanitizing tub-and-tile cleanser would go tragically unmarketed. The ad crowd gathered here seems a bit smug this year. The networks raked in a record $8 billion in last year's flush times; now it's a buyer's market. So as NBC touts its new series--a dubious-looking sitcom starring high-decibel chef Emeril Lagasse, the 1,000th version of Law & Order (O.K., the third)--it touts even more its high-income viewers, the real-life Frasier Cranes who make The West Wing "the most upscale show on any network!" In other words, the people in this room. At the party, the barbecued pork hors d'oeuvres are delish. Maybe it does help to have a chef on board.

TUESDAY THE NEW AMSTERDAM THEATER This morning the WB assured us it would not miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer (lost to UPN) one bit. This afternoon ABC says it is not a smidge disappointed in the fading Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Everything is beautiful at the upfronts. Every old show is hot, every new one a sure hit, and every network is No. 1. The WB? No. 1 in teens! NBC? No. 1 in the rich! Through the magic of statistics, ABC is No. 1 overall--and CBS is too! Today's buzz: Smallville, the WB's teen-Superman series; on ABC, Jason Alexander's sitcom Bob Patterson and college-girl-turned-spy thriller Alias, which ABC hypes as a combination of Dark Angel and the cure for cancer. "Hype is just an acronym," Alexander tells the ad buyers. "It stands for Hope You Purchase Everything."

WEDNESDAY CARNEGIE HALL Trend watch: CIA series (three), Supreme Court dramas (two for midseason), cop-lawyer dramas (too, too many), new-reality shows (everywhere). CBS has big hopes for the Ellen DeGeneres comeback comedy and Richard Dreyfuss drama The Education of Max Bickford. She plays a gay woman; he plays a straight professor. We'll see how they fare, but the network wins hands down for its lavish party at Tavern on the Green, where ad execs nibble prawns and mash up next to Survivor 2's Amber Brkich to pose for Polaroids. No mangrove worms, alas, on the raw bar.

THURSDAY THE U.S.S. INTREPID Creepiest thing I've seen all week: someone in a Lisa Simpson costume shaking her booty to Barenaked Ladies' Pinch Me, just a little too sexily for a 10-year-old, while inviting the weary suits on the aircraft carrier. (This morning UPN spent two hours unveiling a new slate mostly of former WB shows and the Star Trek prequel Enterprise, for which the network had no clips.) Fox--No. 1 in 18 to 34s!--has the most unusual lineup, including 24, a thriller whose events unfold in one day, in real-time episodes, over the season; Pasadena, a spooky-looking soap. I leave the party early, walking past the fighter jets on deck and thinking, If you set off a bomb on this ship...But then these are the upfronts. Plenty of bombs got launched this week. They just won't detonate until fall.

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