Upfront Analysis Day 4: Fox and the CW

Fox Keeps Things Stable, and Welcomes Kelsey
Past experience has shown that it's wise to write down the new Fox schedule in pencil. There's always a change or two (or three) by the time the fall rolls around. But stability was the message for the 2007-08 season: Prison Break, 24, House, Bones, American Idol, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and the Sunday animation block will all return in their same time periods next season. Sure, Fox always falters when the season begins, but the network is about to finish No. 1 in viewers aged 18-49 for the third season in a row.

As far as new shows, Fox is trying to regain the edge it seemed to abandon in this past season's development (which was dismal). The most promising attempt is on Monday at 9 pm with K-Ville, starring Anthony Anderson and Cole Hauser as two cops in post-Katrina New Orleans. We were puzzled when a reporter asked entertainment president Peter Liguori if doing such a show was exploiting a disaster. What should a contemporary show filmed in New Orleans be about? Mardi Gras?

Less promising is New Amsterdam, about a 400-year-old New York police detective. Scheduled for Tuesday at 8 pm before House, this show is supposed to move to Friday when American Idol returns in January. Yes, we're putting that one down in pencil.

While ABC and NBC have abandoned the multicamera sitcom, Fox is embracing the form with Back to You on Wednesday at 8 pm. It's conventional, but really funny. With Patricia Heaton and Kelsey Grammer as stars, the worst that can happen for Fox is viewers stop to watch it thinking it's an Everybody Loves Raymond or Frasier episode they haven't seen. It's followed at 8:30 pm by The Return of Jezebel James. Fox has never had a successful female-oriented sitcom. If this show about two sisters — one of whom agrees to carry the other's baby — can make it to January, when it will precede the American Idol results show, it has a chance, especially with Amy Sherman-Palladino producing and directing.

With baseball preemptions, Fox will try to get through Thursday and Friday in the first half of the season with reality and game shows, turning to Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (kind of a makeover show for restaurants) and the producers of Idol for The Search for the Next Great American Band. Outside of Idol, country music is the last genre that works on broadcast network television, so Fox is trying Nashville, a "docu-soap" about trying to make it in the music business.

The CW Tries Out a New Personality
A year ago, the former stars of the WB and UPN found themselves uncomfortably mingling on one stage for the first upfront of the new CW network. They looked like the kids at the wedding of two single parents.

This year, the CW took a step toward developing its own personality, shedding the aging Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars (the longest-running unsuccessful show in prime time) and All of Us (the weakest link in its lineup of urban sitcoms). The network is even taking the teen out of teen-angst drama One Tree Hill. When that show returns in mid-season, the characters will have been fast-forwarded to their lives after college.

The network is replacing All of Us with Aliens In America, a comedy about a Muslim exchange student coming to live in Wisconsin. It looks funny and a little provocative. Who would have thought the CW would have the first sitcom to deal with post-9/11 attitudes?

Tuesday at 9 pm brings Reaper, about a slacker whose parents sold his soul to the Devil, played with a brilliant oiliness by Ray Wise. The show represents the general tone of the new fall lineups presented this week: lighter fare with more special effects and fewer dark, complicated story lines with dense mythologies.

The moms who watched Gilmore Girls with their daughters will be very sad when they see Gossip Girl. Small-town values, reading books and watching old movies have been replaced by a snarky blogger, privileged prep-school girls from the Upper East Side and barely a parental unit in sight. Gossip Girl, which airs Wednesday at 9 pm, is getting the best lead-in the CW has in America's Next Top Model. Clearly the network thinks this one is the future.

On Sunday at 7 pm, the network will try a younger entertainment news show called CW Now, followed by Online Nation, an America's Funniest Home Videos for the YouTube generation. At 8 pm, 7th Heaven will be replaced by Life Is Wild. Although it's shot on location in South Africa, you'll still see more black people on CW's Monday comedies than on this show. Network insiders say that will change — let's hope so. The wildlife backdrop gives this family drama a distinctive look. Too bad the network didn't have this show last year to replace 7th Heaven on Monday at 8 pm, when viewers still looking for a family show would have found it.

For comprehensive coverage of the network upfronts visit TVGuide.com's Hottest Fall TV Blog.