Entertainment

TV: Network moves series around, delays others in bid to remain competitive

10:38 AM CDT on Friday, May 26, 2006

By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News

NBC blew up its just-announced fall schedule Thursday, sending Deal or No Deal to rally the ratings on Thursdays while bumping Medium to midseason and two of the Law & Order shows to new nights.

The network prefers to call it an "adjustment," even though only rerun-dominated Saturdays and football-filled Sundays remain untouched. Wednesday nights are being thoroughly reshuffled.

The unprecedented demolition was triggered by ABC's announcement last week that it will move hot hospital drama Grey's Anatomy to Thursdays this fall to take on CBS' long-dominant CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

That left NBC's expensive new Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip in a no-win situation as the peacock network's 8 p.m. Thursday entrant. The inside look at a fictional late-night TV show, fronted by Friends alumnus Matthew Perry, now gets Medium's 9 p.m. Monday slot.

Deal or No Deal, last-place NBC's hottest show of the past season, will leave Fridays and try Thursdays on for size against Grey's and CSI. That sets up the fiercest three-show battle in recent memory and perhaps in network TV history.

Here are some of NBC's other moves:

•Law & Order goes from Wednesday nights at 9 to Fridays at the same hour, where it will face CBS' hit Numb3rs and ABC's fading 20/20.

•Crossing Jordan, initially benched until midseason, gets a reprieve as Friday's leadoff hitter, supplanting Deal or No Deal.

•Law & Order: Criminal Intent moves from Fridays to Tuesdays at 8 p.m., where it will air back-to-back with Law & Order: SVU.

•In order of appearance, Wednesdays used to be The Biggest Loser , new comedies 20 Good Years and 30 Rock, and Law & Order . The new lineup, as of this writing at least, is 20 Good Years, 30 Rock, The Biggest Loser and the new Kidnapped.

The biggest loser of all, Patricia Arquette's Medium, now will have to wait for the latest available port in NBC's storm. For now the only dead it's seeing is itself.

E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com