Like swallows winging back to Capistrano, the nation’s TV critics are gathering for their annual summer meeting in Los Angeles, to get information about the new fall shows.

Some things have changed as the first full normal TV season after the 2008 writers’ strike unfolds.
The tour itself, organized by the Television Critics Association, is a slimmed-down affair, and it’s taking place several weeks later than usual. But one thing remains the same: Fall premieres are still the highlight of the TV season.
ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and the CW have more than a score of new shows whose stars and producers all will be available, not only to explain that their current project has the best scripts and friendliest cast they’ve ever seen, but to answer more substantive questions about the state of television.
Critics are buzzing about NBC plans to “strip” a Jay Leno comedy/talk show weeknights at 10 EDT. The network is the only one that has not provided at least a skeleton schedule for the press tour, but Leno has been promised, and the critics are sure to grill him, and whatever executives NBC puts onto the hot seat, about the move. The critics will want to know not only its chances for ratings success but the implications of removing five hours of scripted-drama time from the prime-time network schedule.
Another network looking at the hot seat is the CW. Can it survive only on a targeted audience of young women, and will it find them by serving up a remake of “Melrose Place” to match last year’s new take on “Beverly Hills 90210,” not to mention another production from its assembly line of shows featuring oversexed, hard-partying, angst-ridden, beautiful teens?
The critics are already zoned into the intrigue surrounding “The Beautiful Life,” since star Mischa Barton was hospitalized at the behest of Los Angeles police nine days ago for psychiatric problems. The health concerns of another star, Maura Tierney, have postponed her new NBC show, “Parenthood,” already generating buzz among the critics. While Tierney gets treated for a lump in her breast, NBC is going with a medical show, “Mercy.”
That makes two new ones on NBC and two on CBS, counting midseason-scheduled “Miami Trauma” (not to be confused with NBC’s plain “Trauma”), joining Fox’s “House” and ABC’s “Private Practice,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scrubs.”
They’ll have to break out the defibrillator if the critics don’t jump all over that trend.
On the plus side, the news is a possible resurgence in comedy, as critics are giving early positive mention to ABC’s “Modern Family,” which follows three fictional families, and “The Middle,” starring Patricia Heaton, as well as NBC’s “Community,” about a varied band of misfits at a community college.
The critics’ favorite drama seems to be CBS’ “The Good Wife,” starring Julianna Margulies as the wife of a disgraced prosecutor (Chris Noth) who must return to work as a lawyer to keep her family afloat. “It’s a nice blend of legal and serialized family drama,” says Rob Owen, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Shaved to less than two weeks (from an all-time high in the ’90s of 23 days), the press tour still attracts every major broadcast network and most of the cable ones.
And while it also has attracted the same number of critics as last year, the makeup of the press corps has changed. The ranks of print journalists in the critics association have shrunk 12 percent in the last year, while the number of reporters working exclusively online has jumped 10 percent. The total registered remains the same as last year, 148.
The value of the tour has remained unchanged.
“The access is extraordinary,” says Hartford Courant critic Roger Catlin. “No other reporters on other beats get to grill executives and players the way we do. They normally wouldn’t let me into the same building with Michael Eisner.”
The auditorium Q&A sessions, where principals sit on the stage to be grilled by reporters on the floor, remain the tour’s bread and butter, and they can provide for eclectic experiences.
One day, just before lunch, critics will question Eisner, no longer such a big shot, who’s producing a cartoon show for Nick at Nite about a dentist who takes his family cross-country in a “Dental Mobile” with a giant toothbrush on top. Then Matt Damon will pitch his History Channel show about ordinary Americans who changed history.