Helena Shelton is EVP, director of trading at MediaCom

On the way to New York, both Pearson and LaGuardia felt empty compared to previous years. A reflection of the economic times? I saw one soul on my travels wearing a surgical mask, a reminder of the swine flu alert. But despite rain making the trip slower, and my hair messier, I did make it to New York City for the NBC ‘infront’ — that is not a typo.

The infront is in year two. I did not witness year one, but the differences from the days of the Radio City Music Hall presentations include: about 4,500 less people, no after-party, and none of the usual night-by-night, hour-by-hour schedule discussion. This smaller, earlier preview of the fall programming was as insightful as the big ones of previous years and definitely less stressful.

The big news for NBC is Jay Leno going to five nights a week in primetime at 10 p.m. This is a DVR-busting strategy for them. We were told numerous times that this move will mean fresh, relevant, timely programming that is also funny — and funny is good when up against the usual murder, murder and more murder that is 10 p.m. TV. This will not be ‘late-night Jay,’ this will be ‘primetime Jay.’ The jury is still out on this one.

NBC has nine new shows, and we previewed clips for six of them. Trauma, from the producers of Friday Night Lights, got solid applause. This intense action drama about paramedics in San Francisco has a high production budget, and it shows. Parenthood from Ron Howard got me all emotional, but the rest of the audience seemed unmoved. The storyline revolves around four siblings in various stages of parenthood.

Mercy, about three nurses and the challenges of a hospital, was intense; even the NBC exec on stage described this one as ‘harsh.’ Day one will premiere after the Olympics and is about the first day after some sort of catastrophe wipes out the earth. What can be said? Excellent special effects. Community, a comedy starring Joel McHale and Chevy Chase, is about a bunch of people (divorcees, seniors…you get the idea) who go to community college and learn about themselves in a Breakfast Club fashion. It actually had a few funny moments, but I’m not sure if it can sustain its humor.

Finally we saw 100 Questions, another comedy. It appears each episode will be the answer to a question from a dating service, again with a couple of good one-liners.

But, as one of my New York contacts pointed out, ‘it is hard to get a good feel for the schedule because they did not tell us when the shows would actually be on… not sure what the point of having this meeting now was.’

From Media in Canada