More bad and good news from the world of TV

NBC is about to move 30 Rock to Thursdays at 9:30. I guess somebody at NBC likes it. There are two ways you get a spot on NBC Thursdays. One is, you earn it, as Scrubs, My Name Is Earl, and The Office have.

I don't actually watch any of those series regularly (though I look in on Scrubs from time to time), but it can fairly be said they've proven themselves shows people want to watch. 30 Rock, on the other hand, started with almost nobody watching and had less than that the second week.

Which brings me to the second way you get a show on Thursday nights at NBC: Somebody up there likes you, wants to appease your producer, or both. See Good Morning Miami, produced by Mutchnik & Kohan, the team who sold their soul to the devil for Will & Grace and haven't done anything funny since.

See also Veronica's Closet, produced by the team that brought you Friends. See also Joey.

This is the sort of scheduling-by-favoritism that once led NewsRadio creator Paul Simms, god bless him, to refer to NBC's Thursday-night lineup-in print, for attribution-as "A big double-decker shit sandwich."

In ratings news, according to the usually-trustworthy Marc Berman, things still look dim for Friday Night Lights and I have to say I'm minding less with each passing week. There is much that is still remarkable about the series, especially the performances and direction. And as I've said, any show that can make me care about a high school football team has to be doing something right.

But of my three favorites of "the freshman class"-The Nine, Studio 60, and Friday Night Lights-this is the one I could most stand to lose. If it doesn't make it, I'll feel like it's "just one of those things." Everyone involved will walk away with some good footage for their reel, if nothing else.

If the first two don't make it, I feel like it'll say something about how, in fact, there isn't a place for smart shows on network television these days. Which would be a real shame, especially since a big part of the soul of Studio 60 is about arguing just that point-that there is such a place. I'd really hate for that to be proved wrong.

Especially if 30 Rock succeeds not because anyone actually wants to watch it but because it has friends in the right places. (Lorne Michaels, a man whose name carries much weight in the halls of NBC, is the executive producer of 30 Rock.)

The good news is, also according to Marc Berman,

...the slowly building Veronica Mars was up by 6 percent in both total viewers and women 18-49 (1.9/ 5) from one week earlier, with retention out of Gilmore Girls of 81 percent among target adults 18-34.

Quality-wise, IMO, the show's still wavering badly, but it's still good enough for me to root for a full season renwewal. I'd love to see what the writers could do with safe ground under their feet, and not feel that they were casting about wildly for viewers.

Then again, if the first season could survive a guest shot by Paris Hilton and go on to be as good as it was, nothing's impossible.

One final note: The Nine is on tonight at 10 on ABC, y'all, right after Lost. Join me, won't you?