Fox is betting you’re going to fall in love with their New Girl this fall, Zooey Deschanel. The clip they showed at Monday’s upfront–which we’d love to embed here but it is geoblocked to Canada–got a great response from advertisers. The pilot shows a girl dumped by her boyfriend who needs an apartment and winds up sharing a pad with three dudes. She`s odd but loveable. If you’ve seen (500) Days of Summer, you already know Deschanel (above left with Fox Chairman Peter Rice) can be a quirky, intriguing and quite winning presence. She’s also the kid sister of Bones star Emily Deschanel, a fact exploited for a joke Monday at the ad launch. Fox president Kevin Reilly quipped it was time to move on to other shows since there are no more Deschanel sisters.
The Fox party, held at Manhattan’s Citrus Restuarant, brought out the network’s stars, including Glee‘s Jane Lynch, once again working the track suit and bullhorn as she ripped through the new fall lineup. She was joined on stage at one point by several Glee cast members, including Matthew Morrison, Jayma Mays and Cory Monteith. Darren Criss and rival glee clubbers The Warblers also sang.
There were also stage appearances by new X Factor judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Cheryl Cole, with Cowell and Abdul’s old American Idol buddy Randy Jackson joining them on stage. Wrong show dawg, cracked Cowell.
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| Abdul and Cowell compare mascara |
These upfront used to be very locked down, industry-only affairs, but in this age of insatiable social media networks have thrown the doors open to the world in hopes of stirring up some advance buzz for their future shows. ABC is live streaming their presentation Tuesday at 4 p.m. on their media web site, which should be a treat just to see what Jimmy Kimmel has to say. The late night host has savaged his own network at past upfronts, delighting advertisers by biting the hand that feeds.
The TV industry is also in a partying mood after a few lean years where ad revenues were hammered down due to the recession. That doesn’t seem to be the case this year as even austere NBC has jumped back into the ballyhoo bandwagon.
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| The Glee cast try to distract advertisers from the fact that the show now sucks |
