ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson seems to have been looking for proven quantities behind the scenes, too, yesterday announcing a show from "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett and one from Jerry Bruckheimer, whose many shows for CBS have "been beating up" ABC for years, McPherson joked yesterday with reporters, hours before presenting his schedule to advertisers in New York. Meanwhile, NBC, which announced most of its series pickups a few weeks ago, finally explained how it's going to fit all those shows around football and the five hours a week it's giving to Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show: shared time slots, or as entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman put it in a conference call with reporters, a "dual-season strategy," with the Winter Olympics in the middle, fewer reruns and scripted shows in the summer. The big news from NBC was the renewal of "Chuck," for which Silverman credited fan and critical support - including a lively Twitter campaign - but more importantly, a "partnership" with Subway, one of the show's sponsors, which had found itself the target of a drive by viewers to show their support by patronizing the business. (Yes, this is called putting your money where your mouth is.)

"Chuck's" return isn't set until after the Olympics, Feb. 12-28. Fans of NBC's "Friday Night Lights" will have to wait even longer, unless they watch its first run on DirecTV. Its NBC Season 4 premiere isn't scheduled until the summer of 2010.

ABC announced the renewals of "Better Off Ted," "Scrubs," "Castle" and the "reality" show "True Beauty."

ABC had previously announced the pickups of "America's Funniest Home Videos," "The Bachelor," "Brothers & Sisters," "Dancing With the Stars," "Desperate Housewives," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Grey's Anatomy," "Lost," "Private Practice," "Supernanny," "Ugly Betty," "Wife Swap" and "20/20." "Surviving Suburbia," the Bob Saget sitcom, will air in the summer - without the lead-in of "Dancing with the Stars" - after which point the network will decide its fate, McPherson said.

Definitely not returning to ABC: "Samantha Who?" "In the Motherhood," "Dirty Sexy Money," "Eli Stone," "Pushing Daisies," "The Unusuals" and - at last - "According to Jim," whose inexplicable survival had made it a punchline.

McPherson expressed regret about canceling "Samantha Who?" acknowledging that being paired with "In the Motherhood" hadn't helped. Still, "Samantha" lead Christina Applegate is "a giant, giant TV star," he said.

New ABC dramas for fall and midseason include "The Deep End," a series about law-firm associates that McPherson described as "a 'Grey's Anatomy' in the law world"; "Eastwick," based on the John Updike novel and the film "The Witches of Eastwick" and starring, among others, Rebecca Romijn; "Flash Forward," a sci-fi thriller starring Joseph Fiennes that has overtones of "Lost"; "The Forgotten," a Bruckheimer series about "dedicated amateurs" who work on John and Jane Doe cases; "Happy Town," a drama about a town that may not be so happy, after all; and "V," a "reimaging" of the 1980s sci-fi miniseries.

New ABC comedies include: "Cougar Town," starring "Friends'" Cox as a divorced single mother; "Hank," starring Grammer as a downsized exec forced to spend more time with his family; "The Middle," starring Heaton as a wife and mother in Indiana; and "Modern Family," a comedy from Steven Levitan ("Just Shoot Me") and Christopher Lloyd ("Frasier") whose cast includes "Married . . . with Children's" O'Neill, and whose pilot was screened in its entirety for advertisers yesterday.

In addition, "Shark Tank," an unscripted series from Mark Burnett ("Survivor," "The Apprentice"), will bring would-be entrepreneurs together with multimillionaires they hope will fund their projects.

Other highlights of yesterday's announcements:

* ABC's "Scrubs," which spent its first seven seasons on NBC and its eighth on ABC, will air its ninth season on ABC, with star Zach Braff to appear in six of the first 13 episodes.

* "Law & Order" will return for the 20th season that will tie it with "Gunsmoke" as the longest-running drama series in prime time.

* NBC canceled "Medium" and "My Name Is Earl," Silverman saying [that they were "aging demographically] as we're getting younger and going down [in ratings] as we're trying to go up." Neither show apparently received the support thrown behind "Chuck." There were reports that CBS, which announces its schedule today, might pick up "Medium," which CBS Television Studios produces, like ABC picked up "Scrubs."

* The revival of Friday nights continues, as ABC sends "Ugly Betty" at 9 p.m., and NBC counters with "Law & Order" at 9 and "Southland" at 10. In recent seasons, CBS has dominated that night. *

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