Jonathan Storm: Fox, the fall phenom

Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm is reporting from the television critics' press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif. Read his blog "Eye of the Storm," at www.philly.com/eyeofthestorm.

With Steven Spielberg's epic time travel series Terra Nova, the delightful New Girl sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel, and Simon Cowell's blockbusting The X Factor, Fox this fall may have an invincible new-programming juggernaut.

"I feel like we're sitting on a hot hand this year," Fox Broadcasting Entertainment president Kevin Reilly told the nation's TV critics Friday at their annual meeting. "I really like our position."

He spoke just after Cowell and Paula Abdul revived their entertaining American Idol dance. It probably helped that he was more than 5,000 miles away in England and appearing via satellite. There was no hitting.

Cowell will produce X Factor, and, along with Abdul, singer Nicole Scherzinger, and recording exec L.A. Reid, be a judge and mentor for the contestants. The show, everybody's protestations to the contrary, is a lot like Idol, and will air Wednesdays and Thursdays (with a couple of Tuesday episodes to make way for postseason baseball and Thanksgiving), averaging more than three hours a week.

Some differences: Contestants are judged in four categories, including groups. Minimum age is 12, with no maximum. Auditions take place before large audiences. Judges and other music insiders will mentor the finalists, and we'll go behind the scenes with them in the judges' homes.

"Cameras are hidden," said Cowell, "so you see a very real process. The contestants are unaware of their location, and even I am unaware."

The winner will receive $5 million cash and, with Pepsi the lead sponsor, will follow in the footsteps of Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, and Britney Spears and perform a commercial on the February Super Bowl broadcast.

Cowell, who has produced versions of the show in countries as diverse as Kazakhstan and Chile, obliquely predicted its ratings would beat Idol's.

"You don't enter something for the silver medal," he told critics. "For the next few months, we're going to throw everything at it to make it as good as possible."

"Everything" includes Abdul, resuming her former love/hate relationship, which has always seemed a little contrived, with Cowell. "It's nice to be back," she said. "It's like home."

"More like The Exorcist II," he muttered.

Reid, who has worked with performers from Kanye West to Justin Bieber, looks to be the sensible one among the new judges, while Scherzinger, who grew up in Kentucky and worked last year as a fill-in judge on the British X Factor, seems ready to continue to stir the pot, along with Welsh host Steve Jones, Britain's answer to Ryan Seacrest.

X Factor may be the ratings death star, but the crazily ambitious Terra Nova, about a colony of humans sent 85 million years back through a time warp, as the world crumbles on the edge of environmental destruction in the 22d century, will also get lots of attention. It will air Mondays at 8 p.m. Special effects abound, and dinosaurs have rarely looked so good on TV.

"You're not going to have people saying, 'Which one is Terra Nova?'," Reilly said. "It also separates us from the pack." Reilly touted the characters in the family show about a family, with the required recalcitrant teenage boy and brainy girl. "I like those people, and I want to watch those actors," he said. "That's the best thing you can hope for in series television."

The show, shot in Australia, with 13 executive producers, has had its problems. The premiere was postponed from last spring. Reilly was sanguine: "Coloring on such a big canvas with a mandate to be epic and groundbreaking raises expectations, [but] they're right on schedule."

Finally, there's New Girl, in which Deschanel moves in with three guys. She charmed the critics Friday morning, blushing when one asked what she thought of being called "adorable" in every English-language newspaper and website on the globe. It airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m., after Glee, making a sweet lead-in for Raising Hope.

Fox has had a heck of a time finding popular sitcoms that weren't animated. Reilly, who has been at the network since 2007, seemed almost to breathe a sigh of relief as he said, "We're finally looking at the comedy profile I hoped our network would have."

The show won't give CBS's NCIS much of a run for Tuesday ratings dominance, but, with X Factor and Terra Nova, should provide enough numbers to make Fox undisputed No. 1 in the fall. And Fox's competitors can at least be happy they have seven hours more prime time a week than Fox, which goes back to local broadcasting at 10.