LOS ANGELES -- "Joey" will be back this fall, and he'll be "Friends"-less, at least in the early going.

Warner Brothers In "Joey," Matt LeBlanc, center, will be hanging with Drea de Matteo as sister Gina and Paulo Costanzo as nephew Michael instead of with his New York pals. Click photo for larger image.

Matt LeBlanc stars as his "Friends" character, Joey Tribiani, in this new spin-off, and some of his former co-stars may show up eventually, but not right away.

"Our first goal is to get 'Joey' working on its own and not be dependent on stunt casting, even though the stunt casting would be familiar to the audience," executive producer/director Kevin Bright said. "It's about getting the show to stand on its own feet. But we hope to see the 'Friends' in the future."

"Friends" star David Schwimmer is already scheduled to work behind the scenes, directing the sixth episode of "Joey," whose pilot has had a mostly positive buzz after it was screened for advertisers in May. The plot finds Joey moving to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career. His nephew (Paulo Costanzo), a rocket scientist, literally, moves in with him. Joey's sister, played by Drea de Matteo, late of "The Sopranos," lives nearby.

LeBlanc said viewers will see the same Joey on this new show as on "Friends."

"A lot of times you'll take a character from one show and spin him off to another show, and it seems like people change the character too much and tweak it," he said. "Hopefully, the guy will be exactly the same, there will just be more of him."

For de Matteo, leaping from the HBO drama to a network sitcom, something she had no experience acting in, offers a new challenge.

"I'll be throwing the punches this time," she said, a nod to her character's relationship with Joey. "I'm not gonna get the [stuffing] beat out of me every week."

De Matteo's "Sopranos" character was a mobster's girlfriend and was eventually murdered while crawling through the woods trying to escape from a mobster assigned to whack her.

"I crawled all the way to NBC," she said.

De Matteo said she remains signed to appear in the final season of "The Sopranos" but acknowledged it will likely be in a dream sequence.

LeBlanc joked that to make de Matteo feel comfortable on the "Joey" set, "I slapped her around a little."

"Honestly, I never thought about doing comedy," de Matteo said. "I loved that character [on 'The Sopranos'] more than anything, and to get to play a similar type of character on this show [was great]. I was sick and tired of crying every week. I am excited to have a break from all those chokings and beatings and hair pulling."

The one element of "Joey" that remains in flux is the casting of a female neighbor. Played by actress Ashley Scott in the pilot, the role is being recast. Initial reports said the character, conceived as married, would become single, but producers said the character will remain married as a way to explore the friendly relationship between a single man and married woman.

"That was honestly the one element of the show we were a little uncertain about going into it," Bright said. "It wasn't about the actor. It was about, what role does this character play in the show?"

That may still be in question. Producers were mum when asked to elaborate on how the character will be reconceived. Casting is expected to be complete in a few weeks.

Unveiling 'Pride'

NBC finally took the wraps off its fall computer-animated comedy, "Father of the Pride," a show that had the taint of bad buzz since its May presentation to advertisers. Instead of screening it over closed circuit to TV critics' hotel rooms, as is the norm, NBC aired "Pride" on a big screen in a room packed with NBC publicists who dutifully provided a laugh track even when critics did not.

"Father of the Pride," about a family of lions owned by Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried and Roy, is far more adult in its humorous content than its cuddly animated characters would suggest. Despite a slow start, the episode screened for critics was better than I expected it would be, but it also trafficked almost exclusively in sex jokes (the episode's plot centered on efforts to get two pandas to mate). Some of it was funny, some of it was not, but it's definitely not an appropriate show for small children. Parents, consider yourselves forewarned.

Bye-bye Brokaw

A press conference for retiring "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw wasn't quite the swan song lovefest NBC might have expected. Brokaw got questioned about the media's coverage of the war in Iraq, particularly in light of Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11," which criticizes the media for not being more dogged in its pursuit of the truth about the situation. Brokaw defended media coverage and took issue with some of Moore's omissions.

"He's a master at getting his point of view on the big screen. The right has Rush [Limbaugh], and the left has Michael Moore," Brokaw said. "They are very good at presenting their points of view, saying this is factual. Truth is a little more elusive, and it's the arrangement of those facts."

Brokaw also gave critics a not-undeserved lecture following one too many questions to Brokaw about unflattering newspaper reports or opinion columns about either him or network news coverage. He asked critics how many of them watch "NBC Nightly News" every night, and only a few hands went up.

"We work our fannies off and send people into harm's way all over the world and get on airplanes and fly through the night and go without sleep for five or six days and try to get the exclusive interviews and get out the essence of the story and work the phones all day long to put on the best broadcast that we can every night," Brokaw said. "If you're going to make judgments about what we do, then watch and make qualitative judgment about it and not be derivative in terms of what somebody may have written last week that was in another publication or something that you buzz about around here. That's all I ask."

Sounds like a fair request to me.

Another 'Apprentice'

At a press conference for the new season of "The Apprentice," executive producer Mark Burnett would not say whether contestants from the first season will appear in the next go-round, except that winner Bill Rancic will fill in for George Ross in the boardroom for a few episodes.

"I think everyone was surprised at how tough I was," Rancic said. "I know what they're thinking, I know what they're feeling and if they try to pull a fast one on me, I'm going to call them out on the carpet. ... I think the contestants were shocked because they came in thinking, 'Oh, Bill's here. It's going to be an easy one.' They thought I was on their side. I think I had a higher level of expectation from them because I was there and I walked in their shoes."

The second "Apprentice" will premiere Sept. 9.

NBC fall schedule change

NBC announced Saturday that the summer success "Last Comic Standing" will return for another cycle Aug. 31, bumping the next "Average Joe" to later in the season.

'V' miniseries tabled

A year ago NBC announced plans to develop a new three-hour TV movie based on the '80s sci-fi franchise "V," about alien lizards in human disguise that come to Earth. Then NBC decided it would be a four-hour miniseries. Now "V: The Second Generation" is in development limbo.

Jeff Gaspin, NBC's miniseries and movies chieftain, said there was not enough newness to the most recent miniseries draft by "V" creator Kenneth Johnson.

"I just don't think it was different enough from the original, frankly," Gaspin said. "It wasn't as innovative as the original. It felt like a good sequel if we'd done it immediately after [the original], but in the 20 years that other space operas have come and gone, it doesn't feel as fresh as it did 20 years ago."

Gaspin shopped the property to Sci Fi Channel, which now shares ownership with NBC following the NBC-Universal merger, but executives there were not interested in the "V" revival in its current script form either. Gaspin's not giving up yet, hoping Johnson will develop a whole new story.

"I would like to do something with that property," he said. "I think there are other chances and better options."

Do you speak Pittsburghese?

PBS offers a primer on slang and diction throughout America in "Do You Speak American?" The three-hour special, hosted by Robert MacNeil, will air in January, and the first hour includes a segment on Pittsburghese.