When the Pittsburgh-set sitcom "Back to You" premiered on Fox last fall, it aired for five weeks, then disappeared for a month, returned for two weeks, disappeared for three months, aired two episodes in late February and has been MIA ever since.

With the writers' strike over, "Back to You" finally returns for five weeks of uninterrupted episodes beginning tonight at 8:30 on WPGH. If you're a fan who's been troubled by the show's inconsistent airing, you're not alone. Creators and executive producers Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan have been frustrated, too.

"I'm amazed at how, when I tell people what I'm doing, they say, 'Oh, when will that be on?' " Levitan said in a call with reporters Monday. "We believe the show is one where, if you watch it, we hope people will think it's funny."

Ever since its inception, TV observers have noted this traditional, multi-camera sitcom seemed better suited for CBS than Fox, a notion Levitan didn't seem to dispute.

"If we'd been on CBS on Monday nights with a consistent run, maybe we would be in a much better place," he said. "We're trying to get eyeballs on us so we can build. The network is supportive, but we've got to get eyeballs."

The show's fate for fall remains up in the air, but it seems likely to return, especially if ratings for this upcoming run of episodes are decent. (If Fox could renew " 'Til Death" last year, the least it can do is renew the superior "Back to You.")

"Back to You" follows the exploits of pompous news anchor Chuck Darling (Kelsey Grammer), who returns to the same Pittsburgh TV station he worked at in the '90s and is re-teamed with news anchor Kelly Carr (Patricia Heaton). Chuck and Kelly had a one-night fling that produced Kelly's daughter, Gracie (Laura Marano), but the girl doesn't know Chuck is her dad.

Early episodes contained references to Pittsburgh communities and a February episode included a ripped-from-local-headlines plot about an "anthrocon" convention in Pittsburgh. (Costumed furry fans actually have had their annual meeting in Pittsburgh for the past couple of summers.)

KDKA-TV news anchor Ken Rice is an old friend of Levitan's from college, and Rice attended the taping of the pilot last year, offering some suggestions. Writer Abraham Higginbotham grew up in Washington, Pa., and the writers look to him to regularly provide regional flavor to scripts.

"We might at some point have Terry Bradshaw or various things like that, actual Pittsburgh people," Levitan said. "I know you guys have a very young mayor, and that's kind of interesting to us, but we haven't used that yet."

Some days, Luke Ravenstahl's administration does seem ready-made for sitcom fodder. But "Back to You" is less concerned with pleasing Pittsburghers than it is with winning the devotion of American viewers. To that end, after the writers' strike, producers planned to end the season with Gracie learning that Chuck is her father. But network executives wanted to see that plot play out sooner rather than later, so that episode will air next week.

"It's always been a conversation whether Chuck and Kelly's big secret is played best as subtext in the show or if you want to hit it head-on as we did in the episode where Chuck baby-sits Gracie," Loyd said. "We didn't have a clear answer, but the network felt moving up that plot moment was something that could be promoted fairly easily. They also felt the episodes we were doing that hit that head-on were scoring, and they wanted to get [more of] those on as soon as possible."

The baby-sitting episode was one producers envisioned early in the show's development. "It was a chance for the Chuck character to show another side of himself," Levitan said.

"We're feeling that once he's engaged in the daughter relationship, now that he's decided it's something he wants, the whole show has stepped up a notch. Suddenly, he wants something, the audience knows and the audience wants it, too," he said.

"There's no more ambiguity; no, 'Is this right for me?' That doesn't mean it becomes a soft family show, it just means Chuck has a clearer vision of what he thinks he wants."

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