• by Wayne Friedman , October 1, 2007

Only four days into the season and NBC is flexing its muscle.

Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, says the strength of "Bionic Woman," "Law & Order: SVU" and the surprising time-period win of "Life" on at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, as well as its high premiere number for its big show "Heroes," has the network feeling "awesome."

Silverman, however, is especially pleased with one particular audience group: "We are seeing strength in the young male audience."

Now NBC has three major prime-time shows stirring plenty of interest among young men, he says. NBC is No. 1 among young men 18-34 in its respective time periods for "The Office," "Bionic Women" and "Heroes." "And, of course, the football games on "Sunday Night Football" are tremendous among young men," he adds. All that is important because young male viewers are difficult to reach in prime time. Which means advertisers will pay a premium to get them.

One of the other NBC surprises was the lift in young viewers that "The Biggest Loser" gave to "Law & Order: SVU," which won its 10 p.m. Tuesday time period. "It's finding new audiences," Silverman says.

Silverman got the top NBC Entertainment post right after the upfront presentations were made in May, in the wake of a sudden and public departure of Kevin Reilly, who took a similar post at Fox.

While prime-time shows were set for the season, Silverman was still able to tinker with the schedule a bit. One change: moving "Chuck" from Tuesday at 9 p.m. to Monday at 8 p.m. This enabled NBC to get "Chuck" to a steady 3.6 rating among 18-49 viewers, enough to grab second place to ABC's "Dancing with The Stars." Another Silverman move was to expand "Biggest Loser" on Tuesday to 90 minutes.

Two other shifts have yet to see results: A Friday flop--moving "Las Vegas" to 10 p.m. and "Friday Night Lights" to 9 p.m. Silverman also moved "Deal or No Deal" to Friday at 8 p.m. from Monday at 8 p.m. "We are really happy with the scheduling moves, and what we are really happy about it is that the next episodes of all our shows are strong," he says.

Another big surprise was with "Life," the Wednesday drama at 10 p.m. "Life" follows the sci-fi-esque "Bionic Woman," and the feeling among critics was that "Life"--about a testy, dry-witted cop, who returns to duty after serving time in jail for a crime he didn't commit--wouldn't make sense after a sci-fi drama.

"It's a harder show to sell; he is not bionic," said Silverman. "But with "Life" we felt that "Bionic" would feed it."

During the week ,NBC caused a bit of an uproar over the announcement that "Heroes" would be re-airing its Monday season premiere episode on Saturday--and then taking advantage of new Nielsen rules that would allow the network to cume, or add up, unduplicated viewers of both telecasts.

Silverman says it was an isolated case--that too much was made over the move.

"It's not a Machiavellian plot," says Silverman. "We had a client [Nissan] that wanted to use our platform during premiere week in a specific way--this is part of that process."

"At the end of the day, the "Heroes" number was huge on Monday night [a 6.5 rating among 18-49 viewers]. Any way you slice it, the number was huge--adding Saturday or not adding Saturday."