Day One and V to Premiere as 4-Hour Mini-Series Events

It seems a lot of major decisions have been made in regards to two highly anticipated sci-fi shows. Variety reports that NBC has decided to air Jesse Alexander’s Day One as a 4-hour mini-series event instead of a full-blown 13-episode season, as originally planned. Something similar is happening with the new V TV show on ABC.

So what’s the big idea? Apparently this is a cost-cutting measure by NBC, which is really taking a pounding with a lot of its expensive original scripted shows, including the poorly performing Heroes, which continues to dip in the ratings. As a result, instead of a 13-episode first season, Alexander’s Day One will instead premiere as a 4-hour mini-series event after the Winter Olympics (sometime around March 1, 2010), but the show will have to prove to NBC that it deserves a series (i.e. high ratings) for the network to commit.

Day One stars Adam Campbell, Catherine Dent, Julie Gonzalo, David Lyons, Derek Mio, Carly Pope, Thekla Reuten and Addison Timlin, and revolves the aftermath of a global catastrophe and how the residents of one apartment building in Van Nuys band together to survive and figure out what happened.

On ABC, the network has made the decision to premiere their new V show as a 4-hour mini-series in November. But unlike Day One, V is assured of at least nine more episodes after the mini-series airs, giving it at least 13 episodes to prove its worth.

This could also explain why the show has gone through a number of tinkering in the last few weeks, which has generated quite the bad buzz. If this is the reason — ABC wanting to debut the show with a 4-hour block, and reshoots and editing are under way to meet that new reality — then I think all the delay was worth it.

Stay back, just in case ABC decides to dump us.