Joey will fly solo after 'Friends' ends

HOLLYWOOD — "Friends" won't go on after this season, but friend will.

The long-rumored spinoff featuring Matt LeBlanc as Joey is a go. And they're breathing a huge sigh of relief at NBC.

"I spoke to Matt last night and he is over the moon. And so are we," said NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker, who added that he was "thrilled" to have finally worked out the details for the spinoff.

Zucker wouldn't say so, but this is sort of a good-news, bad-news situation. While no time slot has been announced for "Joey" — the official title at this point — it would be more than a bit shocking if the spinoff doesn't inherit "Friends' " Thursday-at-7 p.m. time period. And the prospect of a "Friends"-less Thursday is a frightening one for the network, given that "Scrubs" and "Will & Grace" have not been able to keep up with CBS's "Survivor" and "CSI," and that CBS's "Without a Trace" has been beating "ER" in reruns this summer.

And the network's desire for a "Friends" spinoff underlines NBC's inability to develop new hit comedies — and is a tacit admission that the much-ballyhooed new comedy "Coupling" isn't going to be the next "Friends."

Well, at least we won't have to wait to see if there's another last-minute change of heart among the rest of the "Friends" cast — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer — about returning for what would be an 11th season for that show. Not that Zucker and everybody else at NBC wouldn't have been happy to see that happen.

Asked why LeBlanc and his character — Joey, the dim-witted, good-hearted actor — is the one on which to base a successor series, Zucker said, "Over the evolution of this show, Joey has emerged as the character that America roots for and loves. . . . Matt is the one that has clearly emerged as the crowd favorite."

Of course, it's not like NBC had a lot of choice. None of the other five cast members — including Aniston, who, according to some reports, was the network's first choice — expressed any interest in carrying their character into a new show.

"The two finalists were Joey or — hey, where did everybody go?" Zucker said, who nonetheless insisted that NBC "did not approach anybody else about participating in this or another spinoff. Matt was who we wanted to do this with."

LeBlanc won't be the only "Friends" alumni transitioning to "Joey." David Crane and Marta Kaufmann, who created "Friends," won't be moving over, but the third member of their triumvirate, Kevin S. Bright, will. He'll also be directing some episodes, including the pilot.