Image Credit: Fox

Can J.J. Abrams do it again?

Like some sort of pilot godfather who makes networks a show they can’t refuse, the prolific producer-director has two new shows hitting primetime next season. One, Fox’s Alcatraz, is drawing inevitable comparisons to Lost. There’s another island, another mystery, with Lost scribe Elizabeth Sarnoff running the show and Jorge Garcia on board in a starring role. But you only need to watch Fox’s trailer (below) to know Alcatraz is very much its own series. “The premise from the very beginning is something I knew I would watch,” Abrams tells EW. “And that’s certainly not an arbitrator of what anyone else would watch, but I knew it was a good place to start.”

The show’s details have been kept under wraps until recently: Alcatraz follows a San Francisco police detective (Sarah Jones) who teams with an expert on the prison (Garcia) after a murder suspect turns out to be a Alcatraz prisoner who disappeared from the island about 50 years ago. It seems the killer wasn’t the only prisoner to vanish — or the only one to return. And now they must stop the Alcatraz escapees as they re-enter modern society without having aged — and try to solve the mystery of how this is happening, and why.

“There’s a kind of intrigue about Alcatraz,” Abrams said. “I heard the name and I thought, ‘How could there never have been a show called Alcatraz?’ I liked the idea of a show looking backwards in order to prevent what’s going to happen looking forwards. The idea of the worst of the worst being sent to that place. What happens if they all disappeared one day, and what happens if they suddenly came back and had not aged a day? That notion was so kick ass.” READ FULL STORY »

Oops, this isn’t the kind of message about stability that you want to send to advertisers: Power problems brought the TNT-TBS upfront presentation to a halt in New York today. The network dimmed the house lights in preparation to air some TBS clips but they never played in the Hammerstein Ballroom. The crowd sat in the dark for a minute or two before the house lights came up.

“You know, I love working for TBS,” quipped Conan O’Brien, who was on stage to introduce the clips.

Turner programming topper Steve Koonin then took the stage and kept the crowd in stitches by joking “we’re not changing our rates” while the cabler raced to restore the video. Ray Romano — star of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age — also did a little improv.

The video was restored after 25 minutes. TNT/TBS then released this statement: “A power surge caused a temporary disruption to video elements at the upfront this morning. Turner executives and show talent rose to the occasion and the show continued after a brief interruption.”

A few minutes later, the power went out again during a promo for Falling Skies starring Noah Wyle. When Mark Paul Gosselaar came up to introduce his new dramedy Franklin and Bash, he joked, “Here’s a clip….hopefully.”

Afterwards, Koonin told EW, “I’m actually very proud of today. We’re not the smartest, we’re not the best, we don’t get everything done right. But we care. We are passionate.” – With reporting from Sandra Gonzalez