‘Friday’ is kept in the playbook

It’s a touchdown for NBC’s “Friday Night Lights”!

The Texas drama -- it’s about much more than football -- has been renewed for a full second season. No word yet on what night NBC will air a show that has struggled in the ratings (against stiff-armed competition) but quickly became one of the season’s biggest critical darlings. Credit goes to NBC President of Entertainment Kevin Reilly, a big fan of the show, for showing patience and letting the fans spend a little more time with Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and the Dillon Panthers.

The announcement comes as the television industry prepares to converge on Manhattan next week for the so-called “upfronts” -- when execs try to woo advertisers for front-end funding for the new TV season. See latimes.com/showtracker for all the latest developments. Here are some of the highlights so far:

Just your average geeks, bionics and time travel

NBC is the first to unveil its new schedule next week. Let the pickups drama begin. As expected, NBC ordered 13 episodes of one of Josh Schwartz’s (“The OC”) new projects, “Chuck,” starring Zachary Levi (“Less Than Perfect”) as the geeky guy who becomes “the government’s most powerful weapon.”

It also has ordered 13 episodes of the remake of “The Bionic Woman,” starring Michelle Ryan as Jamie Sommers in a contemporary coming-of-age story. We meet Jamie as a bartender and surrogate mother to her teenage sister before the devastating car accident that forever changes her life.

Kevin McKidd (“Rome”) will star in another drama, “Journeyman,” the story of a husband and father who suddenly finds himself traveling into the past, affecting other people’s lives as well as his own, when he finds himself reconnecting with his ex-fiancee.

Schwartz, could you please stop showing off?

When one door closes, another one usually opens. But two? Schwartz is rebounding nicely, it seems, from his break-up with Fox.

In addition to “Chuck” for NBC, he’s penned a version of “Gossip Girl” for the CW. It’s based upon the collection of popular books about a New York teenage socialite who spies on her rich and famous friends and blogs about them.

Hello, Steve? Is that you? It’s Ellen. We have to talk

Bravo to Ellen. Why wait for a silly announcement at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Tuesday when you’ve got the pull to call up ABC’s President of Primetime Entertainment Steve McPherson and demand some answers? As Kate Walsh, star of “Grey’s Anatomy,” sat on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk-show couch this week, the host picked up the phone and (nicely) asked McPherson if Walsh’s spin-off is a go. Watch the video for the answer: youtube.com/watchvEegPMU29T88

To Fox, at least one sitcom looks great on paper

Fox wasted no time in hiring TV mega stars Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) and Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) to star in a new multi-camera sitcom, “Back to You.” Fox President of Primetime Peter Liguori was so excited by the script -- and the lead acting team -- that he committed to 13 episodes before one second of the pilot episode was filmed.

Grammer plays a womanizing news anchor (Chuck Darling) and Heaton his uptight co-anchor, Kelly Carr. After an embarrassing Internet tirade topples Chuck from a lofty perch, he’s forced back to the Pittsburgh station where he first crossed paths with Kelly. Announced two months ago, it was the first new series pickup of the fall TV season.

It’s a ‘Jungle’ out there

all right, a cherry red one

More NBC news: Another Candace Bushnell small screen adaptation is coming to a tube near you. The network has picked up “Lipstick Jungle,” starring Brooke Shields, Kim Raver (“24”) and Lindsay Price (“Coupling”) in another “Sex and the City”-kind of tale, in which the three high-powered career women “aren’t looking for Mr. Big. They are Mr. Big.”

Another drama being added to the slate: “Life,” about a cop who was imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit and his efforts to rejoin the police force. Directed by David Semel, who directed the “Heroes” pilot. Damian Lewis will star.

The college years fly by on ‘Veronica Mars’

This time last year an airplane flew over the CW headquarters with a banner that pleaded with executives to save “Veronica Mars.” The detective-soap cult show, starring Kristen Bell, did indeed survive -- only to plummet in the ratings. Is there any hope for a fourth season? There’s been plenty of speculation since the network announced that “Gilmore Girls” is coming to an end, leaving open that possibility. And creator Rob Thomas has pitched a story line that puts Veronica’s life into fast forward, past college and into the FBI Academy.

Reached for comment Friday, Thomas said: “I can neither confirm nor deny that we’ll get a fourth season. Not because I don’t want to. We simply don’t know. I can confirm that the network responded positively to the FBI presentation. I went into the meeting with fleeting optimism; I left with cautious optimism.” The network isn’t talking.

maria.elena.fernandez@latimes.com