So, the Frog network, the WB, is gone, but there are more than a few tadpoles from that pond swimming around looking for a permanent home. Some shows have resurfaced on the new CW Network, a few are waiting in the wings, but the most curious is the tail, oops, tale of the WB Network sitcom reject, the pilot-now-gone-viral-video, “Nobody’s Watching.”

This is the baby of “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence and his buddy, Neil Goldman. After the WB threw it back, it popped up on YouTube, the Internet video site, over the summer and has become a huge hit. The two leads, Will and Derrick have flexed their, um, little frog legs? and moved on over into now familiar commercial parodies of Mentos and soda. Meanwhile, NBC has come a courtin’, handing over some small change and the duo has been hired to produce some webisodes of the pilot.

Not content to swim around in the vast digital pond of the Internet, the team this week launched its very own website, nobodyswatching.tv, hoping to use it to convince NBC to take the full frog rather than the small tales, and put the actual sitcom on the air as a regular series.

The website is kinda fun, full of reader commentaries about why the TV sitcom is in such dire straits (I have to agree there – promotional DVDs of yet another season of “I Love Lucy” just came round, and watching those makes you wonder where comedy has gone so wrong), other videos by Will and Derrick, and some other content.

It's hard to say if the show will end up at the Prince’s ball, but the tale is a cautionary one for both the networks who think they know what people will watch and for the creative types who think Hollywood will recognize a Prince when they see one.

In any event, at least they all seem to be on the same page for now. In a very “Blair Witch Project” style of blending of fiction and fact, in a fictional press release about their new website, the fictional Will and Derrick coyly made this observation about the real head of NBC entertainment: “We each got a very light kiss on the forehead from Kevin Reilly, so we already consider this experience a victory.”

Princes-in-waiting, if ever there were ones.

by Gloria Goodale