Chuck vs. The Obama

Taking a break in between transcribing various interviews (including Demetri Martin, whose very funny show premieres next week, plus Bret and Jemaine from "Flight of the Conchords" and their very thick accents) and thought I'd point out a couple of TV developments that may be of interest around here. (Most links courtesy of TV Tattle.)

� "Chuck" is being pre-empted next week by President Obama's primetime press conference. That's a bit unfortunate, as the show may lose some of the momentum it got from the Super Bowl ads and the 3-D. But the plus side is that the show will now be timed to air only on nights when there's also a new episode of "Heroes" from Feb. 16 until the "Chuck" season ends, which will now be on April 27 instead of a few weeks earlier that month.

� ABC has pushed back the premiere of the new "Cupid" from March 24 to March 31, which also means that there will be one fewer episode of the first season produced. That's on top of the previous episodes that were already trimmed. I continue to think that this is a budgetary thing -- ABC's trying to save money and not produce more episodes than they need to get through the end of the season -- and if the show does well airing after "Dancing with the Stars," it'll be back next season.

� HBO ordered a fourth season of "Big Love."

� Ausiello says that the "NCIS" spin-off is close to landing Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J as two of its leads. The original "NCIS" is one of those shows I watch often but almost never blog about, but unless more interesting actors are gonna follow these two -- O'Donnell is one of the least charismatic actors to ever have a viable (albeit brief) stint as a movie leading man, and Cool James has a tendency to coast a little too much -- I'm not sure I'm down with the spin-off.

• James Poniewozik discusses the twist at the end of last week's episode of "Damages," and whether or not TV shows try too hard to upend viewer expectations of what characters will do and why. I should say that when I saw that particular twist, I decided once and for all that "Damages" was in the Not For Me category and deleted the season pass from my DVR.