The Channels They Are A-Changin’ With the Times

How the lousy economy is affecting our favorite distraction from the lousy economy.

Tweaked story lines: On “Desperate Housewives,” which this season leapt five years ahead in time, Lynette Scavo’s (Felicity Huffman) pizza shop isn’t doing well because, she explains, people are cutting back on nonessentials to save money — at last, definitive proof this recession will continue past President Obama’s first term.

Star-cutting: You won’t see Huffman playing opposite co-star Nicollette Sheridan on “Desperate” next season — show creator Marc Cherry whacked Sheridan’s character after ABC told him to find ways to cut costs on the show.

ABC Studios, which produces Cherry’s show as well as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Brothers and Sisters” and a boatload of other ABC series, sent around a memo last fall telling producers to cut their budgets by 2 percent. Twentieth Century Fox Television, which produces such shows as Fox’s “24″ and NBC’s “My Name Is Earl,” liked that thinking and told all its show producers the same. More recently, CBS walked away from negotiations with Candice Bergen to headline its new sitcom “Big D” because of her asking price, even though she’s a sure-fire way to draw a big crowd to the new comedy. Instead, CBS hired Broadway actress Deanna Dunagan — an unknown to most TV viewers — to take the role for a fraction of what Bergen wanted.

Less scripted prime time: It will be hard to find a new drama to love on NBC because it’s getting out of that business at 10 p.m. weekdays — turning over the time slot to Jay Leno because it will “save” the network millions of dollars every week. Of course that also means no potential for back-end big bucks (DVD sales, overseas sales, etc.) on a would-be hit drama — but it’s been so long since NBC had a hit at 10, that discussion is purely academic.

Once NBC Universal has finished the job of turning NBC into just another cable network, you can expect about as much original scripted programming on that network as on USA, which NBC Universal suits now tout as the company’s crown jewel, not NBC.

New recession comedies: Old-fashioned sitcoms with multiple cameras, shot on a set in front of a studio audience, are much cheaper to produce than single-cam comedies like “The Office,” and television execs developing product for next season have rediscovered them like they do faithful wives after a fling with the hot office blonde. Network execs and studio brass alike think Recession Sitcoms will do well in down markets — remember what a laugh riot the recession was for “Roseanne”?

Debra Messing is a laid-off CEO adjusting to full-time wife/mom-dom in a sitcom being developed for NBC.

ABC’s ordered a pilot for a sitcom called “Canned” — think “Friends,” only Joey, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Ross are all canned on the very same day.

ABC also greenlighted a pilot for yet another Kelsey Grammer-as-windbag sitcom, and this time he plays a Wall Street legend who gets sacked and has to move the wife and kids back to their small home town in flyover country where, just guessing, the jaded kids are bored and the sophisticated wife is annoyed — and hilarity ensues.

Fox, meanwhile, has ordered a pilot for a sitcom called “Two Dollar Beer,” about a group of young adults in Detroit weathering the worsening economy while refusing to move.

Recession Sitcoms are so hot right now, even Roseanne Barr herself is trying to jump back on that bandwagon. Barr and Caryn Mandabach, one of the executive producers of “Roseanne,” have pitched a blue-collar comedy to Fox in which Barr would play — the family matriarch.