Day One is one of the highly anticipated genre specific series coming to a network near you this season (midseason, that is) and all ears were opened yesterday as NBC President of Prime Time Entertainment Angela Bromstad spilled more details about the show in a group interview following her press conference yesterday in Pasadena, Calif.  Amongst the topics she discussed, the super-secret sci-fi premise of the show! (Stop reading now if you want to be surprised)

"It's an alien invasion," Bromstad said. "Not just a disaster. It's an alien invasion."

If you happened to see the low quality trailer that was leaked to the internet a couple of weeks ago, then you might have already guessed that the show's premise was based on an alien attack, and not just some random event.  This means that the new series will be more similar to V than to the post-apocalyptic Jericho, to which it had originally been compared.  But is it even correct to refer to this show as a full fledged series?  News also came out yesterday that NBC has yet to decide exactly how many episodes Day One will be comprised of, and they admitted that anything beyond a single season my be a leap already.

"We've always looked at Day One as a big event for us and not necessarily a show that would be an ongoing, returning show for a second season," Angela Bromstad said. "It would depend on its success. Just by nature of the genre, they always then get a little narrow, and whether or not we can sustain it on the air ..."

If I was a betting man, I'd guess that we're going to get somewhere around twelve episodes of Day One, however even Bromstad wouldn't provide any details on the length of the first season.

"We're still determining that [length of the first season]," Bromstad said. "We're getting scripts in next week. We have three additional scripts coming in, so we're still talking to [series creator] Jesse [Alexander] about what our programming needs are and creative needs."

Day One looks fantastic, and follows "an eclectic band of survivors striving to rebuild society as they unravel the mysteries of what happened and face their uncertain future. The group, all residents of one apartment building in suburban Van Nuys, Calif., embarks on a quest for survival and discovers that hope is found in small victories -- and heroes are born every day." (from NBC)

With the success of Heroes, NBC is definitely looking to expand into more genre specific series, and maybe they have the right idea by presetting, from the beginning, the length these stories will have.  It allows the audience to know that they are going to stick with the series and provide some closure.

"Heroes was really so successful for us, and it's a genre we cannot ignore," Bromstad said. "It does tend to be a little more of a narrow genre." In another interview later she stated, "Before Lost came on, there wasn't really that much out there before Lost and Heroes. Now we've got Lost, Heroes, FlashForward, V, in addition to great stuff on Syfy. It's just a really fertile, rich area to channel right now."

But NBC may have their work cut out for them.  Earlier this year the network debuted Kings, a retelling of the biblical story of David, set in a parallel universe.  The show might have been one of the best written and best acted series of the season, but it fell on deaf ears and couldn't find it's audience.  Bromstad says that she knew all along that King's would be a difficult sell.

"I think that it was an amazingly big swing and a great production, and Michael Green is a phenomenal writer," Bromstad said. "I think our challenge now—and hopefully what you see with the new shows is in a really crowded marketplace—you have to sell something. People want to know what something's about. That was a very complex idea. It was a show that was originally developed when I was there before [with] Laura Lancaster. We thought it was too highbrow and sophisticated to sell in a 30-second spot. It doesn't mean we're not looking for big ideas, but they have to be big ideas an audience can grab onto and relate to."

Of course, Bromstad fails to mention that its that very same marketing, when done properly (or at all in this case) that can give a potential audience something to connect with.  Kings certainly provided thought-provoking episodes that not only engaged the audience, but related very well with issues similar to what we deal with in our world everyday.  So the question remains of whether NBC can effectively market Day One, or any other genre show they produce in the future, and bring the audience in.  One would assume that they're learning from their mistakes, and things can only get better.  But then again, NBC was the network that canceled the original Star Trek series, so perhaps they still have a ways to go.