For years now NBC has laid dormant in fourth place behind CBS, ABC and FOX. The decline was slow and gradual, but once it became the butt of every Leno/Conan joke and started showing in the networks programming, it became clear that NBC was in a bad place. Then a glimmer of hope shined through, after years of mismanagement at the hands of Jeff Zucker, the network president was kicked out by new parent company Comcast who took over the majority share of NBCUniversal from General Electric this past year. The new bosses first move? Hire people that won’t just seal the cracks in the wall, but instead will take a sledgehammer to the house and build a new one from the ground up. The result? The hiring of former Showtime president Robert Greenblatt. Greenblatt is the man responsible for shows like Weeds, Dexter and Nurse Jackie. So for the first time in years, it looks like NBC has someone behind the wheel who has mastered the art of precision driving. And that bring us today and the recently announced fall 2011-2012 schedule. A schedule that is a… re-tooling to put it lightly. As new Broadcasting Chairman Ted Harbert said at the upfront on Monday, the schedule is “a little less reinvention of the wheel and a lot more Broadcasting 101″ which is probably the best way to describe it. Because what it appears is that the fourth place network is finally embracing the two words they have avoided for years “counter-programming.”

Earlier today NBC released their full schedule for the fall television season. Much of the schedule confirms things we already knew from previous reports. But the schedule does confirms some of the “sure thing” renewals as well as revealed some major changes being made to the network’s time slots. Plus, we’ve got some video clips of some of the newer shows (like The Playboy Club and Prime Suspect) they’ll be showing soon in a home theater near you. Of the highlights:

Brian Gibson loves to buy DVDs. Come with him on his weekly journey into the depths of credit card debt as he tells you what to buy, rent and avoid.

It was yet another big weekend for Enchanted at the box office again, just as many people predicted.

If you’re going to dare to see Awake, give it a shot. But don’t go unassisted. Bring your liquid friend along for the ride.

Aside from a gratuitous nude scene from Jessica Alba, the only other thing that could have improved this film would have been if Hayden Christensen would have leaped up from the surgery, pulled out a lightsaber and went holy Jedi ape-shit over the rest of the hospital.

Welcome to the post-Thanksgiving Reject Report, and we are all a little sleepy from eating turkey and watching football on TV.