Adam Baldwin

NBC renews ’Chuck’!

Chuck tux In the battle of Chuck vs. the Network Suits, the Buy More geek has prevailed.

NBC has decided to give Josh Schwartz’s well-liked action-comedy another shot next fall.

The network picked up 13 episodes of the series from Warner Bros., which, in a business-side trend this year, made some budget concessions to secure the show a third season.

Fans pushed NBC very hard for a pickup, launching a "Save Chuck" campaign that included buying sandwiches at series sponsor Subway.

Chuck joins Southland, Heroes, L&O: SVU, Friday Night Lights and Parks & Recreation among shows NBC has renewed for fall. Given that 10 p.m. will be off the board due to Jay Leno’s talk show, the network has considerably fewer slots than usual to fill.

Confidence has been pretty high that Chuck would return. Once Fox found a way to make the much lesser-rated Dollhouse work for fall late last week, Chuck returning to NBC seemed almost certain. It also probably hasn’t hurt that star Zachary Levi has been a team player for NBC, appearing in the network’s PSA campaigns, marketing promotions and events.

Here’s Chuck’s 18-49 ratings for the season, with the final number having gone up a tenth in the nationals since this chart was created. As you can see, for all the woes about the show’s ratings, it actually performed fairly steady, dropping only slightly in midseason.