ANALYSIS: Behind ‘New Girl’s Surprisingly Big Opening And The iTunes Experiment

After two highly rated airings, Fox’s new comedy series New Girl is getting an early back-nine pickup — which in this case is a back-11 pickup — bringing the order to the show starring Zooey Deschanel to 24 episodes. The 20th TV/Chernin Entertainment series, which gave Fox the elusive first live-action half-hour comedy hit in a decade, launched with a big 4.8 rating among adults 18-49 last week. Last night, it logged a 4.5, topping all Tuesday competition in the demo both weeks.

New Girl was created by Liz Meriwether who is executive producing with Peter Chernin, Katherine Pope and helmer Jake Kasdan, who directed both the pilot and last night’s second episode. “We love the charming Zooey Deschanel and the entire cast, we’re knocked out with the work that Liz Meriwether and the whole staff is doing and we are really psyched about the upcoming episodes in the pipeline,” Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said. “It’s great that audiences have responded so positively so far and we’re confident that even more people will embrace the show — and more comedy on Fox — this season.” New Girl is the first new fall series to get a back-nine order. It will probably be followed by another new comedy, CBS’ 2 Broke Girls, which also opened strong and did well in Week 2; another comedy with two solid showings, NBC’s Up All Night, should be close behind. Other newcomers that look promising after one airing include CBS’ Person of Interest, ABC’s Revenge and Pan Am and NBC’s Whitney.