The Associated Press

Joey from Friends may be moving across the country, but he's still going to be in familiar territory.

NBC is very likely to give Matt LeBlanc's spinoff series, Joey, the prime 8 p.m. Thursday time slot that Friends is vacating after this season.

The network's chief executive, Jeff Zucker, told NBC stations in an affiliate meeting that that's where he's leaning.

The spinoff features LeBlanc's character, Joey Tribbiani, moving to Hollywood to further his acting career. He moves in with a brainy nephew who's a rocket scientist.

Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos) has signed on to play Gina, Joey's high-strung sister.

Kevin Bright, Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Scott Silveri - who were part of the creative team behind Friends - are working on Joey and the new series is expected to share its comic sensibility.

Up until a few months ago, huge expectations would have come with that time slot, which leads off prime time on what is, in terms of advertising dollars, the most lucrative night on television.

But the success of The Apprentice on Thursdays has taken some of the pressure off.

The finale to the Donald Trump boardroom game was seen by an estimated 28 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was the third most-watched show of the season behind the Academy Awards and the post-Super Bowl Survivor episode among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic by which NBC measures its success.