Peer pressure?

Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. lot has been renamed “the Friends Stage,” but it now clearly belongs to Matt LeBlanc, who is about to begin his 11th consecutive season playing the lovable but dimwitted Joey Tribbiani. “Friends,” in case you hail from another galaxy, ended its highly successful 10-year run on NBC in May. On Sept. 9, the only friend whose life was not neatly wrapped up in the finale starts over in “Joey,” a spinoff that sets him in Los Angeles instead of New York, seriously pursuing his acting career and getting reacquainted with his family.

Last week, while rehearsing the fourth episode, LeBlanc was in his element. Joey’s new Hollywood bachelor pad is filled with personal relics from “Friends”: his toy shark and Rock’Em Sock’Em robots, his Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix poster and American flag, his hard-to-forget Etch-A-Sketch and a photo of Joey and Chandler (Matthew Perry). The only thing missing, well, besides his five best friends, was new sidekick, Drea de Matteo (“The Sopranos”), who plays his sassy sister, Gina, and was out with strep throat for the third day in a row.

If the heat is on -- and there’s no denying it with NBC’s massive promotional campaign, Warner Bros. Studios’ high expectations and widespread media coverage -- LeBlanc isn’t showing it, even today with his No. 2 missing in action. In fact, LeBlanc’s been so busy helping to establish the show’s voice that he says he has missed what is impossible for most of the rest of us to avoid: Joey’s “Postcards From L.A.” spots, which are saturating NBC’s Olympics broadcasts and appear before movie previews in 6,500 theaters. In six commercials, Joey explores the city, offering the kinds of insights only Joey can: informing viewers that the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a burial ground for legendary stars or pointing out the Hollywood Hooters instead of the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater that he’s standing in front of.

“Believe me, I live here and when I leave, I just go straight home,” says the 37-year-old LeBlanc, explaining how he has managed to elude himself. “When you’re doing a new show, it’s good that the actors spend a lot of time together. I’ve been functioning in a high-pressure environment for 10 years now, so I don’t feel that stuff as much. My job is to make the show as funny as I can. I know I’ll be as good in it as I was on ‘Friends,’ and I know it’s going to be a good show that is different from ‘Friends.’ The rest is out of my hands. I don’t have anything to do with those Nielsen boxes.”

NBC, however, hopes to have something to do with what happens with those Nielsen boxes. There are gigantic billboard ads and bus posters with LeBlanc’s smiling face and accompanying slogan, “New Town. Still Lost.” And in case all of that does not register enough awareness for “Joey,” this weekend brings an onslaught of magazine covers, including Details, TV Guide, Ladies’ Home Journal and Entertainment Weekly. The price tag for the ad campaign would be nearly $10 million if it was not produced internally.

“It’s to our advantage that we have a character people already know, so it’s better for us to go out and shoot new comedy with him that is in keeping with the show than to use the jokes in the pilot and have people be sick of them by the time the show airs,” said Vince Manze, president and creative director of the NBC Agency. “The worst thing that can happen is for somebody to wake up on Friday after the show airs and says, ‘Oh, no! Was that on last night? I missed it.’ Quite honestly, we expect a lot of people to check it out.”

Perhaps the ratings juggernaut that propelled him from obscurity into stardom has spoiled LeBlanc. But executive producers Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Scott Silveri, the “Friends” staff writers who created the spinoff, admit they are having a harder time ignoring the heady hype.

“Early on, the studio was great telling us to think of it as a small show that nobody cares about,” Silveri said. “And that’s what we did when we wrote the script and shot the pilot. But now it’s a little harder to pretend that nobody cares about it. We are very aware of the nerves, and we share them.”

“If people have low expectations, it might work in our favor,” adds Goldberg-Meehan. “We prefer that.”

Pressure notwithstanding, beyond the “Friends’ ” connection, “Joey” has a significant head start. Television critics and advertisers have generally praised the pilot and predicted its success, although few think it will attract as many viewers as its predecessor, which anchored the most lucrative night in television for many years.

“I didn’t have the strongest expectations because I’ve been so jaded about new comedies,” said Shari Anne Brill, director of programming for the ad buying firm CARAT USA. “I thought ‘Friends’ was on for two seasons too long. But Matt LeBlanc is very smart to realize that this character works for him. He is an endearing character that people will tune in to see. It’s going to depend a lot on the rest of the ensemble and the story lines. But I think it’s one of the best shows NBC has on its schedule.”

Even NBC’s competitors expect “Joey” will lure enough viewers to retain “Friends’ ” first-place ranking in the time slot against its competitors: CBS’ ninth edition of “Survivor,” ABC’s “Extreme Makeover,” and premiering on Nov. 4, the second season of Fox’s popular prime-time soap, “The O.C.”

“I don’t think any of us are under any illusions that people aren’t going to show up for ‘Joey,’ ” said CBS’ Kelly Kahl, executive vice president of program planning and scheduling. “Every new show is a potential threat, but having gone up against ‘Friends’ and really thriving, I think we’ve seen the toughest competition we have there.”

Even if “Joey” becomes a hit for NBC, its competitors have plenty to strive for: the advertiser-coveted 18- to 34-year-olds who had already given up on “Friends” and an estimated $2 million in ad revenue now up for grabs because the spinoff isn’t yet able to command the same ad rates the top-ranked “Friends” could. First in line is Fox’s “The O.C.,” which will air two specials on Sept. 16 and 23, with never-before-seen footage and bloopers from the first season as well as interviews with cast and crew.

“We’re not arrogant enough to say that we have the kryptonite for ‘Joey’ and ‘Survivor,’ but ‘The O.C.’ is red-hot, and if we can be competitive in the teen audience and the 18- to 34-year-old audience, we will have a home run,” said Preston Beckman, executive vice president of strategic program planning for Fox. “It’s not that NBC has a failure on their hands. They have ‘Joey,’ and ‘Joey’ is not ‘Friends.’ ”

What “Joey” hopes to become is another “Frasier,” the just-wrapped Emmy-winning spinoff of “Cheers.” The comedy, which ended an 11-year run in May, succeeded in part by simply moving the arrogant, neurotic Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) to Seattle, then building the show around him -- reuniting him with his family and giving him a new career.

“People are always dubious of spinoffs, and there are no guarantees,” said NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker, who approached Warner Bros. about continuing the “Friends” legacy with a new show. “We have a great character that people love, and all of the elements are there to make it work. But you still need a little luck.” And so does Joey Tribbiani, who begins his new journey when he lands in Los Angeles to star in a cable show and reconnects with his sister, who is a hair stylist and has a 20-year-old son, Michael (Paulo Costanzo), whom his uncle hardly knows. (Sound familiar?) Andrea Anders plays Alex Garrett, an uptight environmental lawyer who is Joey’s married neighbor.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more spinoffs because it’s so hard to develop a hit comedy,” said Fred Silverman, an industry legend who helped create three hit shows out of “All in the Family” in the 1970s: “Maude,” “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons.” “I don’t care how good the writing is. You need to start with the center of the show and who is going to play that part. You’re light years ahead of the game if you have Kelsey or Matt.”

Persuading LeBlanc, who thought of retiring after “Friends,” took some time. Warner Bros. Television President Peter Roth jokes that he gained 10 pounds taking LeBlanc out for meals over the course of the year that it took to persuade the actor to live in Joey’s shoes for a little longer. Research told them that “Friends” fans loved Joey even more in the last three seasons of the show as he became entangled in a love triangle with Rachel and Ross.

“The popularity of the character and the popularity of the actor was growing,” Roth said. “People saw that he had a lot of heart. And yet there was a lot of territory we could still explore with this character. But even though I was speaking about working with him in general, the first thing Matt said was that he didn’t want to play Joey Tribbiani and he wanted to wait a year before working again. So I took a few deep sips of wine.”

LeBlanc processed his first conversation with Roth a little differently. His mind heard: “Do you want to go try something by yourself? And be all by yourself? All alone? All by yourself?”

“That was very intimidating,” LeBlanc said. “But then when Scott and Shana agreed to write it and I learned we would have the same crew and the same time slot, and the network and studio would really support it, I changed my mind. We also had to agree that at any moment we would pull the plug if everything didn’t feel right. I would be a lot more stressed out if I read the script and thought it’s bad and it’s going to be embarrassing.” “

Lines, such as the ones Joey pronounces in the pilot under duress from his sister, “I’m gay for David Cassidy!” or when he’s frustrated when a TV show he turns down becomes a hit: “Now, I’m the guy who turned down ‘Nurses,’ which is really strange because in real life I’d never turn down a nurse.”

In the fourth episode, which taped last Friday, Joey hasn’t landed an acting gig and is missing his friends. He is having trouble connecting with new people, even the one guy in his apartment complex who seems like an ideal buddy because he has a pizza oven in his kitchen. So Joey throws a party, giving his nephew an opportunity to appear to be more of a ladies’ man than he really is by pretending to be dating next-door neighbor Alex, the hot lawyer.

“It’s probably our best show yet,” said executive producer Kevin Bright, the only one of “Friends’ ” three creators (Marta Kaufman and David Crane) to be involved with “Joey.” “It really showed the potential of the other characters and that there are places we can take them.”

Neither is the deal LeBlanc struck to play his alter-ego a little longer. Nominated for an Emmy for the third consecutive year, LeBlanc is reportedly earning nearly $800,000 per episode, owns Fort Hill Productions and has an ownership stake in the show, two pilot deals from NBC and two movie deals with Warner Bros.

And yet, what LeBlanc loves the most about Joey is that he is an underdog.

“If he’s really successful, it’s hard for people to relate to him,” LeBlanc said.

“I would feel better watching a guy who just missed the mark than a guy who gets the brass ring. I love that he gets fired from jobs. But there’s a fine line between being a loser and being too successful. You know, ‘dumb’ is not the right word to describe Joey. He’s incorrect.”