There's been some grumbling among critics that NBC isn't giving us any face time with John Wells, who's taken over the reins at "The West Wing" for the coming season -- and boy, do we have questions -- but it may not be the network's fault.

When I asked NBC honcho Jeff Zucker during a press conference why no session had been scheduled for "The West Wing," he excused the show's absence from the network's two-day portion of the tour by saying it had just gone back into production "and they're on a very tight schedule...There's no desire on our part to not have them available to you and to make them available and have them talk to you. We're not trying to hide anything."

Later, though, NBC was quietly putting out the word that Wells' absence may have had less to do with his schedule than with an agreement his personal publicist made for an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, which, like "West Wing" producer Warner Bros., is owned by AOL Time Warner. And network publicists don't seem any happier about that than we are.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a "West Wing" session, a press conference on Rob Lowe's new show "The Lyon's Den," returned repeatedly to Lowe's former role as "The West Wing's" Sam Seaborn and his reasons for leaving the show. (The short version: It wasn't because he hadn't had enough screen time, it was because Sam hadn't. And he "was in love with Sam." Or something like that.)

Lowe eventually wrapped things up by suggesting a "Battle of the Network Stars" between the casts of "West Wing" and "Lyon's Den."

"We can do it acting," he said. Turning to co-star Matt Craven, he said, "You know, you can do a soliloquoy against Richard Schiff." To Elizabeth Mitchell, he suggested, "You can take Allison Janney down with arm-wrestling."

"It's all good. Game on."

Or, you know, we could just wait for next year's Emmys.