TORONTO - A season after NYPD Blue creator Steven Bochco went ballistic about ABC holding his series until mid-season, that strategy looks like a winner, according to one of the show's stars.

Although the cast "felt dissed a bit" at the time by ABC's schedule-favouring of the divorce drama Once & Again, "it did work," says Gordon Clapp, who has played NYPD's Det. Greg Medavoy since the drama began.

It worked so well, in fact, that NYPD will again get a January start on ABC and Global. And again, it will then run straight through with 22 new shows, no repeats.

One cast member who won't be back is Andrea Thompson, who quit to make an unlikely career switch. She's just started as a local TV news anchor in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Clapp and castmate Bill Brochtrupp reviewed her first-night performance for the TV show Extra. The verdict?

"I thought maybe I was going to see somebody who is playing a reporter (but) she was right at home. She was terrific. You know, she looked like she'd been doing it for years," says Clapp, who has known for a while that Thompson has a nose for news.

Sitting next to her on a flight last summer, he noticed her circling items in the newspapers she was reading.

"I said, 'That's a little vain, isn't it, to be circling all the stuff that's written about you?' And she said, 'No, this is Kosovo.' "