Well, that was the whole idea behind Smallville -- to reinvent the story of Clark Kent for people who weren't comic-book fans. It wasn't supposed to be Superman, it was supposed to be a teen drama that would appeal to the WB's target demographic. Similarly to how they made a show called Tarzan which was set entirely in New York City with Jane Porter as a homicide detective. Changing it to a completely different genre was the entire point. It was about generating a new way of telling the story, one with broader appeal (at least to their target audience) than the conventional way.
The reasons that Smallville has changed in recent years are partly that it's gone on so much longer than intended that they had to make it more like Superman, partly that comic-book movies have been big hits in recent years so they wanted to capitalize on that, and partly that the original showrunners finally left and were replaced by people with a different vision of the show.
As for Wonder Woman, this is an NBC show, so it stands to reason that it will be aimed at audiences that NBC wants to cultivate. So the way to assess what the show will probably be like is to look at it in terms of what NBC wants in an audience. Remember that to them, the comic is merely source material, and what matters is making a television show that will get good ratings in their desired demographic categories. Now, NBC has given us Heroes and The Cape in recent years, so that suggests they're willing to cultivate the comic-book audience, although after the failure of The Cape, maybe they won't be as comfortable with that as they were before. But the fact that they hired David E. Kelley to make this tells us a lot about what kind of show they want it to be. They're targeting the audience that likes Kelley's shows.
