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Let's face it: Hollywood is less than thrilled that NBC has just reduced its scripted primetime programming by 5 big hours a week starting in Fall 2009 to make way for Jay Leno at 10 PM. So I'm told that the peacock needed a bulletproof vest at the Hollywood Radio & Television Society's "Hitmakers" luncheon today because the assembled panel of marquee TV showrunners took great pleasure in taking shots at the beleaguered network. According to one of the attendees: Peter Tolan [Rescue Me] referenced the time he bungled a HRTS panel appearance yet today was promoted to the panel's moderator. "If I screw this up, then by next year I should be the Chairman of the HRTS – what they call taking a page from the Jeff Zucker playbook”. Tolan went on to commend NBC for firing everyone right before the holidays so that the storm drains of Bob Hope Drive are running red. He asked the panelists to offer NBC some good ideas on how to turn things around. Al Jean [The Simpsons] suggested “they should bring back Johnny Carson and put him at nine o’clock”. James Duff [The Closer] thought “it’s wonderful that NBC has begun a public transformation into AM radio”. Chuck Lorre [Two And A Half Man] apparantly believed the network is now so devalued that even he could buy the company -- and then offered $500,000 for all of NBC. Tolan quipped that Lorre could certainly afford it. Tolan later got in another NBC zinger: “If a fish does stink from the head, they’ve made a very wise choice in cutting this one from the gills down.”
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I’m really of two minds on all of this, though I’ll not be able to express it as well as Hollywood’s funniest showrunners.
From a creative standpoint, the Leno decision is certainly a disaster. Just because Leno’s program is popular doesn’t mean it’s funny. It may turn out to be the most “lowest common denominator” decision in programming history. Don’t tell Zucker on Bennie, but Leno ain’t Colbert or Stewart.
But in terms of business economics, now the overriding factor in NBC’s creative decisions, it’s pretty much a solid move. Why spend $66 million (times 5) to lose the final hour of primetime every night, when you can program 46 weeks of it for 1/3rd of the cost?
CBS will certainly respond with a nuclear-level assault in the fall of 2009. “CSI” will certainly vacate 9/8 for 10/9, right? One shift of “The Mentalist”, and you then have a murder’s row of three CSI’s, one “W/out a Trace” and Simon Baker, and the NBC “talk wheel” experiment could be over in 13 weeks.
I don’t know. Yes, NBC is in 4th place,
but I don’t think that the network that has The Office and 30 Rock should start taking advice from the brain-trust that gave us “Two and a Half Men”
Does Jeff Zucker have incriminating photos of someone at GE?? Because it is literally the only explanation for how he still has a job. Not only has he completely destroyed the network, but he’s managed to hang on for the better part of a decade at a compnay that had no problem summarily canning more talented people like Kevin Reilly and Garth Ancier. I really don’t understand.
Well, always good to know that if the option of “Knight Rider” doesn’t make it.. how the hell is it something like “Boston Legal” can’t keep a home, and NBC is willing to waive the white flag. Brilliant.
Just a few decades ago, people went after Fox for their abbreviated schedule. Now, unless I’m mistaken, Fox will have far more scripted programming then NBC.. outside of the fact they program Sunday; NBC is currently airing 3 scheduled repeats a week (Law & Order on Saturday for two, and for a few weeks here, we’ll get SVU on both Tue & Wed).
This is the same network that gave the disasterous Rosie O’Donnell hour a try. And now Jay for an hour. Five nights a week. Which will mean, as it will be up against prime-time other network programming, his guests will all be NBC shills acting as an almost infomerical. No way do CBS/ABC/Fox release talent that would be competing against their own primetime.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. From the network that brought you “Hill Street Blues” “St. Elsewhere” and a long list of programming.. oh wait, that was all more then a decade ago.
Thanks for the laugh TadAllagash. Don’t forget, Lorre’s also the hack that gives us the laugh-track, POS “The Big Bang Theory”. He definitely knows quality tv when he sees it.
Prediction: Many NBC affiliates will run Seinfeld reruns or lucrative local programming at 10 p.m. instead and hold Jay until 11:35 p.m. anyway, and follow it with Conan, et al., same as before.
Some will go even further, expanding their local newscast to an hour, dropping it into the 10 p.m. timeslot and starting Jay at 11 p.m., putting him against Letterman once again but this time with a half-hour head start.
I don’t even watch TV and yet I’ve seen that little chubby kid grow to somewhere approaching a ninja who could wallop Nick Cage on the big screen. I’d say that crappy show is wildly successful.
Even Jay Leno joked about people failing upward at NBC tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Jeff Zucker has run that network into the ground and now Ben Silverman is finishing it off.
Why can’t these guys just let people who CARE about the television business run things?
GO AWAY ZUCKER! GO AWAY SILVERMAN!
In the past few years NBC has been driven into the ground while Bravo and USA have flourished. Why don’t they just poach some of the execs from their cable networks to run NBC since clearly those people actually know what the hell they’re doing!
This is a disastrous decision, both creatively and business-wise. Leno may be cheap, but he’ll never pull enuf views at 10 o’clock, and worse? He’ll more than likely suck the life out of the shows that follow, both the local news shows, and the Conan-led Tonight Show after that.
So in this way, he takes NBC and pushes it a little closer to, I dunno, UPN.
Well done!
Let’s see. On Jeff Zucker’s watch, NBC has gone from the #1 network to the #4 network and a public laughing stock. That’s all that needs to be said, right? RIGHT?
Where’s Fred Silverman when you need him?!…Oh, yeah…forgot…something about “Pink Lady” and actors dressed up as “dogs”…How soon we forget that this has all gone before…
If we take a less LA/NY-centric look at putting Leno on at 10 PM, we will see that his show will now air at 9 PM Central and 8 PM Mountain (unless Mountain delays it). This means that Leno is going to have to totally revamp his show format and become even more bland thanhe already is, because his new job will be to deliver a lead-in to the local news. If he doesn’t hold onto viewers from 10-11 as well as scripted shows do, the affiliates are going to have a fit. Perhaps he’ll add variety acts in addition to the chat (unlike Rosie, he doesn’t grate). Either way, NBC is risking a lot no matter how much money they save, because if they lose that hour to the affiliates, they will spiral downward even faster. Even the lower budget of Leno is no real savings because his rerun, off-prime and syndication value is nil, whereas scripted hours can run forever and generate revenue. Somewhere there’s a peacock being butchered.
Here’s my biggest issue with NBC. For all the excuse-making and defeatism over there, their failure isn’t about viewers looking to new mediums, ie video games, cable, new media.
Their development flat-out sucked for as long as I can remember. If their failures were due to a fickle, evolving audience, there would be a stockpile of quality pilots in their library.
There isn’t. In fact, for all their shows that didn’t make the cut and didn’t air on tv, there’s nothing in the scrap heap. I had the luxury of seeing them all.
They’ve literally gone 0-for-100’s of shows.
The Leno move is a white flag.
Bravo and USA have not “flourished,” each has had jerky moves from one format to another. Bravo’s change from high-art and culture and foreign movies to the “gay” channel limits it’s growth. USA has had some minor hits but not explosive (and sustainable) audience/ratings growth.
Now, in a recession when free/over the air TV has a budgetary advantage (it’s free, an alternative to cable/satellite channels), NBC pulls a move guaranteed to limit ratings growth.
Yes shows are expensive. Even more so is not having viewers. The idea that you can either “niche” your way to profits or cheap your way, in what looks like a years long recession / depression is not wise. Programming for the go-go 1990’s or mid 2000’s.
[St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues were more than twenty years ago, not ten. It's been that long.]
NBC could do a lot worse than copy what CBS has done. They’ve constructed broadly appealing comedies (Two and A Half Men gets much higher ratings than either Thirty Rock or Earl or the Office), and lots of crime-time dramas appealing to men (instead of scrapping over the same female viewers everyone else fights over) with the Bruckheimer formula of a team, an older male leader, a female subordinate to provide a hint of romance, and the young gun for action.
CBS has far fewer failures (Moonlight being the most notable) and has not hit the wall as Heroes has, or remained mired in the old model of trading viewers for upscale demos (likely no longer possible in a recession). Who do you think has a better schedule? CBS or NBC? Yeah CBS has older, more male viewers, but so what? That’s good strategy for a recession.
Besides, you can create a show for CBS with far less uncertainty (you know what works for them), it has a “brand identity” (viewers know what to expect), making things cheaper for everyone and more certain.
Replace Zucker and Silverman with a proven brand manager from a consumer products company, with freedom and responsibility. NBC is definitely fixable, but it won’t be pretty.
Clearly the answer here is to give Ben Silverman MORE POWER. Next fall, I say they let him write the remaining hours of NBC primetime all by himself.
MONDAY
8pm: THE BEN SILVERMAN 30 MINUTE COUNTDOWN. Ben Silverman, who is awesome, is followed around town by four camera crews. Mondays are Stash Replenishment Days. Join Ben as he tries to track down his pot dealer somewhere in the Valley.
8:30pm: BEN SILVERMAN REVIEWS: LA-AREA HOT SPOTS. Join Ben as he eats overpriced sushi.
9pm: BEN SILVERMAN’S JOURNEYS. Join Ben as he travels to the world’s hottest clothing-optional resorts.
TUESDAY
8pm: BEN SILVERMAN PRESENTS: WITHOUT BREASTS, NO PARADISE.
9pm: WILLIAM PETERSEN PRESENTS: CSI’S SEXIEST MOMENTS
WEDNESDAY
8pm: THE BEN SILVERMAN 30 MINUTE COUNTDOWN. On Wednesdays, Ben will hang out with Brett Ratner, often in Rat’s hot tub. Special guest stars include Ratner’s grandparents and a Bolivian guy Ben met at the airport last week.
8:30pm: THE OFFICE
9pm: CSI: ACTING KARAOKE. You’ll feel like a star as you lip-sync Marg and Bill’s lines!
THURSDAY
8pm: THE OFFICE: PAM AND JIM. In this full hour spin-off, join Pam and Jim as they struggle through dilemmas such as “Should Pam sleep nude?” and “Should Jim and Pam have a threesome with a chick from Hooters?” – in this astonishingly cutting-edge dramedy, the viewer decides via text message!
9pm: CSI: NY
FRIDAY
8pm: THE BEN SILVERMAN 30 MINUTE COUNTDOWN. For Ben Silverman, Fridays are all about the poon.
8:30pm: NEXT WEEK ON CSI
9pm: CSI: MIAMI
Remember Brandon Tartikoff? Remember ‘must see TV’? Remember the Thursday night sitcom block that ran for 2 decades?
Memories are marvelous things, aren’t they?
@velveeta: Great ideas, but Ben Silverman (and NBC’s viewers) are waaaaay too upscale to be visiting an ordinary dealer. No, on Mondays, Ben will take us on a quest to find the best pot clinic to treat his “insomnia due to back pain” or other equally viable reason to have a perscription.
I know next to nothing about television programming either on the creative or business side so basically that qualifies me to be an executive at NBC.
The ‘I could do that job better than that joker’ attitude being spewed on this board represents the worst passive aggressive behavior of the entertainment industry.
I didn’t realize it was easy to be a television executive. Or to hire good execs. Or to find and develop hit material. Jesus. What’s wrong with Hollywood. If we wanted ratings to skyrocket, we’d just cull the geniuses who smother these boards with their uncreative, uninspired jealousy and spite.
And that’s a view from the :::bottom::: of the foodchain. Imagine what anybody with any clout thinks of your garbage.
Sorry guys. While I’m not a fan of talkshows (and I am proud to say I’ve never sat through an entire “reality show”– including Survivor and American Idol), this may be a smart move from a business standpoint. The biggest expense, obviously, is Leno’s salary which amounts to roughly 200K per show. I admit I don’t know the average cost of an hour of programming but I know it’s multiple millions. I doubt an hour of Leno is much more than a quarter of that yet I’ll bet it will garner well over half the viewers NBC currently gets in that timeslot.
And while I agree it’s sad to see NBC, the once-proud home of must-see Thursday night television, fall so low, I think we will never see the likes of that programming again. Viewers’ attention spans are too short to sit still for more than an hour at a clip and too many viewers actually SEEK OUT utter shit like “The Hills” and would not (and do not if you look closely at ratings) care how much or how little talent is involved in creating a scripted series. Scripted series are increasingly a niche product and will hopefully continue to thrive on cable.
I agree it’s sickening but it’s the devolution of television which probably simply reflects the devolution of our society as a whole.
im really hoping that chuck will not be sacrificed for one of those 5 hours next season. i love the show and would hate to see it canceled when it is just getting so good…i know it has sort of been on the bubble for renwal but i think nbc loves the show too. Do you guys think that chuck will be one of the shows sacrificed or is it just the veteran series that will be canceled? any response would be great
thanks
Mike
To Tadallagash – 2 1.5 Men is a lightweight show, yes – but when it’s been the one sitcom solidly in the too 10 with a rerun getting it the #8 slot last week then maybe I’d give the creators an ear.
As for Bravo – it was made and may be unmade by Project Runway – the tailgate shows – Top Chef, Shear Genius – haven’t closed the deal and the fumble with PR was a bad move. Theyre seriously adrift.
Not only do the writers/producers/directors in hollywood think that the entire business of television revolves around them, but they are very scared of change. They are starting to realize that the old business model just isn’t working anymore and that scares them to death. So, they respond by slamming NBC and coming on websites like this and blaming Zucker and Silverman, when deep down they are just scared of change.
Rabble Rabble -
In the anonymity of the internet, you’re right – obviously hacks are free to weigh in and take potshots at NBC.
The repeat criticism of NBC here goes beyond that. If you had worked w/ NBC or know someone who has, you’d know that all the criticism is more than warranted – and none of the comments to date are far-fetched in the least. Frankly, I’ve seen and heard of worse coming out of NBC.
It is a place that is in every way a disaster. Their execs, their development process (in a number of ways), their overall business plan, a numbing record of “bad luck”, the inhouse promotion of idiots who learned under idiots. I know several writers/producers who have long approached mtgs with NBC execs – and left mtgs w/ NBC execs- as if they had just sat down w/ someone who’s mentally retarded.
NBC is a textbook example of failure, which would normally put a company out of business. A myopic apologist can argue that criticism is the product of monday morning quarterbacking, however so many of NBC’s mistakes were considered idiotic the very second they were dreamt up. It’s been that way, approaching TEN years (some argue longer). Hence the weight of justified criticism found here.
I’m sorry but from my perspective as someone who has sold shows and written on hit shows, it IS easy to be a tv executive. All you need to do is answer phones for 3 years, listen in on your boss’s conversations, get promoted and then repeat key phrases that you’ve heard your boss say to people. These phrases are usually not helpful and are said only to make said executive feel better for saying them because he/she justified his/her job. Overnoting a writer = 20 million viewers.
Also helpful is if you work for someone you’re too scared to ask him what he’s thinking on a particular project i.e. Steve McPherson. Because working from a place of fear is a sure fire way to make a hit TV show.
A monkey could be a TV executive.
“I didn’t realize it was easy to be a television executive. Or to hire good execs. Or to find and develop hit material.”
nobody said it was easy, THAT IS WHY THEY ARE PAID SO MUCH.
if they dont want to work HARD, DONT ACCEPT THE CHECKS.
Mondays are all wrong! Ben shouldn’t visit his pot dealer, but his coke dealer!
The interstitial segments feature Ben’s special guest of the week where he blows lines while holed up in an NYC hotel room w/ several celebs and fellow tv execs…
Next move by NBC: Lobby Nielsen to be considered a cable network! They’d finish, like, in second place practically every night by those standards. Oy! Fire ‘em all
To those who like to trash POS Big Silly Sitcoms on CBS or Leslie Moonves himself here is a bit of news from the AP:
“NEW YORK – Broadcast TV’s fall season is going so poorly that four out of five returning programs have a smaller audience than they had in 2007.
A top TV researcher says it’s shaping up as a historically bad season for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Only eight of the 66 returning shows have gained viewers,
five of them on CBS.
Five shows have no change. “Heroes,” “Private Practice” and “Prison Break” are among the big losers.
SOURCE: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9504QC80&show_article=1
At least the Eye is putting people to work, not giving work to dummies or talking heads. The SAG contract notwithstanding.
GE/NBC is such a joke I can’t wait to see the Nielsen carnage once everything is in play. If I was an NBC affiliate station GM I would be screaming to get days, not hours, back and try to salvage ad dollars.
(Hyper-)Local content rules!
No wonder those who knew jettisoned themselves to the cable nets…Safe for now until Zucker screws that up, too.
One has to wonder… if a large portion of well-known SAG actors also has issue with Leno taking over the 10 O’Clock hour and doing away with so many job opportunities in Hollywood, why not just form a pseudo picket line and refuse to be booked as guests? If Leno cannot book and bring in the viewers, maybe other networks won’t follow this insane trajectory we’ve all been thrust on.
Hey “Dennis Wilson” –
“Prediction: Many NBC affiliates will run Seinfeld reruns or lucrative local programming at 10 p.m. instead and hold Jay until 11:35 p.m. anyway, and follow it with Conan, et al., same as before.
Some will go even further, expanding their local newscast to an hour, dropping it into the 10 p.m. timeslot and starting Jay at 11 p.m., putting him against Letterman once again but this time with a half-hour head start.”
that’s a pretty dang sharp chunk of programming right there…