Total Number of Ratings: 8
NBC: Have They Just Given Up?
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 1:54 AM
There was once a time when the National Broadcasting Company was the unstoppable juggernaut of American television.
As it has been home to such programs as Texaco Star Theater, Laugh-In, Father Knows Best, The Tonight Show, The Virginian, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Dragnet, Columbo, Chico and The Man, I Dream of Jeannie, Saturday Night Live, Hill Street Blues, Sanford & Son, LA Law, The Cosby Show, Late Night with David Letterman, Cheers, Unsolved Mysteries, Seinfeld, Little House on the Prairie, Family Ties, Friends, Law & Order, Miami Vice, The Monkees, The Rockford Files, Taxi, The Golden Girls, St. Elsewhere, Star Trek, Night Court, The West Wing, The Office, and ER, a strong case can be made that NBC is American television.
As far as I am concerned, NBC has far and away been the gold standard in American television since it first broadcast pictures in 1939.
The gold standard, that is, until recently. NBC has, in rather short order, turned into the Network That Can’t Shoot Straight or a network run by the Keystone Kops. Whatever metaphor for incompetence you want to use in regards to NBC, it is probably going to fit pretty well. NBC hasn’t been successful in developing a hit television show since the first season of Heroes in 2006, and that success only lasted a year. The third season of Heroes draws, on average, about half the audience that it did in season one. A succession of executives have tried their uninspired best to throw as much shit against the wall as they could to see what would stick. Most notably, and most recently, the great hope for the network was a completely uninspired remake of Knight Rider, the classic David Hasselhoff action show from the 1980s. When the new version failed spectacularly, NBC announced it was being yanked off the schedule… to be retooled and then relaunched yet again in 2009.
What has NBC done right lately? It seems to be very good at developing little watched critical and hipster darlings, personified by the likes of The Office, 30 Rock, and Friday Night Lights. The problem with pointing to critical darlings as a success story is that as great as those shows may be, they don’t really pay the bills. There was a time when NBC would crank out hit show after hit show that were not only critical successes, but also ratings successes as well.
(Yes, the television landscape is in the middle of a sea change and none of the networks really know how to deal with it, but NBC seems the least prepared for this new television paradigm and really that’s all a discussion for another time.)
As someone who enjoys a healthy appreciation for the history of television, NBC has always been my favorite network. I realize the ridiculousness in making something as nebulous and faceless as a television network you favorite over another nebulous and faceless television network. But I have always liked their history and their programming and have watched it more than any of the other major networks – CBS, ABC, and FOX.
So it was with great disappointment that I read news that made me exclaim (to myself, I swear, it wasn’t out loud), "Damn, NBC has just given up."
Starting with the 2009 television season, NBC will hand over its 10pm timeslot to Jay Leno every Monday through Friday night, creating a three and a half hour talk show block (with 30 minutes of local news in the middle).
Wow.
To understand why this has happened you have to go back to 2004 when NBC announced that Conan O’Brien would replace Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show in 2009. This announcement was made to avoid the fiasco that followed the retirement of Johnny Carson in which NBC hired Jay Leno as the new host of The Tonight Show and then briefly changed their mind and gave the job to David Letterman , before promptly dumping Letterman for Leno again. This led to bad feelings and bad PR all around and ultimately David Letterman left NBC after 11 years as the host of Late Night to host Late Show on CBS where he has been since 1993. It was a huge mess. There was a book and a TV movie about it. I recommend them both.
By announcing Leno’s replacement five years before the fact, everyone thought that they were being all smart and forward thinking. One problem: as the deadline began to approach, Leno apparently realized that he didn’t want to stop hosting The Tonight Show. Leno is reportedly one of those workaholic performers that loves the stage so much he needs it. Leno has made enough money from hosting The Tonight Show for the past 16 years that he and his children and his children’s children (and probably more than that) would never have to work again. And while if I had access to his means, I would probably spend my retirement on the beach, the man still wants to work and I can respect that.
Leno started griping in public about changing his mind and feeling like he was being forced out of The Tonight Show, and NBC suddenly found themselves with a potential PR nightmare on their hands. Like him and his show or not, Jay Leno is the most popular man in late night TV and The Tonight Show is reportedly one of the most profitable shows in all of television. A scenario where Conan O’Brien was not only up against David Letterman on CBS, but also, say, Jay Leno on ABC, is a scenario that NBC is apparently willing to do anything to avoid.
Anything now seems to include cutting their primetime schedule by a third and giving the 10 o’clock hour – the hour once synonymous with powerhouse NBC shows like ER, LA Law and Hill Street Blues – over entirely to Jay Leno.
This move says two things to me. Number one, they were terrified of Conan O’Brien going up against Jay Leno and losing, which I think was actually quite likely. Number two, NBC’s programming and development people have no solutions to their recent failures in developing quality hit programming. I imagine that there are a lot of NBC executives feeling pretty pleased with themselves for coming up with a solution that kills two birds with one stone. Now instead of filling 15 hours of programming every week they only need to worry about 10. And now NBC can hold on to one of its few successful TV personalities instead of watching him move to one of their rivals and bury them even deeper into the hole they created for themselves.
Unfortunately, it seems that they had to give up the keys to the kingdom in order to do it.
Will Leno succeed at 10pm every weeknight?
Will an hour of Jay Leno, followed by an hour of Conan O’Brien (after the news), followed by an hour of Jimmy Fallon, followed by a half an hour of Carson Daly (don’t forget about him!) cause the audience for late night talk shows to implode in on itself like a collapsing star?
Are there enough actual and interesting celebrities to fill the time on not only these shows but David Letterman, Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel too?
Has NBC given up trying to fix their programming problems, opting instead for a very big and expensive band-aid?
I'm with on the side of "Jay Leno doesn't have to be on all week for me." I, like Conor, have made NBC my favorite network before. One thing I liked was that they took risks on shows that others wouldn't look twice at like ER, The Office, or Scrubs. Those days seem long gone, though. I think the Leno time slot could of been used some days to promote other shows and hopefully give them a new audience.
One of my current favorite shows, Chuck, is bleeding right now, and holding it's breath to see if it gets renewed. That's because it is being thrown in on the night of shows such as 24, Big Bang Theory, and Dancing with The Stars(and we all know for some reason it's hard to compete against reality shows). I would think a move to a less competitive day, on a bare time slot, like Leno's, would help. I'm just hoping the fans' campaign may help rescue Chuck. It worked to buy Jericho some time, but then again NBC has recently stopped caring, it seems.
Hey, whattya know? NBC *has* given up!
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/zuckered-i-dont-think-well-ever-be-able-to-say-nbc-is-no-1-in-prime-time/
I'm actually surprised at the amount of canceled shows NBC has had in the past few years. It's a shame to think that NBC actually passed on House which is well into its 5th season and going strong. I've been on a "I hate NBC" streak ever since it didn't give Raines a full season. I actually didn't realize that so many people still watch late night TV. I'd give anything for Craig Ferguson to get an earlier time slot.
Hey Conor, I know you said the paradigm change was a discussion for another time, but I think in fact it has much to do with a decision like this.
I'm curious if the whole timeslot idea is quickly becoming moot anyway.
I don't know about you, but all of 2008 I didn't once sit in front of my television to watch a single network show, even though I did watch plenty of network television. Yes, you probably guessed it, I watched everything online. I would either watch via the network websites or iTunes, and I take which ever route is free and easy (and legal ? but more because I don?t really know where to get the illegal stuff anyway).
I have no idea what day and time most of the shows are broadcast. I?ve really only begun to get a sense of when they?re available online. (The Office is available on Fridays via NBC.com.) Also, the NBC website has more online only content now too, with ?parallel? Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy shows (I say ?parallel?, because in the case of My Own Worst Enemy both versions were launched at the same time, and thus the word ?spin-off? doesn?t seem to fit). Personally I?ve found the NBC site the friendliest to use, and thus really only watch NBC shows. (Conor, you mentioned you thought they were the least equipped for the paradigm change. I would be curious to understand more.)
I seem to recall hearing (I believe on NPR) that NetFlix expected the DVD by mail business to be dead in the next 5 years (mind you nothing is ever really dead ? look at vinyl ? but business wise the market for this will have shrunk so much as to be irrelevant). They?re shifting their business into an online entertainment delivery, and I would suspect the network expects their core business to make a similar shift.
I imagine this has played some role in this whole Jay Leno situation at NBC. If the core audience for Leno would only watch him on the television anyway (meaning they?re not too web savvy), and the core audience of the next big ER or Law and Order will watch online or download, then timeslots are only meaningful to the generation out-the-door. (Author?s note: I?m not a Spring chicken here. I remember Brandon Tartikoff putting Manimal fliers on car windshields in New York City for The Late Night with David Letterman show).
So they?ll makes some bucks right now via cheep entertainment like what traininvain was suggesting, and in the long run this whole timeslot situation is moot.
Mind you, the people in charge of network programming might not have taken any of this into account, and are simply going for the immediate cheap buck as they have many times before (see Reality TV and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire every night on ABC as past examples). They very much might be just randomly guessing what their doing (which is supported by a lot of network history).
Either way for me timeslots have no meaning anymore, with download availability dates having taken their place.
Now how do they come up with quality ?television? for broadcast at some non-10pm hour or straight download, I don?t know. I?m certain there will be more failures than successes as usual. And I?m certain the shows will be messed around with like crazy by those who think they have found a science for creativity. (I?m still pissed they re-shot the pilot of the new Bionic Woman to get rid of her deaf sister. I thought the idea was ripe with potential good conflict and issues for the series. But the deaf sister was dropped out, and what ?they? found expectable was a piece of crap.)
Conor, do you know for sure they programming overall for them is dropping from 15 hours a week to 10, or would some of this possibly be absorbed into more online content which, and if a hit, and thus could be spun-out to the remaining non-10pm slots on the network if deemed useful?
Also, how different or the same do you feel this is from the whole Dateline show from a while back in which every 10 pm weekday slot except for Thursday was Dateline?
Oh dear, all of the blank lines from my text above were deleted on submitting, which unfortunately gives it that oh-so Uni-bomber look and feel. Oh well.
Also, I noticed that my system must have been putting in smart quotes and small single quotes, because now where it should show text like "I'm", it's showing "I?m".
Better luck next time, I guess.
The number of people who watch TV online is large enough to be noticed, but sill tiny when compared to the people who still sit down on the couch at 9pm on Thursday to watch CSI or even to watch it an hour later on their DVR.
NetFlix may be planning to do away with physical discs and go online streaming only in five years but I don't believe that the market is ready to go all digital delivery. Media changes happen way too slowly and in a world where people are freaking out over the switch from broadcast to digital, there is no way that the majority of the market is ready to stream their television in an on-demand world. Early adapters will be ready - they are ready now - but early adapters don't make up enough of the viewership. I'm fairly forward adapting and even I have little interest in that at this point. I want a disk I can play in any of my DVD players or computers or at a friend's house, which means I probably won't be a NetFlix customer in five years. And that's not even taking into account the limitations in bandwidth. Even without the bandwidth caps that all of the major providers want to enact, people I know who stream movies via NetFlix have buffering problems. The the telecos are successful getting caps in place that's going to be a major blow to the on-demand revolution.
Nothing I have read as indicated that NBC is going to be creating programming for online distribution, only that they are using The Leno Solution to cut costs in prime time. Online only shows have, so far, been a disaster in a business (and creative) sense and I can't imagine NBC is going to jump back in that pond.
When NBC flooded the air with Dateline they always had the (once) venerable Thursday nights at 10pm slot and it was never on an official basis like this announcement.
@trainvain - It's cheaper, but it could end up costing NBC in the long run. Leno rules latenight, but with viewership numbers that would be considered terrible in primetime. That could hurt NBC with advertisers. I have also seen that this move as seriously pissed off many show producers, the kind that NBC needs to develop good programming. There is also no way that this move does not damage their relationship with Conan O'Brien. He was positioned as the new king and now he's been undercut by the old one. Never before has the host of The Tonight Show been so marginalized.
Actually, it might just be a stroke of genius. It will be a Hell of a lot cheaper to put Jay on at 10PM then to develop new shows, and as his audience gets older they are going to bed earlier (the same goes for Conan). My only concern is that what does this mean for Law & Order, I don't care about SVU, but the other two are regular viewing for me.
It's cheaper, but it could end up costing NBC in the long run. Leno rules latenight, but with viewership numbers that would be considered terrible in primetime. That could hurt NBC with advertisers. I have also seen that this move as seriously pissed off many show producers, the kind that NBC needs to develop good programming. There is also no way that this move does not damage their relationship with Conan O'Brien. He was positioned as the new king and now he's been undercut by the old one. Never before has the host of The Tonight Show been so marginalized.
I feel your pain. I remember when I was in highschool and it was THE THING to watch tv on Thursday nights. With Friends and ER and all those "must see tv" shows, it was almost bigger than TGIF. That's why I stick to the tv on dvd now...(oh, Netflix plug!)
Maybe NBC has figured out the future. With baby boomers aging, maybe the network thinks those millions of viewers will want an earlier bedtime. With the huge amount of money saved on the ten o'clock hour, they can commit more resources to the shows in the schedule remnants, making them truly "Must See TV."
But I doubt it. While NBC did okay, the parent company ordered ALL divisions to come up with cost savings (damn this economy). NBC found an "interesting" way of addressing that. If only Leno was more like old Letterman, or Steve Allen or Ernie Kovacs who would try all sorts of experimental bits on the air. Ten o'clock could become a cool Frankenstein lab of entertainment. But alas, Leno has never been seen as an innovator. Quite the contrary.
Respond
I know this is an old article, but a recent issue of TIME ran an extensive article about this very thing. Jay was on the cover. Thought you'd like to know.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1920038,00.html