With the number of quality shows countable on one hand, ratings that would make the CW's look good, and two dumbasses who have no idea what they are doing in charge, NBC is sure in the crapper and it's only getting worse by the second.
The network is in dire need of changes, and you're going to help provide them, being given the opportunity to do whatever you please. So what are you going to do?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bazookka Joe,
I would not hand over the 10pm timeslot to Jay Leno 5 nights a week. I would also fire Ben Silverman. When is the last time their fall schedule produced one new hit show? Their development is trash. Is Heroes really the last time they had a hit? Of course, that show went in the tank, but weirdly enough, NBC wasn't to blame for that going in the crapper.
It's not like the network doesn't have quality shows. They just have no clue how to promote them(Life, FNL) or they hold them to midseason(Medium, Law & Order) and/or stick them in crappy timeslots. Worse yet, they cancel some shows they should've held on to(Las Vegas, Scrubs) and instead greenlight Knight Rider and Bionic Woman and Kath & Kim. Genius. I think the simplest answer is really to pick up shows that don't suck. Of all the tv pilots produced each year, they can't find one that doesn't suck? Development and selection of pilots is terrible over there, so fire everyone in charge of doing that and get competent people in there who can produce original, quality shows that will capture an audience.
Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over— an analyst and a therapist. The world’s first analrapist.
Put whoever's in charge of Jimmy Fallon's show in charge of designing the schedule. Get Tina Fey to add executive advice.
Then bring in someone of the Joss Whedon/JJ Abrams variety to organize Drama.
KEEP Friday Night Lights and make it a showcase.
KEEP 30 Rock, The Office, My Name Is Earl, Heroes, Medium.
Trash the rest, it's junk.
If you're gonna do a reality show, you need to get someone who can put together a quality one. ABC has The Bachelor franchise and Dancing with the Stars. CBS has Amazing Race and Survivor. What the hell do you have? That isn't cheezy and cheap? Oh, nothing.
Other than Friday Night Lights, and now the Jimmy Fallon Show, there is nothing on NBC that makes me go: Wow! Gotta watch NBC now.
Even great shows like 30 Rock and The Office, etc. I catch elsewhere rather than on the network.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: MicheBel,
1. Get rid of: "The Chopping Block", "Chuck", "Howie Do It", "Kath & Kim", "Kings", and "Life". NOBODY cares about these shows, and if its not obvious by the viewership numbers than somebody at NBC failed basic arithmetic. Who CARES if they're critical darlings. (Note: "Pushing Daises" getting pushed out the window by ABC.) Good reviews and low viewership isn't going to help you any.
2. Scheduling Yes, I'm looking at you "Friday Night Lights". Just because the show ha s the word "Friday" in it doesn't mean it has to be scheduled on Friday. Incase you haven't noticed NBC, "Ghost Whisperer" is crushing everything in its path. Put an old veteran like "Law & Order" there, because its obvious you just want a land mark season out of it and don't actually care about it.
Actually look at the competition, putting a struggling show like "Heroes" up against "24", "Dancing With the Stars", and "Two and a Half Men" is NOT a smart move.
3. Promote your shows with previews that actually make people want to watch. Look at the preview for "Heroes" this week, what does that show about your program? NOTHING. Its just shots of random peoples faces. Seriously?
4. Fire Ben Silverman.
5. Fire Ben Silverman.
Posts: 802 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: September 25, 2008
If NBC wants better ratings, then they need to take risks.
They need to start picking up pilot scripts that have more diverse characters and situations. NBC needs more shows that have minority characters in significant roles.
And it seems like NBC needs to re-vamp their development department. "Kath & Kim," for instance, is an awful, awful show. The writing is very poor and the ratings aren't that great yet NBC won't get rid of it. What's killing NBC is that they have too many "Kath & Kim" shows (e.g. lousy shows) and not enough "30 Rock" shows (e.g. quality shows).
...and stop letting corporate control so much... also stop relying on quick "reality" fixes and develop good shows and program them accordingly. Keep "Chuck" but give it a new timeslot. Cancel "Heroes", the bad buzz may be hurting more than it's ratings! ... just a few thoughts.
Originally posted by Bazookka Joe: Schedule Medium against Ghost Whisperer.
Eh, that could be detrimental to "Medium". I think their best bet would be to put "Medium" and "Heroes" on Sundays. That way their major demo battle is against "Family Guy"...which shouldn't be hard.
Posts: 802 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: September 25, 2008
I'm not sure how to turn around the network on a business end. We all know that quality doesn't always equal ratings, and it's a bit naive to assume better shows will automatically yield viewer interest (see: "Pushing Daisies," "Friday Night Lights," "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," and so on, and so on).
But yes, development and selection of pilots has to be better. NBC should try doing what ABC did about five years ago. They filled themselves up with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and then were left with holes in their schedule after the bubble burst. Their response: "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives." In other words, think outside the box, look for riskier shows with potential watercooler appeal, something new and exciting. And DON'T rely on garbage remakes of shows that don't need to be remade: "Knight Rider," "Kath & Kim," "Bionic Woman" -- who the hell was asking for those? "The Office" was a remake, but it didn't suck. This is an important distinction a lot of networks don't seem to understand. Crappy versions of recognizable brands aren't good business.
In other words, giving Jay Leno the 10pm timeslot is probably a bad long-term idea. It might stop some financial bleeding -- reliable formula, inexpensive to produce -- but it won't bring new viewers to the network.
Make the decisions that are easy: cancel shows that no one likes and no one is watching, like "Knight Rider" and "Kath & Kim." How the hell did these shows make it past December?
Nurture struggling shows with potential. "Friday Night Lights" is one of the few prestige dramas left on NBC -- correction, the only prestige drama left. I think it's in their best interests to keep it, even if it'll take another deal with DirecTV to pay for it. And hold on to "Chuck," but it needs a creative course correction. It needs to move away from formula and aim to be more of a comic "Alias"; radical ideas should be the lifeblood of a spy spoof like this, but its current stories generate no watercooler excitement, the central romance hasn't develop, the supporting characters are useless cartoon characters who drag the show down. The ratings aren't great, but they're steady, and unlike "Heroes" they're not plummeting to the Earth. It's got 6 million people coming back every week; give them a reason to tell their friends -- and no, broadcasting in 3D doesn't count.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: 742,
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
It took years for NBC to go from 1 to 4, and it's fairly logical to assume that it will take years to get back to respectability. When Uni-fvcking-vision nearly ties you in the 18-34 demo on Monday night, that should be another sign that failing upward, as Zucker and Silverman have done, needs to stop. Fire them both, and clean house at the executive level. Then rebuild with people who don't believe in throwing in the towel at 10PM, or calling themselves a "first and foremost" a cable network business. Such defeatism needs to be erased.
For starters.
Posts: 4233 | Location: SE Pennsylvania | Registered: May 27, 2005
The reason why NBC is in such trouble is because they don't give their shows a real shot at all. They spend all this money on promoting them and then after three episodes if they aren't performing to "Friends" standards then they get the ax. Why invest all that time and money just to cancel the show? It's called invest for a reason. It takes time.
Also, stop pairing up show's on your network. I think NBC should take a whole night's programs and make it a clean slate and create a must see night of brand new show's and work with it and nurture it. Create a new must see night. If they took Tuesday or Wednesday night and created 3-5 new show's and put them on all on one night then you could start a new must see night. Just a suggestion.
The decline of NBC started years ago when they promoted Jeff Zucker to run everything. He is the single worst network executive in the history of TV (and I've been saying it since his second year, even before the actual decline was starting to be noticeable to the public). He has almost exclusively ruined that historic franchise. I don't know if you saw the USA Today article this week, but he actually said that his company considered itself more of a cable enterprise now than broadcast AND that he didn't expect that NBC would EVER be #1 in prime-time again.
Yeah, I saw that piece. It made me wonder how he still has a job. (For about the millionth time.) Why do any of these executives at NBC still have jobs? What is totally crazy is that I think NBC has more quality shows on its cable channels than it does on its network. It is like they don't even care about the actual NBC network.
Well the first step is definetly to FIRE both Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman. they have no clue what they are doing and it's been obvious for many years. Next step, replace them with people that understand what it means to take risks and to nurture shows. I suggest someone along the lines of Susan Lyne or Loyd Braun, look what their ideas did for ABC---these people greenlight "Lost", "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy" so it's clear they have an idea what people want to see...
Next step, pick up better shows. It's easier said than done i understand, but all the other networks have had at least one or two big hits each season while NBC has yet to develope one major mainstream show in years (The Office isn't that big a hit and Hereos was never a big mainstream show, it's just a show that it's devoted fans like)... They need to stop putting all their money into 1-camera shows and focus on developing some successful franchies that will last for years---they need to refocus on sitcoms and one-hour dramas.
They need to use the few hits they do have to launch new shows. One mistake they made in the old days was not using ER to launch other shows--it should have moved to another night when it started to slow down---so that they could use Thursdays to launch another series and use ER as a tentpole on another night...
They shouldn't give Leno the 10pm slot everynight (2-3 nights maybe) but not every night.
It would be smart of them to treat some of their marquee talent better- stop threating Dick Wolf with cancelling all his shows every year---his shows are among the very few bright spots on your schedule in this decade.
Next---GET TALENTED writers and producers to make shows for you...
Cancel some of your dead-weight--- nobody cares about "Life", "The Chopping Block" or "The Celebrity Apprentice" so get rid of them... Use the slots to develop shows people want to watch.
Stop trying to be so hip and cool and focus on good, quality shows that will get viewers.
Praying The Daytime Emmys air on TV in 2010!
Posts: 20035 | Location: just outside Providence, Rhode Island | Registered: July 28, 2002
Concentrate on actually promoting the hit shows too, like law and order and Medium, because their ratings are getting lower and lower too...and make them YEAR long shows, not mid season. You need to make a schedule with hit and strong shows there all season, to help launch new shows, not the other way around. having the hits as bench warmers to pull in when new shows fail is backwards thinking.
