the defenestration of leno and nbc's new schedule
January 15, 2010

Um ... wow. Just ... wow.

What the hell was Leno thinking? There's being a good sport, and then there's being a total idiot, and this pretty clearly crossed the line. By the end, Leno was clearly not a happy camper. And he set it up! After it became obvious where this was headed, wouldn't you change a question or two on the fly, do something so that you didn't turn yourself into the comedic equivalent of a volleyball? (Serve, lob, set, SPIKE!) I mean, jeez, guy, do something.

And yet another shoe drops as NBC announces its forthcoming post-Olympics schedule, also known as Life After The Great Failed Experiment.

Mondays kind of make sense. Kind of. On the one hand, "Trauma" -- which has been yanked from the jaws of cancellation but not necessarily back into production, as NBC still had six episodes of the series to burn off -- would seem a terrible fit for "Chuck", albeit a better fit with "Law and Order". You'd think that maybe they'd want something more transitional between Chuck and L&O, like, say, "Parenthood". But then, that's the one so-far-unaired series that's been getting a certain amount of critical respect, even with the last minute recasting of a central role forced by Maura Tierney's breast cancer. So putting it after "Biggest Loser" on Tuesdays makes sense, as BL has been their consistently highest-rated non-football primetime series. So, perforce, Tuesday's schedule is perfectly understandable.

Wednesday's schedule, on the other hand ... that one has a certain head-scratching quality. "Mercy" is profoundly unsuited for the early evening timeslot. And if you're going to do that, why wouldn't you have the one new drama you managed to save lead into new episodes of SVU, rather than into an encore SVU episode that then leads to a new episode of the same show? The only thing I can think is that they decided to simply suicide the second hour against of "American Idol" and "24" ... but then, why would you suicide "Mercy" as well?

Thursdays are pretty much the same schedule NBC's had all year, with the exception of "The Marriage Ref" -- which sounds like an utter abomination before the programming gods.

...Yeah. So there's that. Because watching real life couples fight and get comedic zings launched at them is going to be so entertaining! In any event, "The Marriage Ref" as an end to the evening doesn't seem exactly calculated to improve NBC's fortunes on that night; wasn't the one thing that came out of the Leno experiment a fairly clear indication that people don't quite want that sort of comedy heading into their evening newscasts? But then, it's not as though NBC has a lot of product on their shelves to stick into that slot.

Fridays are very meh, with "Who do you think you are?", a celebrities' origin story reality series which sounds like a less sensationalistic take on "E! True Hollywood Story", only it's possible that some of the celebrities won't have died tragically or stupidly or have done something lunatic to warrant being profiled. (Which ... honestly, sounds like it could be a bit dull.) Saturdays, along with every other network, are a very traditional "lay down and die" schedule. (Once upon a time, Saturdays were the second most watched night on television. True story. CBS had the killer lineup of Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and the Carol Burnett Show. Oh, for the good old days. But one digresses.)

Sundays are kind of eyecrossing, featuring NBC taking direct aim at CBS ... by counterprogramming with more or less exactly the same type of shows that CBS is airing for the early part of the evening. Sending "Dateline" up against "60 Minutes" again? I mean, Dateline sometimes does ... OK on those nights, but by and large, it never seems to win that sort of thing. And they're sending "Minute to Win It", a game show formerly called "Perfect 10" hosted by Guy Fieri, up against "The Amazing Race", ABC's "Extreme Home Makeover", and Fox's animation block. (Interestingly enough, Fox has ordered a US version of Britain's "The Cube", which uses a similar concept, giving people a very limited amount of time to complete otherwise very simple tasks for a startlingly large amount of money. The Cube adds in the concept of a sort of physical restraint -- contestants are contained inside a plexiglass cube Fox apparently sent the order straight to series, but it's not clear when the series will air -- my own guess would be as a summer replacement series, depending on cost, given the relative success of ABC's "Wipeout!" as a summer series. But i digress.) Guy Fieri, the second winner of the Food Network's "Next Food Network Star", can be a very ... acquired taste, let's say. Though, honestly, game show host seems like the sort of thing that would suit his expansive personality to a T. "Celebrity Apprentice" goes up against ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Brothers and Sisters" and CBS' procedurals, offering a genuine alternative and a proven show that should do OK in that time slot. (Though, seriously, two hours a night of that every week? Well ... OK.)

Really, the best thing you can say of NBC's winter/spring schedule is, given the utter lack of notice and time they had to construct it is that they're clearly making the best effort they can. It'll be interesting to see how it all works out.

nbc's late night soap opera gets vicious
January 14, 2010

The Wrap is tracking the monologues of the late night shows as they all make hay out of skewering NBC for its hamhanded handling of the late night show mess it created.

It's worth noting that they're a day behind at this point. Last night, Conan got truly vicious and mean about the whole thing in a way that I hadn't thought he had in him, including taking a direct shot at Jay Leno.

I have to admit, I hope this is the last time he does something like that. As long as he can direct his shots at NBC, and not Leno, I think he'll get a lot more support. Once he starts going after Jay ... well, honestly, at least in his public persona, Jay is a bit meaner and a bit sharper with the personal attacks, and I kind of don't think Conan can win that way anyway.

Moreover, in order to maintain any sort of respect from its own employees and from the business at large, NBC has to put a stop to this public sniping on its own airwaves, and soon. In any other business, an employee who went after their employer like this would at the least be suspended, if not fired outright. Of course, they're in a difficult position there, as well; Leno's also been sniping at the network, and he's the one they want to keep the most. Differential treatment for substantially the same activity might put NBC in an even more difficult legal position. The one thing they've got to work with is that Conan seems to have now specifically said in public that NBC breached his contract, which is something their lawyers can go after.

On the other hand, there's this interesting aspect: NBC is actually kind of benefiting from the late night follies. Kind of. "The Tonight Show" ratings are up 42% in key demographics this week. You'd think that might be enough of a "win", if that's quite the right word, for NBC to let things continue. However, ratings for the Leno show have dropped 10% during the same time period, which means they're feeding even fewer viewers to the affiliates' late night newscasts, which was the key that set all these dominoes in motion in the first place.(That said, Leno's lead-in was off substantially as well. Sort of points out the benefits of a strong lead-in, doesn't it?)

The whole mess will probably end, or at least disappear from public view, fairly soon. Enhanced ratings for Tonight aside, NBC simply cannot tolerate things going on like this for much longer.

stay klassy, nbc
January 12, 2010

And now the other shoe has dropped. Mind, it had to get kicked around real hard by that first shoe for a while, but here it is.

So presumably, when NBC moves Jay Leno back to the 10:30 Central time slot, he will actually get to be hosting the Tonight show again. I can't imagine that NBC will want the name to go away after all these many years, and it'll be available.

Except ...

The question is just how much NBC wants to screw over Conan at this point. Considering the rather epochal reaming they've been giving him the past week or so, the idea that they don't "have the stomach" for a long legal battle seems kind of improbable. They may decide to shelve the Tonight show name for a couple of years -- ending something like a continuous 50-odd year run -- purely to keep from having to make a massive payout. After all, part of this whole mess was about NBC wanting to save money at the corporate level, even though they were told and told and TOLD that the Leno show would be ruinous for their affiliates.

That Conan may not have the stomach for a long legal battle I can imagine -- his public persona, at least, is the sort of person who really woudln't like that. And, hey, he's been getting paid a few million a year for a while now. Even with the downturn in the stock market, he surely has enough stored by to decide, What the heck, I'm going to take a couple years off, let my contract expire, maybe go back and do a lot more standup to sharpen those skills again, and then come back to late night with Fox or whoever. And that said, as the article notes, the Fox affiliates are for the most part not at all happy about Fox wanting a late night show and having to give up the lucrative (and unshared) advertising spots that come with the syndicated shows in that timeslot. That's apart from the rather hefty expenses to the network itself that come with starting the show in the first place. Given that their affiliates are going through "a challenging business cycle", it might also suit Fox to back off for a couple of years until things settle down a bit.

The only issue then would be whether or not people were still interested in watching Conan at all -- a very real issue, given how easy people seem to bounce from show to show these days.

nbc and the shadows of the night
January 8, 2010

And all of this coverage came from people noticing that NBC had ordered a startling 18 pilots for next season, including an even more startling 10 one-hour dramas, and unless the Leno show went away, NBC had nowhere for those shows to go, even if they cancelled the rest of their lineup.

Here's the question I'd like to see answered: if NBC really does plan to effectively cancel Leno's show as of the end of the Winter Olympics ... what do they do with the rest of this season? They didn't order drama pilots for this season in large enough numbers to cover the space. They don't have enough comedy shows in reserve to shove back their dramas into the late primetime slot. They let Southland go to TNT -- and I would argue, myself, that it should have been either there or at FX in the first place, but that's neither here nor there. They let Medium go to CBS. So far this season, they let Trauma go, period. That's three shows that they no longer have to plug holes with. The question remains: what does NBC do with that last hour of coverage from the beginning of March through the end of August? (And make no mistake: NBC will need to do something to prevent the normal summer viewing doldrums from absolutely killing any momentum they might build up for next fall.)

They may be able to expand Dateline to take over some of the space. It has the virtues of being relatively well-respected and, you know, cheap. And its ratings couldn't possibly do much worse than Leno. But even Dateline would need some prep time to get stories filmed, edited, ready to air. And the last time NBC tried to overload its nightly lineup with too much of that sort of thing, viewers, again, deserted in droves. People only want just so much news coverage, alas. Apparently, they do have some reality shows in reserve, and as noted in The Wrap's article, they can always pull over some USA, SyFy and Bravo shows for a short-term fix. (That said, they tried doing exactly that the past two summers. Turns out that people really don't want to watch USA shows on NBC. Cable penetration seems to have finally gotten deep enough that most people who want to see those shows actually do watch them on their original broadcast.) Depending on how the contract reads, they may also be able to pull "Friday Night Lights" onto the rotation a bit earlier -- though I'd think that DirectTV would object most strenuously to shortening their exclusive window.

It's likely that whatever sort of short-term solution NBC comes up with, it will involve doing something with the earlier slots as much as the later ones. Those previously mentioned reality shows without air dates will almost certainly be better suited for earlier in the evening rather than later. Perhaps they can come up with some sort of game shows on the fly or perhaps expand existing ones -- two hours of Biggest Loser that night, maybe, instead of one? except that's already been taped, of course, and that would probably be much too major an edit and would likely damage that show very badly. Regardless, doing something earlier would allow them to set the schedule back to the slightly more sane state it was in last season. "Heroes", the mostly-departed "Trauma", "Mercy", "Law and Order" and "Law and Order SVU" are all clearly in timeslots too early for the material -- the "Law and Order" shows most notably. Seriously, who on earth thought it was a good idea to lead Fridays with that material?

NBC has done this sort of rebuilding act before, of course. They were in a terrible state back in the 1980s, before they built their line-ups of doom with the Cosby Show, LA Law, ER, and other shows that pulled them out of the pit. The landscape now, however, is dramatically different. That television viewership has become heavily fractured since then may, oddly enough, help a bit; it means that in order for something to work well, it doesn't need the same sort of huge audiences that you needed back then. (A side note: One of NBC's notable decisions back in the day was cancelling an excellent comedy called "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" because it was damaging their powerhouse Thursday night lineup. At the time, Molly Dodd was something like the 13th highest rated show of the season, and LA Law, which followed, was top ten. They replaced Molly Dodd with, I believe, Family Ties or Night Court. The next season, LA Law was the top rated show on television.) That said, the one thing that NBC had at the time, which they don't have now, is time and stability. They could afford to let shows that didn't do well initially have some time to find their audience. They had people who got to hang around long enough to tinker with lineups until they worked. None of that seems to be true today; if whatever they do to make things work doesn't work fairly quickly, those people may not get a chance to try again.

Basically, NBC has a six-week to two-month window in which to figure out what the hell they do now, as well as a summer to figure out what they do next. The network's certainly going to be looking at some interesting decisions ahead. Possibly -- even probably -- in the Chinese curse sense of "interesting".

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