The arguement that NBC under Jeff Zucker has become a joke is really nothing new:
Zucker can't program a network, but he's an expert in super-sizing
NBC's Jeff Zucker has given up
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/index1.html
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/index2.html
Zucker can't program a network, but he's an expert in super-sizing
NBC's Jeff Zucker has given up
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/
It’s easy to enumerate how dire things are for the network: The fourth-place finishes, night after night, in both total viewers and the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that still serves as TV’s gold standard. The absence—for the third year running—of any new hit show. (For the week ending November 1, NBC placed exactly one series in the top 30.) The continued attrition of the network’s Thursday-night lineup, which throughout the eighties and nineties was the bedrock of both NBC’s wide appeal and its yearly Emmy tally and now has only The Office and 30 Rock keeping that old tradition-of-quality candle burning. And the fact that the network’s one big prime-time ratings success—Sunday Night Football—goes off the air in early January, making the season’s second half, particularly after the Winter Olympics, even bleaker.
NBC’s latest Dark Age began a few years ago, but worsened last December, when Zucker, who has run or overseen the network’s entertainment programming since 2000, announced that Jay Leno, the departing host of the Tonight Show, who was grumbling about handing the reins over to Conan O’Brien, had won a whopper of a consolation prize: five hours of prime time a week. Good-bye, five scripted dramas. Hello, one cheap-to-make replacement that, for all the promises about new concepts and creative rejuvenation, would end up being a bland clone of Leno’s Tonight Show, when it arrived ten months later. Zucker hung tough when his decision was trashed by TV writers angry that a talk show was going to put many of them out of work, and critics who, noting that Leno’s late-night run had not been distinguished by a whole lot of innovation, saw the move as a statement: We’re not even going to pretend we’re trying anymore.
Zucker saw it as a statement as well: This is a business, and we’re in it to make money. Phrases like “managing for margins” (meaning “We don’t care if fewer people watch as long as we make a profit”were incanted as new gospel. When critics carped, he shrugged; when the head of the network’s Boston affiliate threatened not to air the show, NBC slapped him back in line. Leno, Zucker explained, would provide 92 weeks of original programming over two years for a small fraction of what it costs to produce and license scripted dramas. Preemptively redefining success downward, NBC let it be known that a barely detectable 1.5 rating among 18-to-49-year-olds (meaning consistent last-place finishes) would be an occasion for boardroom high fives.
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/index1.html
http://nymag.com/news/media/61857/index2.html
