Final column of the press tour looks at how early and often people from other networks took shots at NBC for both Ben Silverman's tenure and the Jay Leno plan.
Sorry I didn't blog more this time around, but I feel like I've gathered up a lot of good material (some from the press conferences, most from one-on-one interviews) that I'm going to be writing in the coming weeks once I'm home and my brain has stopped resembling tapioca pudding.
See ya when I'm back in Jersey.
9 comments:
Great job blogging/tweeting all this -- I had a great time keeping up with your material!
Ditto. I've been checking the blog and twitter incessantly. Great work.
For all the backlash this Leno thing has begot, I wonder if anyone looks at the bottom line anymore. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOST (as an example of a network hourlong that is event tv fo me. the only one, anymore) but think about hwat it costs to produce any 1 hour drama. Really, it's a lot of money. Like 2,3 milan ep? ok, so you have 5 dramas a week, 22 eps a year and you end up with like 220 mil a year before advertising and all that hoopla. And be honest, how many of these even last? None, nowadays.
Yes, we would ALL love to see these slots taken up by great shows (god I miss NORTHERN EXPOSURE more and more) but the truth is that there is more crap being produced than anything else. The LOSTs and MAD MENs and BREAKING BADs are so few and far between.
In the end, this might work because 3eno DOES appeal to an older segment that is fed up with so much crap on their TVs. All this meansi s hat older folks can get to bed earlier nowadays.
Wins all around. Except for us discriminating viewers. But there just ain't enough of us around anymore.
It's funny listening to these producers complain about the death of the one hour drama, specially those running shows on cable where they are allowed more freedom then NBC would have ever permitted.
And I'd like to see the talent back their outrage up and not promote their projects on Leno in the future. But that will never happen. His show will be all fine & dandy when they need the pub.
The death of the one hour drama started with the proliferation of crappy reality shows on networks. Why are the Bachelorette and Big Brother still on? because they are cheap to make.
Leno five days a week in prime time did not cause this problem and other network heads are hypocrites if they act like they are above this, because they all air too many bad reality shows.
I was no fan of Leno's style on the Tonight Show, but if he steps up his game in prime time with regard to his comedy bits, it probably won't be worse than most of the sitcoms out there.
And before people started blaming the death of the network one-hour drama on cable or reality shows they did it on the proliferation of newsmagazines. Remember five hours of Dateline a week? At least Leno will have, like, celebrity slotcars or something. I don't know. It's not like I'll be watching him.
But then I don't remember the last hour-long NBC drama that caught my interest. Homicide? Manimal?
I do find it odd that no one gets mad at Simon Cowell for taking up so many hours of prime time. To repurpose the critique of Leno... Why does American Idol have to be on two nights a week? Doesn't Simon realize how many writers, actors, and directors he's putting out of work by not just being on one night? Hasn't he made enough money that he should just retire all together?
At least the people who work on Leno's show are allowed to be in a union and get health care and money towards their pension. The writers of American Idol (and yes, it does have them) don't get any benefits or recognition. Which is odd because game show writers have traditionally been union.
Mmmmmm... tapioca brainnnnnssss....
What I don't get is that, as jasctt said, it's about the bottom line. NBC needs its programming to generate more revenue than it cost to produce. NBC happens to own the USA network, which happens to have like six original prime-time series that, on balance, seem to be doing fairly well - maybe I'm wrong, because I don't follow ratings, but USA usually manages to find something they can say in the ads, like "In Plain Sight was the #1 new show on cable last year" or whatever (I gather everybody bows down before The Closer). So somebody somewhere in the food chain seems to be able to bring somewhat profitable shows to the table. Now you could argue that USA's shows are targeting a specific kind of niche and aren't generating the ad revenue that you need for a network primetime slot, but you're also not gonna tell me that Psych's budget is anywhere near The Mentalist's, either (right?) - so...
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