Another Look At NBC Schedule: It Makes Me Wanna Puke…
By fred | April 3, 2008
NBC revealed its new schedule, and now that we have had a little more time to digest it, let’s come back and see how it went, was it mostly good, or bad.
And I’m sure some will like it, because Friday Night Lights is coming back or because there hasn’t been a complete takeover by reality crap, but just because it’s not the worst it could have been doesn’t make it good. And quite frankly, this schedule is no surprise coming from NBC, but it’s also clearly nothing good. They’re a bunch of idiotic sellouts, and they make no secret about it.
Yes, some shows are back and it’s good, but SNL airs on Thursdays, The Office will have hour-long episode again, and a spinoff, and Scrubs is not around. And those idiots put Life, best shows they have, on Fridays at 10.00 !! I’d kill them just for that.
If this new schedule proves one thing, it is that NBC isn’t trying to do good television, that they don’t care for quality or about their viewers, they really don’t. Their new keywords are “product placement”, they want advertisers to be creating the shows, pretty much.
If you loved to see Heroes promoting the new Nissan, if you had fun seeing BlackBerrys all over the place on The Office, if you really enjoyed Lipstick Jungle thanking Maybeline over & over, and if you liked that commercial for Ford, or Knight Rider as they called it, you’ll love NBC.
NBC sales and marketing president Mike Pilot even promised advertisers that they had the power to take their products, and “make them TV stars“. Because that’s what the shows are going to be about in the future, not the actors, not the characters, not the plots, but the ads ! “You’ll become more than a sponsor. You’ll own a piece of pop culture” NBC promised them.
NBC can’t have any original ideas, but they’re not even trying anymore. Instead, they go for Office spinoff, Knight Rider, and well-known stories like Robinson Crusoe (Crusoe) or Jekyll & Hyde (My Own Worst Enemy), or whatever it is that advertisers will ask them to come up with.
I’ve already said what I thought about that whole Office spinoff “idea”, but let’s come back on when it will actually premiere. After the Superbowl. Now that has to be the stupidest idea ever, really.
You do not use the post-Superbowl slot to have a series premiere, that is nothing but plain stupid ! A new show can’t be perfect from the first episode, often a few episodes are required for everyone to find their place, for the show to get its tone and have its dynamic set in motion, and then it can grow nicely. You need to give a new series those few episodes, and only once done, and if it works, you can then consider to go further.
The post-Superbowl slot should be given to a show that’s already there, that had time to find its place and grow a little audience already, and is now ready to be given a boost and hopefully sent to the next level. Of course I’m in love with Life, I believe it is the best show on NBC and I would have personally loved to see that one get the famous slot, because the show really is that great, and I’m sure that given the chance, people would actually love it too.
But even if they wouldn’t do that, because they’re way too stupid for it, using that precious slot to have a new show to premiere is a stupid idea. Especially when that show comes from Silverman wanting to make more money by creating a spinoff of another show, but that even after a year they still don’t have anything : no characters, no plot, no nothing.
Using that slot to promote a new show and give it a boost is good, but you need to wait a little, wait that it is installed and has gotten itself a nice audience, and then try to bring it to something else, actually use the slot to create a new hit, not just confirm another one, or waste it on something that you have no idea what it will look like, or even be about for that matter.
Putting Criminal Minds on that slot wasn’t really a great idea, and last season Fox didn’t do much better with House. I love the show, but they should have put Bones instead. House is already a hit, it doesn’t need anything to do great. The post-Superbowl slot was perfect to introduce the great little show that Bones is, and try to get people that haven’t tried it out yet to fall for it.
I wanted Life. Another choice I could have understood, is to put Chuck right there. I don’t like that show myself, but it’s been doing good and has a fan base now, and giving it a Superbowl boost would have been the greatest thing that could happen to the show. If they wanted to stick with comedies, the right choice for that slot was obviously 30 Rock. Now that would have been pretty cool, yes. Plus, 30 Rock are Gods when it comes to product placement, don’t tell me Silverman wouldn’t have loved to see Liz promoting some cellphone or I don’t know what right there, in front of millions and millions of people, in a post-Superbowl slot !
At this point, I really hate NBC. It’s a weird thing, because they have some truly amazing shows on (Life, 30 Rock, The Office…) yet they are such a bunch of morons. So I find myself hoping that new Office spinoff will be a failure, confident that Knight Rider will be another Bionic Woman, yet just hoping it’ll only be worst, and praying that Crusoe or My Own Worst Enemy don’t even get Quarterlife ratings.
I do, so that maybe next time, they’ll realize that actual quality and shows like Life, Scrubs or Journeyman, are to be treated with better consideration. So that maybe next time, before thinking about what advertisers want to see, they’ll try to think about what we want to see first, because as it turns out, it’s not advertisers who actually watch TV and are magically counted by Nielsens and รด so valuable to networks… it’s us, the viewers!
Posted in News
Shows: 30 Rock, Chuck, Crusoe, Journeyman, Life, My Own Worst Enemy, Scrubs, The Office
