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Something’s definitely wrong at NBC

By fred | August 6, 2008

They bragged about their new pilot-less process, ordering at least 6 episodes of new series from a script, without “bothering” by first having a pilot episode shot; they also love to say how they go international by co-producing series with other companies; not to mention how they love advertisers and are now asking them for lists of products, then ordering the creative minds to come up with new episodes or series to sell the stuff.

Clearly NBC is trying to innovate, or at least do anything they can think of to show they’re trying, they’re really trying, I’m not sure what it is exactly they’re trying to do, I’m not even sure they do, but they try hard, they never stop trying.

It’s possible I’m a pessimist, it’s possible I have this tendency to hate NBC, anything goes, but the more I read about what’s going on at NBC the more I think it’s not gonna be good, at all. And what really saddens me in this, is that I have a bunch of shows I love which just happen to be on NBC, hence my worries.

I won’t even mention the whole mess about The Office Spinoff, you all know how much I truly hate this crap (and that’s still happening by the way, alongside the new unnamed Amy Poehler project) or that Ford commercial Knight Rider thing.

First, it was their new series The Philanthropist. The show could have been worthwhile, at least at first there were reasons to have hopes, but then creator/showrunner Tom Fontana left, over creative differences. Read NBC wanted to make the show more, how to put it, like anything else we’ve seen billions of times already, or, well, crap.

Recently it was then announced that NBC was looking for an international partner to join in on the project, to split the cost. I’m sure they’ll have good reasons to justify this move, naming how they already worked out the same for another upcoming new failure series of theirs, Crusoe, but the fact and the matter is, I can’t help but thinking they don’t really have faith in the show and just want to limit the damages…

Now I found found out that there’s some shakeup at new series My Own Worst Enemy as well, and creator Jason Smilovic is taking a back seat and won’t be showrunner anymore. Negotiations are happening to get co-executive producer John Eisendrath to step in, and NBC was quick to assure that Smilovic remains involved in the project, and will still be executive producer.

Now I don’t know what’s really happening, but clearly having the creator/showrunner of a new series stepping down before the first episode even airs is not a good sign of things to come – production the pilot episode is only about to wrap. And to me it’s just yet another indication that things are going so well at NBC right now, I feel like adding because they don’t trust the creative people behind the shows.

I’m sure not ordering hundreds of pilot episodes only to go with a couple of them can be a good idea that saves billions, but that doesn’t mean they should entirely get ride of the pilot step altogether. Even more so if they don’t have real and strong intentions of fully trusting the creative people they hire to work on the shows. I’m still incredibly sadden by the way things went down with Firefly, which was and remains one of the best shows I’ve seen, and was killed by stupid network executive who don’t get it and refuses to trust the people who should be in charge, because they think they know better.

Posted in News
Shows: Life, My Own Worst Enemy, Robinson Crusoe, The Office, The Philanthropist