Posted on 09/12/2006 7:04:12 AM PDT by abb
Who's Afraid of TV 2.0?
If you work at NBC Universal, beware the ides of September. Peacock staffers are sweating bullets over the impending release of what the company is calling TV 2.0, a proposed top-to-bottom reorganization of the network to streamline it for the Internet age. While NBC Universal Television Group honcho Jeff Zucker is pitching the project—recommendations are due mid-month, according to one source—as a visionary look to the future, staffers suspect it will be a merciless look at the bottom line. "Everyone is waiting for the ax to fall," says an NBCer. "There was a board meeting a couple of weeks ago, and the word was, 'How much can you cut for the fourth quarter?'"
"Zucker says we don't want to be like the music industry," says another staffer. Translation: "They want to squeeze money out of this place."
And there's less and less money to go around. NBC, which dropped from first place in the advertiser-friendly 18-to-49-year-old demographic in 2004 to dead last for the past two seasons, sold $1.7 billion in ads for its non-sports programming last May at the Upfronts, when advertisers place bets on the networks' new shows. That's a 10 percent drop from its 2005 take, and a whopping 41 percent drop from 2004, when hits like Friends and The Apprentice raked in $2.6 billion.
An NBC Universal executive, speaking on background, insisted that no decisions have been made: "They're looking at a lot of different scenarios. Nothing has been decided yet." Staffers at the network's news division are particularly on edge because news budgets are a large and easy target, and because Jay Ireland, a former GE auditor and bean-counter at the company's plastics division who now runs NBC Universal's station division, is the exec tasked with wedging NBC News into the TV 2.0 scheme.
Speaking of NBC News: Former news division chief Neal Shapiro, who was unceremoniously ousted by Zucker one year ago, is expanding his television portfolio, Radar hears. According to two sources who know him, Shapiro has been busy shopping around an idea for a procedural crime drama to the networks. Shapiro declined to comment.
Ping
NBC ya later!!!
Give those a shot.
A 46.9% cummulative drop over 2 years may help explain MSM feelings of Great Depression II.
And the hits just keep on comin'...
Death by a thousand cuts with hope springing eternal seems like a bad way to go.
NBC and all of the other networks are finally getting thier collective come-uppence from the viewing public. They need to go back to real comedy, and not the smut they try selling now, and get some real writers to write, and not the crackheads and junkies and drunks they all favor now. It won't happen, but it is fun to think about. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy watching them die on the vines they grew that choked them to death.
" Don't underpay your technical and clerical workers."
Well, that would certainly get the International Workers of the World demographic, but I doubt the network's future prospects would be altered all that much.
About the only show I enjoy on NBC anymore is Vegas. Yes, it's shallow, but it's fun.
CBS has some good, established, shows and some new shows this season look like they may show promise. They stay away from making statements and try to entertain and actually hire some conservative actors (Gary Sinese, James Woods and I believe Mark Harmon is a conservative, too) The Unit is excellent and NCIS is entertaining.
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