NBC asks viewers for better sitcom ideas

Entertainment Weekly ^ | April 8, 2014 | James Hibbert

[Buckeye McFrog]

The broadcast network announced “an unprecedented effort to discover fresh comedic voices” on Tuesday by launching a national campaign offering aspiring comedy writers from around the country the chance to pitch their sitcom ideas. [snip]

[GeronL]

Not every joke be about sex, take out the gay and leftist propaganda would help

[Iron Munro]

How about one where a goofy, air-headed, half black, homosexual, illegal alien dope addict is married off to a large, ugly, manly black woman by a bunch of communist and socialist conspirators with an eye on getting the guy elected to the presidency?

Hilarity and high jinks ensue when they succeed through a combination of vote fraud, playing the race card and almost crashing the entire US economy with the aid of greedy capitalist bankers who want to plunder the US Treasury.

[Rummyfan]

It sounds like Family Ties...

[Gaffer]

The panel includes Aziz Ansari, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Mindy Kaling, Adam McKay, Seth Meyers, Mike Schur, Amy Poehler, and several others

Frankly, the only one on this list outside of Aziz (possibly) I'd even think has good ideas would be Jason Bateman. The rest, like Amy Poehler can suck it.

And, I also am extremely tired of having the requirement to put some fun-loving Gay in every damn TV show, comedy or otherwise - that goes for Modern Family, too.

These attempts at normalization never delve into the depravity and buggering that goes on, only the so-called 'love' for another human being. Further, showing these deviants as normal parental examples for young children is entirely contrived and artificial.

[be-baw]

Last Man Standing is pretty close to that

[Rummyfan]

You forgot to mention Adrienne Barbeau's assets...

[dfwgator]

How about this.....a poor Arab Bedouin discovers oil and then moves to Bel-Air and hilarity ensues.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xasgz2_saturday-night-live-the-bel-airabs_fun

[RatRipper]

You are $h1++1n me, right????

[Texas Eagle]

Okay. There's this guy who used to be Vice President of the United States and he totally believes in man-made global warming so he goes about haranguing people about their excessive use of fossil fuels (carbon footprints we'll call it), meanwhile, he lives in a 20,000 sq. ft. house he rarely visits while he travels on a large jet that emits tons and tons of carbon dioxide into the air and......

Nahhhhh. Never mind. Completely unbelievable.

Gosh. This coming up with funny tv shows that have plausible plot lines is tough.

[SamAdams76]

Or how about this:

A ship of "global warming" enthusiasts sail to Antarctica to prove global warming and proceed to get stuck in ice. Hilarity and hijinks ensue as they wait for their rescue. We can also have subplots aboard the icebreakers sent to rescue them as they too get mired in ice. This series promises to be a laugh a minute.

We can title it "Ship Of Fools".

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

Your "son" character sounds a bit like Alex Keaton from Family Ties.

[massmike]

The way Mr. Roper called Jack “tinkerbell” or “fairy”,it’s amazing they still show it in reruns!

[jsanders2001]

How ‘bout a political series with a black president who is loved by the limousine liberals and people that receive government welfare benefits who is really gay and Muslim that is supported and financed by a multi-billionare who wants to rule the world that is trying to stage a coup? His nemisis, the Tea Party patriots find out about the plot and try to stop him by forming an underground grass roots movement which he despises because they stand in the way of his evil plan so he uses the MSM to paint them as evil anarchists who love a sky god that doesn’t exist (even though he believes there is one too) and tries time after time to stop their gun shipments so he can begin killing them to use them to manufacture “black magic”, a new meat product that people can buy cheaper but on’t know what it is (you really don’t think he’d let them call it by the white man’s name ((soylent green)) do you?). That plan isn’t working well so he creates a healthcare “solution” that forces everyone to buy it or they can’t buy or trade anything. On top of that they have to get an invisible tattoo on their hand or forehead and agree to follow his rules. The healthcare plan also has a secret provision in it that the policyholder agrees to terminate their life after 5 years of paying no taxes into the IRS or 3 years of not paying insurance bu the patriots haven’t learned that they are going to be turned into lunch meat yet.

Stay tuned for more...

[Rummyfan]

Normally I'd add the "except for sports" caveat here, but I quit watching the felons in the NFL and NBA many moons ago.

About the only broadcast events I watch anymore are the majors in golf (and, hey, The Master's starts tomorrow!), some of the World Series, and the NFL Playoffs. Trouble is that the broadcasters have let their bias spill over into sports too. Seems like you cannot watch an event without some commentator segueing into an aside, liberal-biased of course, on current events, or worse, BO showing up to hog the spotlight.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

Yup, Jack was about as not-gay as they came.

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, "reality TV" not workin' out for ya?

NBC should either get rid of its news division, or start a 24 hour news network for the "second" channel on this ATSC digital broadcast crap; the NBC affiliate here uses that for a really lame 24 hour weather channel. They'd take market share away from ABC and CBS in all time slots, and nab some from Fox News. MSNBC (whatever it's called now) and CNN would get even more marginalized. Affiliates would be required to fill the noon and dinnertime slots, and have their late news in the hour or half hour before the Tonight Show (because that ain't goin' anywhere).

I remember in the 1970s when Carson was at his peak and NBC had bottomed out across the board; despite the late hour, the Tonight Show was a substantial fraction of NBC's entire viewership and revenue. Johnny could set pretty much any terms he wanted.

Sitcom ideas that would fit the overall NBC milieu...

• unsuccessful teen suicide bomber, gets probation, and has to attend a suburban high school. He also has to do community service, which consists of doing custodial duties at a local church where the minister is an NRA member who cheats on his wife.
• an abortion clinic, where the wise-cracking lead character is modeled after Kermit Gosnell.
• big city political machine mayor, a Republican, who has all the moral fiber as that dirty cop in the show "The Shield", to be set in Chicago (see, reality TV).
• an alternative reality show where Trayvon Martin survived, graduated college, went to law school, and because the other possible candidates were either not home or had dead cell phone batteries, winds up appointed to the Supreme Court.

The nation is urbanized, and city audiences are predominantly non-white. That's the audience for the "reality" TV, and they tend to watch schlock like the dance-offs and over-the-top singing "competitions" where they can vote on it and no one checks their ID. The other stuff they watch is more frankly garbage, like Maury, Jerry (is he off the air?), fake courtroom shows, and celebrity this or that.

The suburbanized audiences are predominantly white, soft-boiled libs who watch plotless soap-opera-like "comedy" like "How I Met Your Mother". That crowd likes what it likes, and once they saddle on a show, it eats up the time slot market share and drinks it dry.

Country audiences are hard to reach because the leftist faux news broadcasts used to be the lead-in, but for the most part we don't bother with that garbage -- hence NBC should either dump its "news" division or move it to 24 hour on the back channel.

It took me years to discover "The Big Bang Theory", and then it was only because someone had the season one disk set. Like "Two and Half Men", "Friends", "The Drew Carey Show", and a raft of others, BB comes from Warner's TV production, which has a high success rate and can sell to the highest bidder.

I didn't tune into Two and Half because I kinda loathed Sheen, and didn't start watching it until I more or less had to watch an episode after it reached syndication and peed my pants laughing.

20 or so years ago I didn't watch Seinfeld at first because that standup intro they did for the early seasons absolutely sucked, because his standup sucks.

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[blueunicorn6]

“No one watches our sitcoms. Don’t they realize how smart and funny we are? The network executives are beating us up because no one watches our shows. What can we do to get back at the audience and network executives who don’t realize how brilliant and funny we are?”

“Let’s ask everybody for their ideas. That way, the network executives will see that we really are brilliant.”

“But, don’t we get paid big bucks to be funny? Isn’t this really admitting that we should be replaced?”

“Ummmmm......yeah.”

[SunkenCiv]

IOW, it’s a reality show where people pitch ideas to a bunch of has-beens? Why doesn’t NBC just put them all in canoes and make them race — through piranha-infested waters?

[Rummyfan]

You mean this one?