I don’t think we need to rehash the undoing of NBC over the last few months, an undoing that hit humiliating new lows by falling behind Univision in the ratings, and having its once MUST SEE Thursday night lineup being replaced by a 20-year-old Matlock movie. Their dramas aren’t working, and even their sitcoms aren’t working anymore, so what to do? MORE REALITY TV, OF COURSE.
Ugh.
First of all, the biggest change is NBC’s decision to move their very expensive, heavily promoted failure, Smash, to Saturdays, where it can quietly die without anyone noticing, although the show will finish out all 17 episodes. That is a worse fate than the Friday night death slot, but on the bright side, instead of facing stiff Tuesday competition, it will go up against COPS. To replace Smash on Tuesday nights beginning in April, NBC is putting their dating show Ready for Love in their most coveted post-The Voice time slot. Perfect. WAY TO EXPLOIT YOUR ONE GOOD TIME SLOT, NBC! A new dating show! How original! I cannot wait to completely avoid that.
Ready for Love is hosted by Giuliana and Bill Rancic, the latter of whom gained his popularity as a contestant on Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, which has not had particularly good ratings (except in relation to the rest of NBC’s schedule). But, without Ready for Love in its once intended Sunday night schedule, NBC has decided instead to expand their awful Celebrity Apprentice to two hours, which means EVEN MORE FILLER. EVEN MORE DONALD TRUMP.
In the meantime, Go On — which had fairly decent ratings when it came on after The Voice but tumbled into near obscurity after The Voice went on hiatus, will move to Thursday nights after The Office for its final two episodes of the season in April. That’s probably a testing grounds; if it does OK, maybe it returns for a second season. If it continues to get lower ratings than Whitney, then it’ll probably be cancelled (better still, it does save us from 1600 Penn, at least for two weeks).
Meanwhile, with Whitney, Go On and The New Normal all airing finales in late March and early April and Smash being put to the Saturday pasture, NBC is left with some scheduling holes, so it has decided to bring back The Sing Off, yet another reality singing competition (HOORAY). To be fair, if I had to watch one singing competition, it would be The Sing Off, but only because Ben Folds is smarter than every other judge on every other reality singing competition on television. Also, a capella is kind of cool.
The take home: More reality tv! More singing competitions! More Donald Trump! More failure! Why don’t we start a Kickstarter campaign to buy NBC? What could it possibly cost? $10 and some belly button lint?
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More Donald Trump = more times I can tell him to go fuck himself on Twitter. Works for me.
I don’t think Trump’s not being on TV precludes you from telling him to go fuck himself on Twitter. That’s a god-given right that should be exercised daily, if not hourly. Just sayin’….
Could we just do a Kickstarter campaign to get Parks & Rec, the only reliably good show left on NBC, moved to a better network? It would happen after the Community season (likely series) finale, so we wouldn’t really have to worry about what happens to NBC after that. We can just tell our kids about how there used to be a network with a peacock for a logo but now it’s the largest Lane Bryant in Midtown.
They should just film Ben Folds enthusiastically talking about music for an hour a week.
I can’t believe they haven’t called Dick Wolf and been like “We will literally buy ANYTHING YOU HAVE!!”
In (city), local police enforcement fight (specific type) of crimes. There is a (race #1) cop, with a female (race #2) partner. They work alongside the (stereotype, age group) prosecutor and his (race #3) DA.
he couldn’t do worse than they are now.
Expect the mighty Dickwolf to be all over the 2014 season.
I bet Timberlake’s people would be willing to pay NBC to shoehorn in a bunch of pro-Timberlake content.
I’m just waiting until they bring back Bill Cosby’s bloated corpse and team it with Nick Cannon for a Cosby Show reboot.
Why doesn’t NBC just hire Dusten Rowls to fix their network? He seems to have all the answers.
someone woke up on the wrong side of the bunk bed!
That’s good hustle.
We also would have accepted “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the race car.”
At this point, could it hurt?
Even at 36, I still want that race car bed.
That Ricky Schroeder kid gets everything he wants.
um, i sleep on a pile of dirty laundry. duh.
They should just hire Stephen J. Cannell, have him reboot all of his greatest misses…..JJ Starbuck, The Hat Squad, Booker, Cobra…..
God, I loved The Hat Squad.
You know Cannell’s dead right? Well, that probably wouldn’t stop NBC…
Goddammit, now my wife is going to make me start recording The Sing Off….
The only thing I liked about that show was the time I got her to believe that Ben Folds’ brother Richard is the more talented musician.
it could be worse, my wife now has me recording Boston’s Finest.
Danger, have you been sending them your pitches? You really should.
My wife and her friends saw the commercial for that Ready for Love and were disgusted. Guys won’t watch it because, you know, we’re guys and girls won’t watch it because it because it’s an even LESS romantic version of the Bachelor. Who does that leave? NBC’s hottest new demographic – underage trannies.
I just found out a friend of mine is one of the “contestants” on it. Ugh.
Not even trans: just underage mute and deaf kids.
Go On is decent. So, obviously, it wil be canceled.
Season finales in March & April? Whaaa?
In the Good Ol’ Days, the May book was crucial for annual schedule buys, due to the fact that 1) the July book was a joke and 2) November book was too late in the game. You HAD to have viewer momentum at the beginning of the year, with the drive for peak viewership in May, that would have an effect in the affilliate’s lifeblood for the entire next fiscal year. The fact that NBC ops are essentially throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks in the next few months, means that there are a lot of affilliate GMs who will be re-evaluating FY14 budgets in the next six months, meaning wider ramifications for those in sales, marketing, news, etc. Good luck to those at NBC affills, thanks to some clueless asshole in NY you might be re-evaluating your career path.
A capella is cool? you mean the singers from Where in the world is carmen sandiego?
Jeez, prime time is dead, Today has fallen in the ratings. Is Leno at least getting good ratings? I know he sucks but they have to have 1 win…right? Daytime soaps?
They could air Rachel Maddow getting a bikini wax once a week and the ratings would be better than any of their dramas and most of their comedies. Welding goggle sales would sky rocket as well.
No dice. In the midst of the aforementioned bikini waxing, the goggles do nothing.
I am more than ok with more The Sing-Off. It’s the only reality show, other than The Amazing Race, that I like.
That said, LOL at NBC. And please, PLEASE cancel Whitney. For some reason I found myself watching 5 minutes of it last night. It took an entire viewing of this week’s Justified again to scrub my brain back to normal.
NBC has been cursed ever since they fired Conan.
I guess that Schrute Farms spin off isnt looking to bad now.
So, after Community dies and Parks and Rec is somehow assassinated, I should just remove NBC from my listings entirely.
Pretty sure Celebrity Apprentice has always been two hours long. I am a terrible person and can’t stop watching it.
It has, it doesn’t take anything but minimal research to know that either.
Well Comcast just finished buying all of GE’s shares and owns NBC in whole so I wonder if they’ll just gut the damn thing next season. It’ll probably be a shitshow
There are conspiracy theories floating around the Internet that Comcast bought NBC specifically to block the spread of white-space broadband. I’m… skeptical.
Gary Oldman doing that for six hours a night would be far more entertaining.
Wonder what Fred Dryer is doing these days? Him and McCall in an all new Hunter? As an early teenager I had a massive crush on her.
At the end of Warren Littlefield’s book he points out that in the Comcast deal, NBC – the broadcast network was valued at $0. So $10 is too much to pay.
I am so glad Awake was cancelled.
This show was the WORST! Everyone…Eva, the hosts, the “matchmakers”, bachelors, bachelorrettes…were ALL FAKES who wanted cheap fame and more money for their books/careers! Good to know the masses aren’t that stupid to buy it! Shame on fame, attention hungry, wanna be glamorous but 4 ft. With a plain face Eva!
Now…when will the cockroach Kardashian pukes go away?