A Few Thoughts on NBC
It’s usually the first post on Friday where I recap The Office, typically there isn’t much to rehash about comedies other than this was funny, that wasn’t funny, this worked, that didn’t, etc. But that’s not in the cards this morning. Why, you ask? Because our local news dominated the 8:30pm et. slot with a solid twenty-two minutes of weather updates (supposedly there was a tornado getting ready to hit Pike County).
I understand the need for severe weather warnings and the like, and I do not know who has the executive decision on this, the network or our local NBC affiliate, but twenty-five minutes? If the weather was severe enough to warrant all that television coverage, then surely enough the fine citizens of Pike County had lost all TV reception, if not all power. But I can almost assure you that the weather has never been cataclysmic enough to demand non-stop coverage like NBC (or WCMH) was doing. And really, I’m not trying to undermine the importance of warning everyone in the general viscinity of a possible tornado, but CBS (or WBNS) simply skipped all their commercials during Survivor to update the local masses.
When I got up this morning, I had three minutes of the Office episode, twenty-two of weather coverage and five minutes of commercials recorded on my DVR. Really what’s the point of the three minutes? It’s like they’re saying, “Yeah, it’s on, but you’re not going to watch it unless you cop it on Itunes”. Maybe this is indicative of why CBS is #1 and NBC cannot get over ten million viewers for any series. That isn’t to say that weather warnings are specifically the sole cause of the current state of both networks, but rather one is simply governed much better that the other, or at least is much more fortunate to have comptent local syndicates.
Whatever the cause, NBC has has been bottoming out this year. And while I prefer their original programming much more than any of the other networks (meaning they have at least two series I make appointment television, one I casually watch and several I can respect but never tune in to), Kevin Reilly and such need to get their shit together before NBC cleans house and the new management revives Fear Factor with five straight nights of “celebrity” editions.
/rant
A recap of The Sopranos episode “Remember When” later this afternoon.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:51 am
[...] Tuesday Links May 1st, 2007 by Christopher Gabel Just a quick note before we get to the links, the most recent Office episode was replayed in Columbus at 2am the same night cancelled the series to bombard us with weather updates. I missed this little nugget of information and failed to record it. A friend of mine, however, was in on the ruse and still has it recorded. So expect a full recap tomorrow. Onto the links… [...]