Mistakes Were Made

Three really good pieces today on the NBC-Leno-Conan debacle:

Chuck Ross at TV Week looks at why NBC suddenly gives a crap about its affiliates after basically telling them to go suck eggs for the last several months. (Here's a hint: Surprise, surprise -- it has everything to do with the proposed Comcast deal):

"OK, let’s review: (Jeff) Gaspin (NBC Universal TV Entertainment chief) says the only reason he’s yanked the Leno show in primetime is because about a third of his affiliates may have started preempting the show. And that it wasn’t the actual preemptions that would have bothered him, but the bad publicity that would accompany just the threat of preemptions. Furthermore, this publicity would be a public relations nightmare and would damage NBC, Gaspin says...

Come on. NBC, the once proud peacock, has gotten so much bad publicity in the last few years as the architect of its own demise that it’s the Tiger Woods of media...

But isn’t he kidding himself, ladies and gentlemen of the jury -- and us as well -- if he doesn’t think that an honest connecting of the dots inevitably and irrefutably leads to the conclusion that the reason NBC all of a sudden fears another 'PR nightmare' right now is because they are indeed worried about the political fallout it could have on the Comcast deal.

Gaspin says he’s just doing his job and does not hear footsteps from Philadelphia. But clearly one of the jobs of a top executive at NBCU today is to ensure that the Comcast deal gets done, since management of NBCU and parent General Electric have said they believe that the consummation of the deal is in the best interests of the company."

The New York Times's David Carr examines NBC's embarrassingly public midlife crisis and wonders what it will mean for NBC Universal chairman Jeff Zucker, whose incompetence has turned a once-proud television network into a nationwide laughingstock:

"It was Mr. Zucker who decided to fix the network’s problems in prime time by putting late night franchises in play and it was, in the end, Mr. Zucker who decided that the solution to bailing out a leaky boat was to blow more holes in the bottom.

Mr. Zucker has a three-year contract with his incoming bosses at Comcast, who will probably notice that everything around him is now horribly damaged. Not since New Coke has a storied brand been so thoroughly maimed. 'The Tonight Show,' once a gilded entertainment franchise, is now just one more broken toy in the mistake pile...

After a series of bold moves, the network is now trying to hedge its way out of the corner, by slipping “Leno” later back in the schedule, which effectively pushes Mr. O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon of “Late Night” deeper into the night...

The message to the younger talent is one thing -- wait for a turn that may never come or may be taken back at any second -- but the message to younger audiences is even clearer: a legacy industry will default to legacy assets and ride them down to the bitter end."

And the irascible Nikke Finke over at Deadline Hollywood notices that while Zucker screwed everything up, it was Gaspin who had to fall on his sword:

"Jeff Gaspin got right down to it because that's what the TV critics and reporters wanted: his first public statement on NBC's late night debacle orchestrated by NBCU boss Jeff Zucker. Of course, Zucker was MIA, leaving Gaspin to clean up the mess and face the press at the Television Critics Association confab this morning.

Afterwards, Gaspin was mobbed onstage by the media, who were surprised to hear him claim that he made the decision to pull the plug on The Jay Leno Show in primetime and then move it to 11:35 PM and in the process shakeup the network's late night -- not Jeff Zucker. (Talk about a failure of leadership at NBC Universal!) 'I called Jeff and said, but this was not news to him, 'It’s time we make the call.' He said, I don’t remember the exact words, but he understood and he didn’t disagree.'"

One more thing: Jeff Gaspin, NBC Universal's embattled head of entertainment TV, who replaced talentless douche Ben Silverman in July of last year, is an MBA who got his start as NBC News's director of financial planning. In other words, although he's an accomplished programmer for VH1 and Bravo, he began his career at NBC as an accountant.

That tells you all you need to know, folks.