Is NBC Relevant? (answer: a resounding no)

Part of me wants to feel sorry for the once-mighty NBC, but the delusional decisions and arrogance of Zucker and his henchmen make me wonder why I should give a darn. For much of the last 80 or so years, NBC was a hugely successful and dominant media conglomerate, having a profound effect on American culture. Losing them seems like losing part of your family. But hey, they are just a business, and have no soul, other than the souls of the creative folks who work there (but apparently not the ones who make major decisions.

The NBC network was not created to enlighten, entertain, or promote human progress; no, it was created mostly to sell radio receivers (and later, TV sets). It was created by RCA, which originally was a holding company that bought up all the patents it could relating to broadcasting technologies, then used their muscle to give them a competitive advantage over other companies. Nothing wrong with that; it's the way business is done. Of course, they had more than a few decisions that weren't in the public's interest. For example, in the early 1950s, there were a number of competing technological schemes to make color television. GE had created what was perhaps the best one; if adopted, television would have had much higher definition and truer colors, but we instead adopted an inferior method that made the US television industry the laughingstock of electronic engineers in the rest of the world. Why? Because the GE scheme wasn't backwards compatible with the monochrome standards of the time (which dated back to the 1920s), and RCA didn't want to alienate their existing customer base. Kind of like the way Microsoft Windows suffered for 15 years as long as they were backwards compatible with older versions of DOS.

But that's another story...

The problem facing older conglomerates like NBC is they were built on a business model of scarcity. In 1948, it was extremely expensive to build a TV broadcasting station (as it continues to be). There was a scarcity of available bandwidth. It wasn't possible to connect distant stations which each other, resulting in a huge investment of coaxial cables. Small players couldn't afford the economies of scale of providing content to multiple markets, so it was left mostly to the old-line radio content providers to expand into television networks. Networks are a good thing in many ways. Providing the same content to most of the entire country brought people together as a cohesive unit. Entertainment, news, and tragedies could all be experienced and shared by everyone.

But the darker side is that "broadcasting," by its very definition, means the content had to have broad appeal. That resulted in a general dumbing down of anything controversial, and favoring the mediocre over the adventurous. Pioneers like Ernie Kovacs and the Smothers Brothers were rare exceptions.

Which brings us to the current "controversy" - the history of the Tonight Show has been one of blandness and taking the safe road. Not to insult the genuinely talented and nice guy Jay Leno, or his predecessors like Johnny Carson (and even Jack Paar, who wasn't afraid to stand up to NBC). The network needs this show to have very wide appeal, and doesn't want to take chances. In the past, the routine was to give the viewing public entertainment in the evening, culminating with serious dramas at ten PM. It is followed by the local news, then a bit of "Tonight" to relax folks and send them off to dreamland with a little relief from the serious stresses. Nothing wrong with that. But its those local stations that are getting upset, because they no longer have a strong lead-in to their local news broadcast (a major revenue source), and anything less than "Tonight" following it is bad for ratings also.

Used to be that 10PM was a special hour, one in which mature and relevant programs that dealt with social issues could appear; think "E.R.", "Law and Order", "Hill Street Blues", "L.A. Law." Last fall, NBC essentially admitted defeat. These serious shows faced a diminishing audience, were expensive to produce, and have to succeed for man\ny seasons in order to be syndicated - such are the economics of modern television.

At the same time, viewers suddenly had lots of choices. When I was a kid, most markets had the three major networks, a PBS (or "educational") station, and maybe a UHF station that was considered bargain basement. The networks had firm control, and called the shots. Today this is reversed; viewers have access to hundreds of channels, and an ever stronger alternate content delivery network in the Internet. Other technological advances have further hampered network control, such as the DVR (like Tivo). I'm the network's worst nightmare; I almost never watch programs in real time, skip all commercials, watch DVDs or direct downloads, and rarely miss anything of importance to me (unlike the old days, when rival networks would often run top shows at the same time).

In other words, the networks lost control, and aren't likely to get it back. I shed few tears over this; most TV is fluff anyway, and I have never been impresses with what most of what they have had to offer me. And I rather like being in control.

Of course, I'm not your typical viewer, and maybe am slightly ahead of the curve in how I get my programming. I like Jay Leno, he's very talented and likeable, and does good things with his position. But aside from the opening monologue, most of the Tonight Show has had little relevance to me, and I don't watch it. Dave Letterman is more my kind of guy, but he's pretty cynical, and most of his guests have little to offer me.

So if I have to support somebody, it would have to be Conan. He's not afraid to take chances, has an offbeat sense of humor, and a long history of intense creativity, including a stint as a Simpson's writer. Unfortunately, he's probably a little too edgy for the kind of broad appeal Leno has. He does appeal to a younger demographic, though, and NBC seems to have missed a great opportunity to reach them by not nurturing his show more.

So yeah, none of this really matters much to me. And that's the problem NBC is facing. When they were recently sold, the value was for their cable channels; the NBC Network was more or less thrown in, since the old network model is too expensive to be profitable with in most cases. What do they have left? Creating more cheap to produce but devoid of any real value "reality" shows? Real-life versions of parodies like "Ow, My Balls" as fodder for those of low aspirations? One of my favorite films, Idiocracy, is seeming more and more like a documentary every day.

Goodbye, NBC; it was nice while it lasted. I can't imagine what it would take to get me to ever take you seriously again.