NBC's '2.0' may be a zero

Verne Gay | Off Camera

October 23, 2006

Did you read the news about NBC last week (oh boy)? Seven hundred lay-offs worldwide. ... MSNBC headquarters in Secaucus will be shuttered, and the network moved to 30 Rock ... 8 p.m. slots on the NBC prime-time schedule will be handed over to "non-scripted" programs, like "Deal or No Deal."

NBC even gave this "restructuring" plan a catchy new name: "NBC 2.0."

Everyone - that is to say, the press and analysts - bought this with all the gap-toothed gullibility of a first-time tourist at Times Square. So, NBC really IS serious about the digital future and really IS making the tough calls that have to be made, everyone seemed to agree.

Welcome to Times Square, suckers. It was all a shell game, designed to divert attention away from the real issues at hand, which are a troubled prime-time schedule and a muddled top management succession plan. Throw away the press release. NBC is still 1.0.

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Let's take each of last week's heady declarations one by one.

First, "700 layoffs." As you know, analyst types love to hear the word "layoff." It makes the ice water they have in lieu of blood flow just a little more freely and their tiny, shriveled hearts beat a just a little faster. It says to them: Oh great, this company is serious about controlling costs in the face of digital competition (even though NBC was on the forefront of the digital revolution well before CBS and ABC). In fact, the 700 figure is mostly meaningless. There are 14,000 NBC Universal employees around the globe. Anybody who has ever worked for a vast bureaucracy well knows that jobs - often left unfilled - accrue like barnacles on the bottom of a tanker. These "layoffs" - in other words - are mostly jobs that will also be left unfilled.

Second, the move of MSNBC to 30 Rock. This is effectively the correction of a mistake made 10 years ago when NBC built a cavernous new studio-office facility in Secaucus that (to this day) sits largely empty. NBC could have built an MSNBC studio in Manhattan 10 years ago, but - for reasons of tax avoidance and labor issues - trekked across the river instead. Magnificent studio aside, viewers still didn't watch MSNBC. It was a white elephant then, and a white elephant it remains.

Third, the 8 p.m. reality slate. This is the silliest thing I've heard since NBC decided it would air "Dateline" across the 10 p.m. schedule because news magazines were a way to control costs. You know how long that plan lasted.

Friends, let me give you a piece of wisdom about primetime TV that was as good in 1947 (the beginning of this wonderful business) as it is in 2006: TV is a game of hits. You find a hit show, and then you air it where the most people will watch it. There! You now know the secret of TV.

Only a very silly person - or one who is willfully spinning the gullible financial community - says that only reality or game shows will air at 8. Sure, of course, right: NBC will make an attempt to air some cheap reality shows at 8, but the minute viewers bail out, they'll put something else in.

Here, in fact, are the real issues. NBC needs to find a hit, like "Lost" or "Grey's Anatomy" or "24" or "American Idol" - shows that people (and preferably young ones) are actually talking about and watching.

NBC also needs to think very hard about who will replace longtime chief executive Bob Wright one of these days. Will that "someone" be Jeff Zucker, the presumed-heir-in-waiting who so breathlessly unveiled NBC 2.0 last week and who once declared "The Apprentice" the future of NBC's once-vaunted Thursday lineup?

Yes, that's something NBC needs to think especially hard about.

Your thoughts?

E-mail verne.gay@newsday.com.