And then there was the cheerful greeting first thing in the morning form NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt who, with a nod to remarks made the day before by new CBS Entertainment President Glenn Geller, welcomed everyone to NBC’s sessions and said, “I was doing some math before I came here, and I think this is my 25th executive session of the TCA that I’ve been up at this podium, and I think there were 23 or 24 more where I was in the back of the room as a younger executive.
“So here I am again. I still come from Illinois, and I’m still gay.”
As always, Greenblatt (pictured above) came prepared to make news and/or confirm existing reports. “We’re looking forward to a strong midseason as well and a terrific summer,” he said. “We’ve got Simon Cowell joining ‘America’s Got Talent,’ plus our growing hit ‘American Ninja Warrior,’ and of course, we end the summer with the [Olympics] in Rio.”
Greenblatt was especially excited about NBC’s performance this fall. “‘Sunday Night Football’ the No. 1 show on television, just delivered the most-watched NFL primetime season in 19 years,” he said. “But I want to point out that when you factor out sports, we are No. 1 with entertainment programs only. I want to repeat that. NBC is No. 1 with entertainment programs only. That hasn’t happened for us since 2003, which included the final season of ‘Friends.’
“As I think all of you know, ‘Blindspot’ quickly became the No. 1 new series of the season in both total audience and most demos,” he continued. “It’s also the biggest gainer in L+7, adding an average of over 5 1/2 million viewers a week. That brings the show’s weekly average to about 13 million and has helped keep us dominant on Mondays [after “The Voice”].”
Greenblatt also raved about NBC’s December holiday specials. “‘The Wiz Live’ was a huge success for us, growing 42 percent over [last year’s live musical] ‘Peter Pan,’” he continued. “Excluding sports, it was our second-best Thursday -- behind ‘The Sound of Music’ -- since the ‘ER’ finale in 2009. Then a week later we aired ‘Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors,’ a beautiful family movie that wasn’t afraid to talk about God and faith. This movie had nearly 16 million viewers within three days. It became the most-watched TV movie in more than six years. And finally, we had the sublime ‘Adele Live in New York City’ following a very big ‘Voice’ finale. It became the top rated music special on any network in 11 years.”
In December 2016, Greenblatt announced, NBC’s next live musical will be a production of “Hairspray,” pending any last-minute problems with deal-making.
Not surprisingly, the specter of Donald Trump continues to hang over NBC, “It’s very regulated and specific, and a lot of lawyers know it more than I do,” Greenblatt replied. “If people request equal time and they’re eligible for it -- not everyone who is running is eligible for it -- then we negotiate with each candidate how they’re going to get that equal time. It’s not as cut and dried as ‘they get 11 minutes on ‘SNL’ also.’ In fact, we have given equal time to, I think, six of the candidates, and everything’s been satisfied. It’s in certain markets, it’s a certain number of minutes and it’s all been taken care of. It’s not as simple as giving them the same thing that [Trump] had.”