NBC at TCA: From Worst to First - Ed Martin

Pasadena, CA -- In a dramatic turnaround from its presentation one year ago, NBC at the 2013 Winter Television Critics Association tour came across as a network flush with success. Its message was one of uncommonly swift improvement, not only from last January but from six months ago, when the presentation of its fall lineup at the Summer TCA tour, while solid, gave no hint of the extraordinary advances to come.

"What a difference a year makes, right?" NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt noted at the top of his session. "Last year I came out here and admitted right off the top that we'd had a bad fall [in 2011]. I think what I actually said was that we'd had a really shitty fall."

Greenblatt credited the multi-layered strategy NBC put in place last summer for its fall 2012 performance, which was stronger than the network or the press had expected. He explained that the network's goals were as follows: "To use the promotional platform of the Olympics to help launch our fall season; to start our fall premieres early to hold on to that Olympics momentum; to deploy 'The Voice' as a weapon on Monday and Tuesday, which would also, hopefully, provide lead-ins for some new shows; to build off the momentum of Sunday and improve Monday, Tuesday, and hopefully, Wednesday nights; and basically just to get lucky enough to launch a few hits.

"The good news is the strategy worked -- and it worked better than I think any of us thought it would," he added.

One might argue that the decision to run "The Voice" in the fall and to use it to launch new series behind it (specifically, the action-adventure "Revolution" and the comedy "Go On") had more to do with NBC's recent successes than the promotional push from the Olympics, which didn't do much for weak freshman comedies "Animal Practice" and "Guys with Kids" or the network's aging Thursday night lineup, but why nitpick?

"Season to date we're up 24 percent in 18-49," Greenblatt said. "We're up 19 percent in total viewers and up by double digit percentages in all other key categories. NBC is the only network among the four broadcast nets to be up in 18-49, total viewers or by any other key measure.

"In total viewers, the other three networks are down and we're up," he continued. "We all know that CBS still leads the networks in total viewers, but we're now the clear No. 2, up from what was a distant No. 4 a year ago this time. In the 18-49 demo, we [were] No. 1 or tied for No. 1 for 12 of the season's first 14 weeks."

Many critics credited NBC's outsize fall success to the performance of its Sunday Night Football franchise. But information supplied by NBC made clear that ratings for Sunday Night Football, while still formidable, were essentially flat year to year, meaning that most of its growth stemmed from its entertainment programming.

Given the momentum that "Revolution" built during the early months of the season, not to mention the serialized nature of the storyline, critics questioned the wisdom of taking it off the schedule until late March, when it will return (along with "The Voice," which will run through the end of June, helping to boost the network's summer schedule). Greenblatt replied that he wanted to avoid the irregular and off-putting schedule pattern that often negatively impacts serialized dramas during midseason, when they are clumsily preempted due to the holidays and big event programming or scheduled in such a way as to make them stretch through the entire season (that is, an original episode may be followed by one or more repeats). "It's a little bit more of a cable model," he explained. With a show like AMC's "Breaking Bad," he noted, the audience is fine with seeing several episodes in the fall and then another group of episodes a few months later. "If you market properly and have the goods and can run [as many originals as possible] in a row without repeats, that's the better long term play."

One issue raised during Greenblatt's session (and, earlier in the tour, during A&E's luncheon for its upcoming "Psycho" prequel, the very dark "Bates Motel") that will likely continue throughout TCA is the sudden abundance of new series centered on violent individuals and serial killers. Concern about violence in the media is once again a hot button topic in the wake of last year's mass murders in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut. (The violence issue is certain to come up today during Fox's TCA presentations. Based on early episodes, its new thriller "The Following," which debuts later this month, focuses on an elusive serial killer who amasses a cult of murderous followers. It looks to be one of the most intense and disturbing series in the history of broadcast television.)

Greenblatt, of course, was responsible for the serial killer drama "Dexter" when he was programming chief at Showtime and has "Hannibal," a thriller centered on the murderous character from "Silence of the Lambs," in development at NBC. When one critic expressed concern about the sheer number of such shows currently in the television mix, Greenblatt replied, "I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not sure you can make the leap from a show about serial killers [to] the problem with violence in our country. There are many, many other factors, from mental illness to guns."

Greenblatt reflected on "Dexter," then added, "I think [the long-running CBS hit] 'Criminal Minds' [about an elite team of investigators who pursue murderers] is worse than 'Dexter' ever was."

With "Hannibal," he said, "You don't see a lot of acts of violence. You see people who have been murdered."

NBC's day featured panels for two new series, the comedy "1600 Penn" and the drama "Do No Harm" (another creepy and disturbing drama). Wisely, the network filled the rest of its day with very strong sessions for existing shows, including "Revolution," "The Biggest Loser," "Celebrity Apprentice," "Grimm" and "Smash." The "Smash" session, which ended the day and included sneak peeks of upcoming musical production numbers from its second season, was especially effective.