Word: network
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...Every network has new shows to announce, but each takes a different story into the upfronts. ABC, having shot into contention for the top of the ratings with "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," will be in full-on gloat mode. NBC, which went from first to fourth place in one year among the crucial 18-to-49-year-old viewer group, will be in full-on crisis-management mode (to the delight of rivals who have suffered several years of NBC gloating under the self-congratulatory slogan "The Quality Shows" - until they lost "Friends" and gained "Joey" and became "The Desperation...
...stunk up the joint," said NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker at a noontime press conference previewing the network's fall schedule for reporters. He was referring to a particular night -the low-rated Tuesday slate -but why be particular? He could have been referring to just about any part of the once number-one-now-number-four network's performance for the 2004-05 season. Thursday, when Joey found that viewers would not be there for him in nearly the numbers in which they watched Friends. Sunday, when The Contender, the boxing reality show from Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice...
...upfronts, usually designed to put lipstick on the most porcine of network lineups, Zucker and new NBC programming chief Kevin Reilly, promised straight talk and candor -to a point. "We're not where you want us to be. We get it," Zucker told advertisers at NBC's Radio City Music Hall show, which in the happy-talk world of the upfronts is the equivalent of committing ritual suicide. (Last year, Zucker vowed to advertisers that the new Thursday night lineup, with Joey and The Apprentice, would get even higher ratings than the previous season's, which featured the last year...
...broken." (In a "Weekend Update" skit at Radio City, Tina Fey was not so kind. The HDTV broadcast of Joey, she said, was so clear, "you could actually see Matt LeBlanc's panic.") The new schedule NBC was announcing would go a long way toward turning around the network's fortunes. But, then again, they might change it within weeks...
...unusual move, Reilly and Zucker -whose network presented first at the upfronts -repeatedly stressed that they could switch things around depending on what the competition announced. Here's the schedule! We love it! Except we might not love it by the end of the week! But don't worry -we've got a whole stack of schedules where this one came from! (This despite the fact that the whole purpose of the upfront is to give advertisers a concrete schedule to pay to advertise on -but hey, it's not my money, so not my problem...