“I’m coming back to NBC in prime time,” Jerry Seinfeld told advertisers Monday at Radio City Music Hall, touting his new fall offering at NBC’s upfront presentation.
Such is the state of TV comedy today, nine years after top-rated “Seinfeld” concluded its run on then-top-rated NBC, that Seinfeld’s new production is the only new comedy on the now-fourth-place network’s fall schedule.
Except it’s not a program. Not really. It’s a string of glorified commercials, short funny clips to promote “The Bee Movie,” his DreamWorks animated film set to hit theaters in November.
“Only [DreamWorks co-founder] Jeffrey Katzenberg can come into your office with a straight face and convince you … to put his commercials on and not have him have to pay for them,” Marc Graboff, NBC Universal Television’s West Coast president, had explained earlier, across the street at the network’s headquarters.
“But it turned out to be a good deal for both of us,” Graboff said. “These are just very funny bits. … Jerry’s in all of them and it’s all very Seinfeldian, so it’s not just some cheesy promo.”
At least NBC balked when Katzenberg wanted it to change its logo to N-Bee-C. It still has a bit of pride.
But when you’re in fourth for a third consecutive season, you take your laughs where you can get them.
The truth is, Seinfeld ginned up some much-needed humor, which has been in short supply of late in and around TV, waxing nostalgic for the days before viewers’ digital diaspora.
“I had the No. 1 show and NBC was the No. 1 network,” he recalled. “There wasn’t YouTube. It was UsTube. You watched what we put on the air or faced the consequences.”
Nowadays it’s NBC that feels squeezed. It finds itself renewing “30 Rock” and “Friday Night Lights” despite each only averaging about 6 million viewers, fine numbers … if they were cable programs. The plan is to heavily promote the critical darlings, stick them in new time slots and hope viewers coalesce. The first season DVD set of “Lights,” set for a summer release, will be priced to market the series and encourage sampling.
“You’ve just got to believe in good shows and that eventually the audience can catch on,” NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said.
What’s intriguing is NBC is answering its recent performance largely by standing pat. It’s stuck only four new dramas on its fall slate, and three of them have a sci-fi bent, a la “Heroes,” the big surprise of last fall’s schedule.
“If you go back historically, particularly for networks in down cycles, loading up on [new] product is not necessarily a recipe for success,” Reilly said. So instead it’s “bulking up,” in NBC’s marketing-speak, ordering extra half-hours of “The Office” and “My Name is Earl.” It’s also supplementing “Heroes” with a six-episode spinoff, “Origins,” that will offer new characters.
Calling last year “a big fat disappointment,” Reilly told the Madison Avenue-types, “We need to be more better. We’ve got the class, but we need more mass.”
ABC is next up for the advertisers, set to present Tuesday. Among the expected ABC casualties is George Lopez’s sitcom, sacrificed to make room for the likes of “Caveman,” a show based on the series of Geico insurance ads.
NBC should be so lucky as to have Seinfeld decide his “Bee” promos should be the basis for a series someday.
But it’s not going to happen.
He told the crowd he looked at his 1998 prime-time exit from “Seinfeld” much like Michael Jordan’s exit on top with the Chicago Bulls that year, and he didn’t care much for the way Jordan’s subsequent return with the Washington Wizards ruined the storybook ending.
“I don’t know if I could do a TV show today, what with the worms and the one-legged dancers,” he said. “It seem like the whole industry packed up and joined the circus.”
BRIT AND DETERMINATION: With a busload of candidates sharing the stage, if not the spotlight, eight months or so before the first presidential primary or caucus, CNN and MSNBC already have shown just how hard it is to make these debates seem newsworthy
On Tuesday, at the University of South Carolina, it’s Fox News Channel’s turn at sponsoring a debate and, “with some trepidation,” moderator Brit Hume is looking forward to the Republicans’ joint speaking engagement.
“We’re trying to figure out, with as many players as we have, how to make it interesting and it’s hard. Ten candidates is a lot,” Hume said.
The jockeying among the politicians is matched by the jockeying by the networks, each looking to attach its brand to these exercises, even though Hume believes there’s “probably not all that much difference” in one outfit’s debate from another.
Democrats have thus far balked at participation in anything Fox News sponsors.
“They’re not afraid of the questions I might ask,” Hume said. “It’s just that at one moment it looked like it might be politically smart to try to draw us into some kind of fight, and fighting with Fox is good politics in certain circles of the Democratic Party.”
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philrosenthal@tribune.com
