Media Curmudgeon

« The Bancrofts Will Sell To Murdoch | Main | CBS Hollers Help! »

June 01, 2007

Time Warner Should Buy NBC

NBC’s upfront presentation last week was considered to be so ho-hum by the advertising community that the consensus was that NBC would again finish dead last in the 18-49 ratings next season. The programming architect for the shipwreck 2006-07 season, for the upcoming 2007-08 season, and for the upfront presentation was Kevin Reilly, who was fired a couple of days after the new schedule was announced. The 2007-08 season schedule went over like a NY Post headline at a lecture on Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I can’t get used to calling NBC NBC Universal, so I’ll keep referring to it as NBC. Universal is the film studio that made those great horror movies in the 1940s, like “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” and my favorite, “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” which is an apt description of NBC’s programming this year. “Heros” was a hit, but was not as good as “The Wolf Man,” which is 66 years old.

Also, week before last NBC Digital announced a new Web project, MyNBC, a social networking site it will launch this to compete with News Corp.’s MySpace. Just what the young people want--a corporate MySpace. Not much innovation there.

Jeff Zucker was named CEO of NBC in February, but it was under his watch that NBC dove from first to fourth, so I’ll bet GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt will be glad to get rid of the fourth-place network and its new CEO who led the nosedive.

Time Warner is a good fit for NBC because TWX is the only big media conglomerate that doesn’t own a broadcast TV network or TV stations. Time Warner would have to get a waiver from the FCC to allow it to own a TV station and a cable system in the same market, but the Republican-dominated FCC is very corporate friendly and would probably give Time Warner the waiver, just like it gave Murdoch’s New Corp. a waiver to own two television stations and a newspaper in New York.

Also, Time Warner hired Randy Falco as the CEO of AOL, and Falco has a lot more experience with network television sales than NBC’s new head of sales, Mike Pilot, who came from GE Consumer Finance—yes, Consumer Finance to television network sales.

Falco was head of NBC TV network sales and when he realized that Zucker was going to replace Bob Wright, he started looking around. Time Warner was smart enough to snap him up to replace Jon Miller as CEO of AOL. Falco was what AOL needed to sell its massive online audience like TV sells its big audiences. Falco would make a much better CEO for NBC than Zucker.

Furthermore, Time Warner understands the television and entertainment business better than Zucker or its corporate parent, GE, do, so Time Warner would have more expertise to pull NBC out of the basement than Zucker has, although the new head of programming on the west coast, Ben Silverman , has a good resume and might be able to do something.

Of the three networks, NBC has been the least innovative online and off to a much slower start than the other networks, especially Fox with the MySpace association, so the synergies with AOL would certainly help NBC’s lagging online efforts.

It’s probably too reasonable an idea to ever happen, but short of being bought by someone who can turn NBC around, the best chance NBC has for success is to bring back the Universal hits of the ‘40s. How about “Earl Meets the Wolf Man,” or “Frankenstein at 30 Rock?”

Posted by Charles Warner at June 1, 2007 03:07 PM

Comments

Post a comment