Troubling times at NBC

The NBC network is quickly becoming a waste land of failed programming. With the peacock loosing Thursday night stalwarts 30 Rock and The Office and its latest drama to fill the 10pm hour on that day, Do No Harm, has now been added to the cancellation bin. The Jekyll & Hyde drama premiered last week to the lowest ratings ever for an in-season scripted series opener on any of the four networks last week with an underwhelming 0.9 18-49 rating. It dropped 22% to a 0.7 last night, effectively sealing its fate. Its lead-in, the anemic 1600 Penn, did not help either, as the sitcom nosedived from 1.9 the previous week, to a 1.1 last night. It will be pulled for a super-sized The Office next week, but its fate seems sealed.

The other latest drama is what will happen to Up All Night, now that Christina Applegate has decided to quit the show, which was in the process of going from a single-camera production to a multiple camera series with a live audience. “It’s been a great experience working on Up All Night, but the show has taken a different creative direction and I decided it was best for me to move on to other endeavors,” Applegate said in a statement. “Working with Lorne Michaels has been a dream come true and I am grateful he brought me into his TV family.  I will miss the cast, producers and crew, and wish them the best always.” The comedy show has struggled in the ratings, but since it’s from Michaels, and NBC pretty much owes a lot to him, the only reason it survived into a second season was him and –at first- it’s Thursday timeslot. But it’s faced an uphill battle behind the scenes as well, with the exit of series creator/executive producer Emily Spivey as well as original showrunner Jon Pollack. The series original concept was about a family who were new parents, which was inspired by Spivey’s real-life experiences of going back to work soon after giving birth. Applegate, a new parent then, liked the idea as well. When Maya Rudolph was cast, the PR firm idea was dropped in favor of Rudolph as an Oprah-like talk show host. The concept was tweaked for season two, but somewhere between the season opener and 11 poorly received episodes (now on Wednesday) NBC, instead of pulling the plug, said the show would go on hiatus, with everything converted to the three camera system and return in the spring with five new episodes. With Applegate’s departure, can the show continue or will –as some are already speculating- recast? 

But it does not stop there, as most of their shows are some the lowest rated of the Big four networks, and if Community cannot get picked up for a fifth season, NBC will have to find something to fill the hole that is three hours of programming on Thursday. At this juncture the only show that has shown any legs is Revolution, but the shows in its last month of a three month hiatus, and there is no guarantee that anyone of those viewers who watched the first ten episodes will come back for twelve more.  

Sure, unscripted fare like The Biggest Loser, The Apprentice and The Voice do well for them, but you can’t fill in every empty spot with them. And Rock Center, the Brian Williams lead magazine show, is cheap, but it too does not bring the ratings.

NBC still has Hannibal, the Bryan Fuller created thriller that reboots the Thomas Harris character of Hannibal Lecter from the novels, but little else to build a network that is still in fourth place.