NBC

On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 30, David Gregory, NBC News’ ubiquitous robo-anchor, popped up in front of the cameras at Rockefeller Plaza where over the course of several drizzly hours, he held forth on such topics as the dismal weather, Barry Manilow and the world’s largest floating Christmas Tree, which turns out to be in located in Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. Gregory—NBC’s chief White House correspondent, host of MSNBC’s 6 p.m. show 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the world’s most indomitable substitute anchor—was filling in on Sunday for Lester Holt as co-anchor of Weekend Today.

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NBC Universal has subleased roughly 100,000 square feet at Tishman Speyer's 75 Rockefeller Plaza from AOL, according to Crain's. (The Observer's Dana Rubinstein noted the likelihood of more space at 75 Rock in October.)

The move is part of NBC Universal's grand maneuvering to find 600,000 square feet of office space to consolidate its business operations, maneuvering that has seen the media giant kick the tires at 7 World Trade Center, Worldwide Plaza and the old New York Times building. Thusly, the 75 Rock sublease is reportedly short-term.  read more »

Last week, Vanity Fair's Matt Pressman interviewed Lee Eisenberg, a writer for NBC's The Office for the magazine's Culture and Celebrity blog.

Here's a snippet:

How did you [and writing partner Gene Stupinsky] end up writing for The Office?

Lee Eisenberg: Gene and I sold a pilot called Lonnie and Gordo, and [The Office executive producer] Greg Daniels got his hands on that.

What was that show about?

It was about two co-dependent magicians who live and work together. We were really happy with how the script turned out, but it didn’t move forward. But Greg read it and liked it enough to meet with us.

Mr. Eisenberg went on to explain, "I think the characters were incredibly heightened versions of us. We were living together at the time and, obviously, struggling with a creative endeavor. We started talking about a show about two guys who were living together. As it started forming, we decided that writing is much less visual than magic, so we decided to go with magic."

It's not the worst idea in the world—who didn't love Arrested Development's Tony Wonder arc?—but maybe what Messrs. Eisenberg and Stupinsky needed was a big-time Magic Celebrity, or at the very least, Criss "Mindreak" Angel, to push the project through.  read more »

If you think every single episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live was exactly the same (Another Digital Short about Laser Cats? Really?), you're not alone: So does Justin Timberlake, who offered an Evolution of Dance-esque two minute run-through of an entire episode of the 34-year-old comedy-variety show during 'Weekend Update.'

Call it celebrity lifehacking: Mr. Timberlake, who was scheduled to appear on next week's show but had to cancel, saved viewers 90 minutes (or 30 minutes with DVR) by revealing all, from the host's repetitive monologue to the groan-inducing recurring characters.

Judging by this week's show, which featured guys French kissing, painting each other nude, gay cartoon characters, a cellphone in a man's butt, and three male dancers in high heels, it'll also save you an ass-load of gay-panic jokes.

AdWeek's AdFreak blogger, David Giantasio brings word—and image!—of this 30 Rock promotional stunt from The Netherlands that's so strange, it has to be real.

Behold, Oscar-nominated actor and recent New Yorker profile subject Alec Baldwin's face on toilet paper. (This comes via TVTattle.)

Someone should probably send a case of this stuff to the staff of the New York Post's Page Six' and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, each of whom has elevated hating the outspoken Mr. Baldwin to a life mission.

In The New York Times today, Bill Carter reports that a Fox station and a NBC station in Philadelphia are teaming up to share video operations in a bid to save money.

According to Mr. Carter, the move is a part of a broader plan which the stations' parent companies, News Corporation and NBC Universal, hope to roll out in cities across the country, including here in New York.

As we've previously noted, WNBC is New York is currently undergoing some major changes, which have already resulted in a downsizing of the station's roster of cameramen and camera crews.

More from today's article:

Al Primo, a news director in the early days of Eyewitness News at WABC in New York and who now consults on local television issues, said, "I think this is inevitable.  read more »

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If you've got twenty-two minutes to kill, we suggest checking out the series premiere of Kath & Kim. Although the NBC show doesn't make its official debut until Thursday night, the network was kind enough to post the premiere episode online a few days early. Actually, after watching Kath & Kim, we can definitely say it wasn't that kind of them at all. The show kinda stinks.

Based on the hit Australian show of the same name, Kath & Kim stars Molly Shannon and Selma Blair as mother-daughter dullards who snipe and gripe. NBC is hoping the remake slides effortlessly into their Thursday night comedy lineup, but we have our doubts about the show's staying power.  read more »

Is NBC finally embracing the web? Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life, Knight Rider and 30 Rock will all premiere on their video site Hulu (which they co-founded with News Corp.) a week before their TV broadcast.

Hulu has its own Fall Lineup page, with new premiere episodes on all networks for seven straight weeks beginning Sept. 2. Tonight you can watch Fox's Prison Break (mmm, Wentworth Miller) if you can't get to the TV by 8 p.m.

As Michael Learmonth at Silicon Valley Insider points out, giving the internet a head start over the broadcast episodes isn't a major risk for NBC.  read more »

After watching the pilot last year, we didn't figure Chuck would become one of our favorite shows: it looked like a cheap episode of 24, filled with cringe-worthy humor, and it featured one of the most annoying supporting performances in the history of television (Joshua Gomez as Chuck's irritating sidekick Morgan.)

But by the end of whatever truncated first season Chuck was allowed to accomplish (thanks WGA!), we were totally in love. It's not the plotting, a predictable mix of True Lies, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The 40-Year-Old Virgin; it's the chemistry between Chuck and Sarah (played admirably by Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.  read more »

Did you see the New York Times' positive coverage about web viewership of the Olympics "soaring"? Well, we beg to differ.

NBC was going for the gold (forgive us) with all their online coverage of the Olympics. They launched a brand new cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in website to cover the Olympics and unleashed more than 2,000 hours of online video. But they didn't even qualify to compete, according to recent numbers. Techcrunch tells us that Yahoo Sports beat NBCOlympics.com with an average of 4.7 million visitors a day versus 4.3 million, according to Nieisen Online. Yahoo didn’t even have video. Worse, NBC’s Olympics video ad revenues came to only $5.  read more »

Candace Bushnell's NBC show Lipstick Jungle has set up shop in the Flatiron district-right outside the Observer offices!--for the day, occupying two blocks of Broadway between 19th and 21st streets. Some helpful production assistants told us they were filming a "club scene" featuring stars Lindsay Price (dressed in what another Observer reporter likened to a "blue medieval beer wench" costume) and Andrew McCarthy inside Strata, a multilevel nightspot under whose awning we like to smoke.

"It's like a Halloween dream sequence thing," one of them added. Indeed, the sidewalk was mostly occupied by a line of costumed extras (masqueraders and witches, mostly). Lipstick Jungle star Brooke Shields was reportedly not around, but we were told that she is expected on set at Franklin and Varick streets tomorrow (just saying!).

Even as Candace Bushnell's NBC dramedy about powerful New York women Lipstick Jungle will return for a second season, Bergdorf Blondes author Plum Sykes is working on a new show called Mogulettes, about a group of women click-clacking their way onto airplanes instead of New York City streets. Variety reports:

"Mogulettes," which Sykes is penning with scribe Amy Harris ("The Comeback"), will center on jet-setting twentysomething women who have already become captains of industry. Show revolves around Eva, the beautiful and brilliant leader of a cosmetics empire.

Ms. Sykes originally brought a show based on her Bergdorf Blondes book to the WB a few years ago. But they passed. NBC seems to love it: "I think Plum has a unique insight into social dynamics in a way that she’s able to find these characters that are at once sympathetic and aspirational," producer Charlie Corwin told Variety.

Can you guess which ragingly hot chest belongs to which swimmer? It sounds like a game you might play on Queerty or something, but you can just do it on, you know, NBC's Olympics Web site.

Stare at the chest, think of the swimmer, click a button, and there's the face. It's like online shopping.

Apparently NBC isn't above link-baiting.

More Landmania for you Friday afternoon!

As we wrote this week, NBC and The New York Times are going into the Olympics with different goals: NBC is covering the sports, The Times is waiting for a big news story.

Well, Jonathan Landman, The Times' deputy managing editor, laid out his own distinctions between NBC and the paper of record in his weekly memo. Even though Jeff Zucker believes NBC's coverage over the next two weeks is "the most ambitious broadcasting event ever attempted," with a planned 3,600 hours of coverage, including 2,200 hours live on the Internet, Mr. Landman isn't so impressed:

The formula for a great news and information Web site: Be interesting and useful.

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Over the weekend, Allison Romano of Broadcasting & Cable took an in-depth look at NBC's plans for broadcasting the upcoming Olympic games in China.

According to Ms. Romano, this year's coverage of the games by NBC represents a "radical shift reflecting a more technologically savvy era," that will result in more sports than ever before being covered on a variety of NBC owned platforms, including Telemundo, "five of seven major NBC Universal-owned cable channels," and NBC's Olympic Web site.

More from the article:

After being criticized in the past for limited and delayed Olympic coverage—not to mention for its ill-fated Triplecast pay-per-view deal for the 1992 Barcelona Games—NBC is now going to an unprecedented extreme.

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With help from Romenesko, we now know that Gary Schwitzer at the University of Minnesota health news blog is shocked—shocked!—that NBC gave up so much time to the mouse-pill story. (A recap: A lazy mouse took two pills and showed increased endurance and fitness without doing any exercise.)

"It devoted more than 2 minutes out of its total of 22 minutes or so of news time to this story. We are at war. The economy is in the tank. No one can afford gas in the tank. But 2 minutes was given to this mouse research...With limited airtime, why was that an important nugget? Unless one's goal is to make drug company sponsors happy.  read more »

Dick Wolf, Law & Order creator and producer, and godfather to New York City actors, is creating a new show for NBC.

His subject matter will be familiar territory, according to Variety. The one-hour show, called Lost and Found (what, no ampersand?), will revolve around "an unconventional female detective who identifies anonymous murder victims, and then solves their crimes."

Mr. Wolf will executive produce the pilot for which he's corralled writer Chris Levinson to provide a script. Ms. Levinson has worked with Mr. Wolf on Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Trial by Jury. She also wrote episodes of Dawson's Creek and Charmed.  read more »

It’s the summer of a presidential election year, which means it’s time to renew, for the fourth time since 1996, our quadrennial discussion of the hugely consequential role that Ralph Nader is poised to play in November.

The aging consumer advocate, in case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know in the first place, announced his candidacy on Meet the Press over the winter and, besides scoring some headlines in June when an indicted referee lent some (but not much) credence to his NBA conspiracy theories, hasn’t been heard from much since – until this week, when NBC News and The Wall Street Journal included his name in their latest poll.  read more »

It's official.

NBC News execs announced today that Republican strategist and McCain confidant Mike Murphy is joining NBC News and MSNBC as a contributor.

On Monday, in a column in The New York Times, Bill Kristol suggested that Mr. Murphy--who helped craft Mr. McCain's failed bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2000--would soon be joining Mr. McCain's camp.

Afterward, Mr. Murphy denied the rumor and subsequently told reporters that he would be joining NBC.

Today, NBC confirmed the news, announcing that Mr. Murphy will provide analysis to NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, Today, and MSNBC.

More from the release:

Murphy is one of the Republican Party's most successful political media consultants, having handled strategy and advertising for more than 26 successful gubernatorial and Senatorial campaigns.  read more »

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Jamie Tarabay, the former Baghdad Bureau Chief for NPR, was stationed in Iraq in the early months of 2007 when General David Petraeus arrived to take over command of the U.S. forces there.

In the weeks and months to come, like many of her professional colleagues in the war zone, she eventually accompanied Mr. Petraeus on a number of walk-along interviews as he strolled through the streets of the occupied city.  read more »

NBC visited 7 World Trade Center on June 2, the most recent of more than one visit to Larry Silverstein’s gleaming downtown tower, whose top 10 floors are still available for lease. Sources say NBC was considering housing its new business operations center there.

“NBC has been back to 7 World Trade Center a number of times, with executives and different division heads poring over the building,” said a real estate insider, who, on a recent visit to the building, saw NBC representatives looking like “cats who swallowed the canary.”

Those “executives” included Jeff Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC Universal, according to another source.

A Silverstein spokesman said he would “not comment on nor confirm discussions with potential tenants.” But another broker familiar with NBC’s plans said the media giant has since moved on from 7 World Trade, and is now looking at SJP Properties’ under-construction 11 Times Square and properties along Eighth Avenue.  read more »

According to several news reports today, though it is currently in fourth place among the broadcast networks, NBC has wrapped up its advance advertising sales this year with successful results.

And they didn't even throw an upfront!

Earlier this year, NBC executives announced that they would eschew the traditional TV time frame, not show pilots to advertisers at an upfront presentation, and would roll out new programming all year long.

"NBC's intention to announce a new sked in April—and then follow with a mix of small meetings and one big Gotham pitch—promises to disrupt the usual upfront selling season by giving the net a full month's head start on dealmaking," Variety reported back in February.

Four months later, that approach appears to be working.  read more »

In his column this week, PBS's ombudsman, Michael Getler, wanders far, far away from his home territory in public broadcasting and, instead, does some pro bono ombudsmanry for ... NBC News.  read more »

Watch out, Lost and Survivor: NBC is bringing the original desert island castaway to primetime, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The network has ordered 13 episodes of Robinson Crusoe, a drama series based on Daniel Defoe's classic novel, and plans to launch it this fall or midseason 2009, depending on whether there will be an actors strike in the summer. Crusoe reportedly came out of an unorthodox brainstorming idea of new NBC chief Ben Silverman, who asked his development team to generate a list of the most engaging stories ever told -- ranging from The Last of the Mohicans to Sleeping Beauty. Crusoe was at the top of that list.  read more »

NBC is suing Law & Order creator Dick Wolf over a contract provision that would give him executive producer fees if any version of his hit crime series were to be cancelled, Variety reports.  read more »

The Nevada State Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of NBC, essentially overturning a lower court’s order requiring MSNBC to include Dennis Kucinich in tonight’s Democratic debate.

“We conclude that the District court manifestly abused its discretion in determining that a contract existed between the parties,” noted the ruling.

The Politico's Michael Calderone (formerly of Media Mob fame) recently caught up with a bunch of broadcast news bigwigs in Iowa.

Along the way, NBC's Brian Williams talked up his belief in the advantage for NBC of having a sibling cable news outlet providing plenty of real estate for its anchors and correspondents to appear throughout the day.

"Williams noted that NBCs advantage for 2008 is having a cable news network, MSNBC, working round the clock — 'a game-changer,' in his words," reported Mr. Calderone.  read more »

David Letterman is winning the battle of the re-runs, the New York Post reports.

Since the writers strike began over a month ago, forcing both Mr. Letterman of CBS and his late-night rival, Jay Leno of NBC, into re-runs, Mr. Letterman's numbers are down only around 21 percent, whle Mr. Leno's are off by 40 percent. Mr. Leno still leads, but, says the Post, "Letterman hasn't been this close to Leno in years."  read more »

That was quick!  On Friday, we noted that NBC had rejected an ad from the conservative group Freedom's Watch that asked viewers to think of U.S. soldiers in Iraq over the holidays.  The network had said its decision was based on the fact that the ad contained a link to the group's Web site, which has explicitly political content, and therefore violaterd the network's prohibition on controversial issue ads.

But over the weekend -- after Newt Gingrich had taken to Fox News to urge conservatives to boycott NBC -- came word that the network had changed its mind.   In a statement released Saturday evening and reported by the Associated Press, NBC declared: ""We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site."  read more »

NBC has turned down an ad from the conservative advocacy group, Freedom's Watch, that encouraged viewers to think of the U.S. soldiers in Iraq over the holidays, the Associated Press reported today.

"NBC said it declined to air the ad because it refers to the group's Web site, which the network said was too political," reports the AP, "not because of the ad's message."

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MONDAY

It’s only been a week, but the strike has done plenty of damage. Late night TV is kaput. Saturday Night Live, too. (Poor Jonah Hill, of Superbad fame, was slated to host.) But it’s Mondays that may suffer the most. Production of 24 has been delayed, with the possibility that Fox may even hold showing the seventh season until next Fall, in order to make sure it airs uninterrupted. Don’t the networks know that if they postpone 24, the terrorists win? End the strike now. Give the writers whatever they want. Please.

In the meantime, enjoy your last episode of the Big Bang Theory for the foreseeable future. Production has shut down. And tonight’s is the last that they have in the can. Also, Billy Crystal is honored with the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor (PBS, 9 PM). Plenty of comedians who you could have sworn were dead will be on hand to celebrate.

TUESDAY

“From John Langley, producer of the groundbreaking Cops”—uh oh—“comes the next big law enforcement reality series”—oh no—“Jail” (MyNetworkTV, 9:00 PM). Where does Mr. Langley come up with these ideas? It’s really just another dagger into the slow-beating heart of Tuesday nights. What else is there other than House (Fox, 9:00 PM)? And don’t say the Dancing With the Stars results show (ABC, 9:00 PM) …  read more »

NBC is planning a new Office branch! But no worries, they won't be stealing Jim or Dwight away from Scranton.

Ausiello Report at TVGuide.com has the exclusive:

Multiple sources confirm to me exclusively that the Peacock is developing an episode of The Office that would introduce several new characters who would then be spun off into a new series à la Private Practice.

However, unlike Practice, which stole Grey's regular Kate Walsh to anchor the new series, the proposed Office 2 is not expected to include any of the mother ship's core cast. In fact, producers are already casting about for a "name" to headline the potential show.

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MONDAY

Darlene’s back! Well, sort of. It didn't take long for The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 8:30 p.m.) to reunite its star Johnny Galecki with former Roseanne co-star Sara Gilbert. The erstwhile awkward TV lovers have been reunited as … awkward lovers! And just in the nick of time. The show is only several episodes old and the flustered interplay between the two supergeeks and their hot next-door neighbor, Penny, was getting a little stale. This week, they attend Penny’s Halloween party. Let’s hope Dar—ahem—Leslie is there to add a little spice. Halle Berry attempts the same on Inside the Actor’s Studio (Bravo, 8 p.m.). Watch to hear James Lipton exclaim, “Make me feel good.”

TUESDAY

The 47th Democratic National Debate (MSNBC, 9 p.m.) of the 2008 presidential election airs tonight. Will Barack Obama make good on his promise to The Times to hold Hillary’s feet to the flames? Will Hillary show up hungover from a weeklong birthday bender? Will John Edwards appear on stage with his wife in a desperate bid for attention? What will Joe Biden say? What will Dennis Kucinich extract from his pockets? Who knows? Who cares? Brian Williams moderates. (Can’t someone at NBC get him on a show with good ratings?) If you really want to watch something you feel like you’ve seen a million times, check out It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (NBC, 8 p.m.). Or watch the Spurs annihilate the Oden-less Trail Blazers in the NBA season opener (TNT, 8 p.m.).  read more »

Christina Applegate’s Samantha Who? (9:30 PM, ABC) debuts tonight, sandwiched in between Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelor. She plays a woman who wakes from an eight-day coma with retrograde amnesia only to slowly come to the realization that she was a total bitch. Perhaps a little amnesia is necessary on the part of viewers, who will need to forget Surviving Christmas in order to give this show a shot. (Who am I kidding?  read more »

It's death by metashtick! Seinfeld, Fey stir up trouble by, well, acting like themselves.  read more »

Mr. Obama passed, yet again, on a high-profile chance to fuel his second-place candidacy with a badly needed sense of urgency.  read more »

On Sunday, the idea that Kerry ever considered using McCain as a running-mate seemed laughable.  read more »

The 'To Catch a Predator' segment of 'Dateline NBC' is falling victim to advertisers' sensitivity to its controversial material. In the segment, Chris Hansen ensnares men trolling Internet chat rooms looking for sex with minors. It's been a big hit for the network, driving ratings for the evening news program. But, The Times' Brian Stelter reports:   read more »

At long last, steely Dateline NBC co-anchor Stone Phillips has sold his triplex penthouse at the Oliver Cromwell, an 80-year-old Central Park West co-op. Mr. Phillips’ six-room apartment was first listed back in fall 2005 for $5.5 million.

But, according to city records, Mr. Phillips 27th-floor apartment sold for a bit less--$4,350,000--to a fashionable buyer: Fred Gehring, CEO of the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation.  read more »

According to Mr. Trump—a newly minted grandfather, thanks to Donald Jr. and his wife Vanessa—he wants to pursue other showbiz options without the network.

"It looks like viewers will have to wait to see what Mr. Trump plans for the future," a statement from Mr. Trump said. "But if Mr. Trump's past TV success is any indication of the future, then one can anticipate that millions of 'Apprentice' fans will be migrating to his new venture."

What does this mean?

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“The buzz was loud and clear, we struck a chord,” said president of NBC Entertainment Kevin Reilly at the network’s Upfront presentation yesterday afternoon. But: “Frankly, we need to be more better.”

Mr. Reilly was saying what the hundreds of ad executives milling around Radio City for the first day of the Upfronts already knew.  read more »

This afternoon, NBC goes before advertisers and the press to try to sell its 2007-2008 season to advertisers and the press. So this morning the network sent out the details of the season for previewing by the masses.

"We've got the class and next season we're ready to add some mass," said NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly, "with new shows that build on the creative accomplishments of last season and are as broad as they are good."

We take it "mass"