NBC May Cut Back on the “B” Part

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mojo-photo-nbclogocuts.jpgHow the mighty have fallen. We knew things were bad at NBC, with ratings falling right along with the economy, but we didn’t know quite how bad. Heads are rolling over at the Peacock, with some high-ranking executives getting axed, along with 3% of the company’s 15,000-person workforce. But the network might not be done with it’s slicing-and-dicing. Rather than actually try to come up with shows people want to watch, NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker has announced that the network is considering just cutting back on the hours–or even the number of nights–it provides programming. From the AP:

“Can we continue to program 22 hours of prime-time? Three of our competitors don’t. Can we afford to program seven nights a week? One of our competitors doesn’t,” Zucker said. “All of these questions have to be on the table. And we are actively looking at all of those questions.” … Part of the problem at NBC has to do with the economic crisis and slowdown in advertising revenue in a market that is “as difficult as any we’ve seen,” Zucker said. “Businesses are just afraid to commit.”

Er… especially to crappy shows.

Really, NBC. The only thing you’ve got going over there is a lady called Tina Fey, whose 30 Rock may not end up seeing any ratings bounce from Fey’s game-changing Palin impersonation. (Debra disagrees with me, saying the show continues to make her “snort Coke through her schnoz”, but I feel like the brilliant, giddy edginess of the show’s first season–swastika sparklers, anyone?–has seeped out surprisingly quickly, with the show already entering a jump-the-shark phase of hokey guest stars and characterization missteps.) Heroes has become so jaw-droppingly terrible I’m embarrassed I ever watched it, and even the usually-chuckle-inducing Molly Shannon is completely at sea in the nonsensical Kath & Kim, which is itself the only new Fall show that’s survived this far. Sorry, Knight Rider.

Cutting back on broadcasting hours is so WB, but then again, maybe NBC could make the best of it. Say they managed to whittle down the schedule to one night a week: they could just pull out that old “Must See TV” slogan again. Wonk.

[Update] Whoa, look at that. The New York Times reports that NBC is planning to hold onto the about-to-jump-ship Jay Leno by giving him, basically, a half-hour version of the Tonight Show, except at 10pm every weeknight. It’s the first time any network will feature a nightly show in that time slot. Conan O’Brien is slated to take over the actual Tonight Show in May, 2010, with “comic nonentity” Jimmy Fallon jumping onto Conan’s old Late Night. But Leno had been making noises about heading to a competitor, so the network has apparently created a weeknight schedule that just shifts everything up, effectively lopping a couple hours off their weekly programming roster, as we just discussed. Wonder how Conan feels about this?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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