Peacock is still arrogant

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct 5, 2005 | by Scott D. Pierce Deseret Morning News

Just a couple of months ago, NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly was falling all over himself to make nice with TV critics.

Not that we're so nice (or so powerful), but it's something that happens when your network's ratings are headed down the toilet. All those years when NBC was on top, all those guys who were in charge - - Warren Littlefield, Don Ohlmeyer, Scott Sassa, Jeff Zucker -- never cared what TV critics thought or wrote. Some of them even went out of their way to be rude, obnoxious and insulting. (Not to name names, but their initials are D.O. and J.Z.)

But with a network that had fallen from first to fourth in the ratings, Reilly stood in front of a room full of critics and vowed that things had changed. That the arrogance was gone. That the new, humble NBC would fight its way back to the top of the ratings.

At this point, the return to the top looks like it's a long way off. NBC's ratings have fallen still further, down 17 percent across the board. And, despite Reilly's words, it looks more like the arrogance remains.

You may recall that, during July's Television Critics Association press tour, I pointed out that The one show that might have gotten NBC a lot of ink is Martha Stewart's new incarnation of "The Apprentice," but Martha wasn't made available to critics -- even via satellite, which is standard practice for these things.

Lame, unconvincing excuses were made, but the fact remains that it was a big chance blown by NBC. The kind of thing you can get away with when you're No. 1 but not when you're No. 4.

Just to make it clear, satellite interviews are standard practice for press tours. For goodness sake, HBO had Kirk Douglas on satellite from his Los Angeles home to a hotel in Beverly Hills because the actor was recovering from knee-replacement surgery.

Turns out there was a real good reason NBC kept Stewart away from the press. And failed to provide critics with review copies of the premiere of "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" -- the only one of 31 new shows on the six broadcast networks not previewed for critics.

Stewart's "Apprentice" is a big bore. And a ratings bomb. (The ratings were bad the first week; they got worse last week. Tonight, it moves to 8 p.m., swapping places with ratings-challenged "E- Ring.")

And keeping critics from seeing bad shows before they premiere is the same old thing networks have done for years.

"We're insane if we stay on the same track," Reilly said of the network's promotional efforts back in July. "That's the definition of insanity -- to keep making the same mistakes and doing things the same way."

Well, maybe you might think about ending the lying.

The problem with "Apprentice: Martha Stewart" is that the star and the network are at cross-purposes. NBC was hoping the notoriety the star had achieved when she went to prison would provide ratings juice. To get that, however, it needed Mean Martha to ride herd over her potential apprentices.

Stewart, meanwhile, is trying to rehabilitate her image by making nice. So what viewers got was a Milquetoast Martha in a watered- down version of "The Apprentice," when what they want to see is Mean Martha slapping people.

Quite frankly, adding a second weekly edition of that show when the first is in serious ratings decline wasn't so smart to begin with. (The original version had its lowest ratings ever last week.)

But maybe the Martha Stewart Phenomenon has already peaked. Her daytime talk show is doing OK but not great in the ratings. CBS's movie "Martha Behind Bars" was a mega-bomb on Sunday. (Of course, that may have had something to do with the fact that it was a big honkin' bore.)

Whatever the case, NBC isn't going to drag itself out of the ratings cellar with pale imitations of fading shows.

Talking about how you've got a new attitude isn't the same as actually having one. And NBC still needs to get over itself.

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com