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NBC'S Morning Mistake

M

MediaBoy4Radio

CBS made a huge mistake with Couric and now NBC is damaging their once proud
franchise by stretching Today to four hours.

Where do you begin when you list the reasons why this is a very very bad programming move:

...lack of creativity........NBC obviously can't come up with new AM programming
...lack of support from affiliates......as if stations will clear all 4 hours in a row
...killing the audience off with mind numbing extra hour(s)....Today will stop being
the standard in AM news and just disappear into a cloud of fluff.

Better yet move Today to cable and make Today 24/7.

J. Fred Muggs forgive them.......
 
I see that ABC's Good Morning America is stretching to a third hour.

I remember back when NBC was the first to add an additional half hour to Soap Operas. They were slammed by critics, saying no one would watch a soap for that long. Now everyone is doing it.

Then they went for a 90 minute soap. That failed. Maybe they will have the same fate with a 4th hour. Try it and see what happens.
 
Didn't they do something about 5-6 years ago...LATER TODAY? It had Florence Henderson on it. Very short lived!

They said it was "Just like TODAY, only later"...they should have said "Just like TODAY, only canceled!

Overall...the TODAY show is very good. But, I guess they will just keep trying to capture the additional hour.
 
What was originally called Later Today in effect became the third hour of Today. Although I wouldn't want to watch the entire 4 hours, I'd rather see 4 hours of Today than the trash talk and courtroom shows that makes up a big part of daytime TV now.
 
Giddy Up Radio said:
Overall...the TODAY show is very good. But, I guess they will just keep trying to capture the additional hour.
Click to expand...

Coming in the Near Future... "Stay tuned for the Today show at 7AM followed immediately by NBC Nightly News at 6 PM!" Overall, it might actually be an improvement. ::)
 
I think that the 4th hour of TODAY would need to have something to make it different than the other three hours. I know it will have different hosts...but, something like "Hot Topics" on the View or the first 20 minute host chat on Live with Regis and Kelly. Otherwise, it will just be another hour of TODAY at a time when its core base of "people getting ready to go to work while watching/listening to TODAY".

Just a thought...What could they do?
 
1069_KIFR said:
I remember back when NBC was the first to add an additional half hour to Soap Operas. They were slammed by critics, saying no one would watch a soap for that long. Now everyone is doing it.

Then they went for a 90 minute soap. That failed.
Click to expand...

Guilty as charged: Another World on both counts. After a 1974 special 1-hour ep for a wedding, the show expanded for real in January 1975. The head writer of the time was used to writing long-form stories and plays, and the hour expansion was better for him to work with. By the end of 1975, Days of Our Lives and As the World Turns were next to jump into the 1-hour pool. By 1980, all the shows that would expand to 1 hour had done so; Young and the Restless being the last. The late/great Bill Bell had resisted the move because he didn't feel like he could write an hour-long show after having written half-hours at a time since the late 1950s. In March 1979, NBC did have yet another case of more-is-better (with the EP in agreement), and the 90-minute eps would begin, but a ratings slide would follow. The HW tried to keep up, but eventually found 7 1/2 hours a week to be too draining to write and eventually left the series. With his departure went so much of the tone and quality of AW, as the next HW was a bit different in storytelling. All this while other soaps, mainly General Hospital at the time, were speeding up their pace and attracting more/younger viewers. August 1, 1980 (of which can be seen on AOL Video) was the last 90-minute ep, used (as the last several preceding months had been) as a story-springboard to introduce Texas, AW's second spinoff. The following Monday, August 4, both AW and Texas would be hour-length shows; Texas being the first to debut as an hour-long soap.

Mistake? Sure, there were many. NBC's moves caused other shows to be prematurely cancelled or moved around (the latter being mostly detrimental for the moved show). They didn't seem to pay attention to changing daytime viewer trends, especially in the case of the 90-minute expansion. Overall, if the network hadn't suffered from alternating cases of trigger-happy and more-is-better, they might not be looking at such a bleak daytime landscape by now.
 
Remember, too, that in the summer of 1980
NBC tried David Letterman in the 10-11:30 AM
(ET) period, later cut (on August 4) to 10-11.
The show, like all Letterman shows, was not
visual radio; you had to sit down and watch,
which not many people would or could do at
10 AM (9 Central). Another big miscue for the
Peacock network.
 
We all know why Today is expanding to 4hrs. It's less expensive to produce news programming than daytime dramas or anything script-based. They're banking on the franchise being the big-draw.

It's akin to NBC's 200 versions of Law & Order or CBS's CSI. The networks love formula television. Let's hope the formula doesn't get "old" too soon.

Gary

Gary Begin
Identity Programming Consultant
Jackson, TN
www.identityprogramming.com
(731) 437-0536
 
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