• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 13, 2009

For the better part of a year and a half, NBC has shrugged off the value of the typical upfront week for advertisers, saying business needs to be done differently. But are there real changes here or not?  

NBC abandoned its usual Monday upfront presentation date (leaving it to Fox) in favor of earlier and smaller May and April meetings with advertisers, ideally more focused on business.

But, just when we think NBC is all serious business, it shifts gears and give us what, in theory, it also does well -- some entertainment during the traditional upfront week.

NBC will have a "Comedy Showcase" at Town Hall in New York City, featuring late-night talk show comedy guys -- Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon -- plus maybe Tina Fey and Steve Carrell thrown in for good measure. Leno, in true NBC marketing synergistic form, will make his appearance at exactly 10 p.m. onstage -- the start time of his new prime-time Monday to Friday show.

If nothing else, it seems the network has learned to segment the whole upfront advertising process -- serious business on one hand, pure entertainment on the other.

But there is also some opportunity here. Someone in NBC's advertising department must have pointed out the obvious:  "Hey, our big advertising clients and their media buyers are still milling about during upfront week. Shouldn't we try to get their attention?'

NBC strategists have been influenced by the right kind of thinking: that gaudy upfront broadcast network presentations are too costly and provide too little information. At the same time, media executives say they'd rather have smaller, shorter, and, in theory, more efficient meetings.

The current upfront presentation template, still used by most broadcast and a growing number of cable networks, is an uneasy fusion of cold-hard media business information with some cursory entertainment -- all in a two-to-three-hour upfront event.

Give NBC some credit here. At least media buyers now have a choice -- even if it's just packaged differently. And, they can cut actual business entertainment waste if they need to .