• by Don Seaman , Featured Contributor, January 8, 2010

I'm finding myself mentally replaying the classic movie line (which has been edited for journalistic reasons): "You (screwed) up - you trusted us!" Otter's timeless advice to a heartbroken Flounder about a wrecked car could just easily come from Jeff Zucker on an NBCU PSA.

Now NBCU gets a chance to fix its own Animal House. It looks like viewers have to stay up late for Jay Leno once again.

They made a mistake. Many, actually. First, by misguidedly casting aside Jay Leno over fears of losing Conan O'Brien. They then doubled-down and blew up their 10 p.m. hour for each night of the week by giving Leno the nightly prime-time gig. The net resembles a gambler who's caught in a downward spiral. Now it's time to cut your losses, walk away from this card game and go back to where you made your money in the first place.

Reinvest in the blue chips, NBCU. (Maybe there's a reason that this story hit while the press is busy at the CES in Las Vegas.)

They now have to publicly recognize those mistakes, since they've demonstrated that checkbook programming doesn't play well on the big stage. To compare it to professional sports, it's like having a big-market team -- one expected to strive for excellence every season, no matter the cost. Above all else, the broadcast networks are the big-market teams, and viewers won't settle for a rebuilding year.

All the "Leno" experiment told the viewers was that they were more interested in programming for the shareholders rather than the viewers. NBC overvalued the Leno brand. It should know that a late-night success is rarely ready to be a prime-time player.

Perhaps there was a heightened sense of urgency -- and clearer heads in the room -- due to the Comcast deal. They had to look at what long-term damage might be inflicted upon the brand legacy if it were to continue. It certainly didn't engender any hope for the long-term future of the broadcast network from the outside.

The only real snag may have been a legal one -- can they bag the Leno prime-time deal? And what does that do to the egos that are involved? By adding Jimmy Fallon to the mix, they now have three homegrown stars to satisfy, and there still aren't any more hours in the day to give them.

Is giving each of them less of the available time really the answer? Or maybe they each specialize -- Leno does a monologue and maybe some Jaywalking, Conan does his performance art skits, and Fallon does the bit with the guest. You could make a case that each hour-long show only had about 30 minutes of material. You might be able to cut out the filler from each and produce one successful hydra-like show: a 21st-century late night Larry, Moe and Curly.

NBCU painted themselves into a corner, but as they were waiting for it to dry they decided they didn't like the colory, so they bided their time until they could repaint. Unfortunately, they did it during an open house, so everybody could see their mistake.

I think that there are three main takeaways to this story:

* NBCU recognized that it was suffering from an uncomfortable problem of too many bankable stars with too small of a galaxy, but their early overreaction made the situation untenable. Having too much star power is a good problem to have, but they badly miscalculated on the deployment of their assets. * Languishing in fourth place gave them the wherewithal to experiment, to take some risks that they may not have considered under different circumstances. This move may have precipitated an early exploration of an embracing of the cable universe more directly -- if they stop running dramas at 10 p.m., perhaps they could leverage their cable properties as the "new home of NBCU drama."

*Affiliates still matter. They're getting killed by the "Leno" lead-in. Their late-news cash-cow is lucky to give skim milk now. Powdered. By ramming the show down their throats, NBC was sacrificing their relationship with them at a critical point in their corporate existence. In this era of retrans deal restructuring, they don't need to have internal dissent with a potential epic FCC battle looming.

These are days of unprecedented change for the broadcasting world. NBC, once the undisputed King of Prime-time Television, becomes practically a netlet, then begins to toy with the idea of transforming itself into a cable network.

While we keep improving the delivery options of television (HDTV, 3D TV, mobile TV, etc.), we're also devaluing and under-investing in the product of television. Innovation in how people watch TV will be lost if we're losing the battle of why they watch it in the first place. Superior content will keep the viewers, not the potential of seeing "The Biggest Loser" in 3D.

Until all this gets itself straightened out, and NBC is once again airing three hours of true prime-time programming every weeknight, my advice to you, viewers, is to drink heavily. Trust me, I'm Pre-Med(ia).