TV insiders like to say that one hit can turn around an entire network. That may be overstating the case, but NBC executives seem to be walking around their pods these days with more spring in their heels and fewer frozen, tense smiles. And it’s not hard to guess why.
“Heroes” was the prize at the bottom of NBC’s Cracker Jacks box this past fall. A kind of “X-Men” for primetime, the comic-book drama about everyday superheroes has become the breakout hit that the network was praying for after a couple of horrendous seasons. Along with Sunday football, “Heroes” is responsible for a ratings surge that has teleported the network from last place into a three-way tie with ABC and CBS for No.1 in young-adult viewers this season.
NBC was widely expected to do better this season, but this wasn’t exactly the path to restoration that pundits predicted. If NBC doubled down on any new show this season, it was Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a costly and inside- baseball-ish peek behind the curtain at a late-night sketch comedy that came from Warner Bros. Television, industrial- strength supplier of such TV perennials as “ER” and “Friends.”
In-house success
But “Studio 60” has generated polarized critical opinion and lackluster ratings, while “Heroes” is sucking all the oxygen from the room. And it hails from NBC Universal Television Studio, the smaller, in-house unit that jockeys for clout, respect and talent alongside far better-provisioned competitors like Warners.
All this has given Angela
Bromstad an especially broad smile.
Bromstad is president of the NBC studio and the person, her staff is happy to remind anyone who asks, who put into motion the machinery that eventually got “Heroes” on the air. She’s the one who, with subordinates, took the 45-minute pitch from creator Tim Kring, pronouncing it “engrossing,” and the one who excitedly read the first script before getting out of bed one morning.
Now she sees “Heroes” as evidence of a full-feathered, peacockian renaissance, something that’s “helped turn the tide at NBC.”
“When I came in” – that is, started at NBC – “‘ER’ had just happened,” Bromstad said last week, fresh from talking up the virtues of NBC’s television operations (and showing a “Heroes” clip) to CEO Jeffrey Immelt and other top General Electric executives at the company’s annual “global leadership” meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. (NBC Universal is a unit of GE.) “I thought, ‘That must be incredible, to be there at the beginning and be part of a big hit like that.”‘
“Heroes,” of course, hasn’t quite scaled “ER”-like heights yet; the former is, after all, only midway through its first season. But Bromstad’s message was unmistakable. She wants it known that NBC’s in-house studio, once known for bombs like “Surface” and “Hidden Hills,” can deliver big, generation-defining hits. In addition to “Heroes,” NBC’s studio has found two critically acclaimed comedies with “The Office” and “30 Rock.”
To drive home the point, the studio is spending big bucks to clinch development deals with a few top writer-producers to make more shows that executives hope will be game changers.
David Shore, who created Fox’s hit drama “House,” starring Hugh Laurie as a misanthropic M.D., is working on a pilot for an NBC series about a cynical female cop in the “House” mold. Just last week, the studio announced it had wooed away (from Warner Bros.) Hank Steinberg, creator of CBS’s long-running missing- persons drama “Without a Trace” – a defection that was strongly suggestive of the momentum NBC Universal is enjoying these days.
Broader implications
Whether the studio succeeds will have big implications for NBC and for primetime TV generally. Unlike Warners or 20th Century Fox Television, the studio makes few projects for non- NBC networks (Fox’s “House” is an exception), which Brom-
stad said was an inevitable result of the “vertical integration” that swept the TV business in the past 10 years in which every network has a sister studio.
So to a certain degree, NBC’s attempt to return to its glory days will depend on the ability of Bromstad and company to excavate more shows like “Heroes.” Competitors argue that the success of “Heroes” was nothing more than a happy accident; NBC clearly expected “Studio 60” to be its big hit. Moreover, they say, Bromstad, despite her close relationship with NBC Universal Television boss Jeff Zucker, has relatively little autonomy within the company’s top-heavy management structure and has clashed often with NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly, who’s responsible for picking the shows on the broadcast network.
“Close relationship”
Said Bromstad, “Kevin and I have a very close working relationship.” And in an e-mail, Reilly wrote: “Angela has been a good partner. The fact is we’ve had a healthy collaboration between the network and the studio which has resulted in some great shows and big assets for the company.”
David Nevins, president of Imagine Television, which produces the football drama “Friday Night Lights” with NBC, said the studio had offered unstinting support for the show, despite low ratings. “The show has been incredibly well produced, ahead of schedule and under budget,” Nevins said. “The studio has always known what they were going after.”
Yes, but what they were really after was a hit the size of “Heroes.” And now they’ve got it. Nevins isn’t alone in perceiving an NBC “rising tide” that’s lifting more than just executive spirits.
“I feel like the dynamic at NBC has really changed from ‘Who’s the next president going to be?’ to ‘They’re finally doing something right,”‘ he said. “And they’re being rewarded for it by the audience.”
