As for the actual point of the article though, the parallels seem fairly obvious. They got big, cocky, and risk-averse, didn’t change with the times, and forgot why they ever got to the top in the first place. Their corporate culture stinks, and anyone with an idea worth having works for the upstart competitors instead of beating their heads against that particular wall. The real question you should be asking is, how many hundreds of other companies fall into the same bin?

Jay, get off the teleprompter, hit the comedy circuit again. Heck, borrow Robin Williams’ rainbow suspenders and remember once upon a time: you were actually funny!

I long for the days of Rodney Dangerfield. The ultimate funny man in his heyday.

I can’t believe they actually believe that everyone agrees with them. Or that losing a large portion of their audience is good for them.

I guess they just exist as a propaganda machine for the very young. I suppose it works. I imagine that is more important than providing good entertainment everyone can enjoy.

Seriously, I think the propaganda is the purpose. I also think it helps propel us into civil war.

Fun show with good acting.

Hamlet on Harleys with a nod to the Sopranos.

Actually, there’s some similarity between MCs and the Mob. They are both subcultures with their own rules. They may not be society’s rules, but they are rules nonetheless.

Ayyy, gringuito

“many of whom said they didn’t bother with TV anymore,”

The woman was talking trash, delusional, how do you know she’s not a soap opera addict like you?

“which in the Southern Cone of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, and other countries means . . . ”

That’s their slang, not anywhere else, keep your smears within your agringados.

On substance, Stephen Green is wrong. NBC’s problem, and GM’s, and Leno’s, are that they are not popular enough. They are niche operations with a broad-based legacy cost structure, unable to live off revenues from niche customers.

Ferrari can handle only a few thousand customers per year — they charge premium prices. NBC wanted to be Ferrari, not GM of the past, and sought the logical extension of the “Brandon Tartikoff strategy” by using stuff like Hill Street Blues to attract fewer but wealthier yuppies.

This soon morphed into a politically correct mish-mash of a gay-female ghetto.

WHERE on NBC’s schedule are any shows aimed at men? The two that were SOLIDLY aimed at men last year, Life and Chuck, were either cancelled (Life) with no real effort to promote and work with the show, or relegated to a mere 13 episodes in the Spring (because Sponsor Subway was inundated with Chuck fans mailing in their register receipts demanding the show be saved).

Meanwhile you have the female-gay oriented “Mercy” which features an Iraq War veteran nurse who cheats on her doofus good guy husband with a hunky doctor. Or “Trauma” etc. No shows appealing to men.

Broadcast TV is in fact a gay-female ghetto. Most of Hollywood is oriented (particularly TV) around the female audience, with various princess fantasies being the basis of Disney-ABC’s empire, and variations of that for ABC (Desperate Housewives, Witches of Eastwick), NBC, CBS, and to a lesser extent Fox (which is the youngest and most male oriented of the nets). CW is of course the home of “Gossip Girl” and “the Vampire Diaries” so that takes care of younger viewers.

In order to succeed the Nets need a broad audience. Men as well as women, old as well as young. The Superbowl with about 100 million viewers or so represents what could have been done with five nets accounting for population growth, akin to the 60 million viewers that the Beverly Hillbillies got in a nation of 200 million people in the late 1960′s. Even with cable erosion, the amount of people actually watching, particularly 18-34 for the five networks is about 12% or so IIRC of the potential 18-34 population.

Link to my article, WSJ sources, comparison with the Census Bureau data is here.

Let’s review: NBC abandoned Saturday Nights (Pretender, Profiler, etc.) in 2000, ABC in 1999, CBS in 2004. In 1999-2000 the Networks had: “Angel,” “the Pretender,” “Martial Law,” “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Nash Bridges,” “Harsh Realm,” and “Seven Days.” All male skewing. It would be a miracle if the nets had even ONE male-skewing/oriented show left on their schedule.

The networks in good times, pursuing wealthy yuppie women, with ad money rolling in, had no reason to pursue a broad viewership that would insulate them from downturns. They were like GM focusing on trucks/SUVs. Unable to make anything else profitable.

Now broadcast TV is perceived as male-friendly as Broadway or a Twilight convention. It would take years of losses to lure back men the way it will take years for GM to lure back broad based consumers for non-truck/SUV vehicles.

Lesson: in media, pursuing wealthy yuppie customers is very vulnerable to inevitable economic downturns. NBC is in trouble because they have nothing men want to watch, and are in pursuit of the same female audience that CBS, ABC, CW, and Fox pursues.

Apparently vivo has not bothered to read the comments on VDH’s recent article on being a cultural dropout, which got around 500 comments, many of whom said they didn’t bother with TV anymore, let alone “soap operas and foxed news.”

Also note that a number of posters here also said that their TV watching had declined considerably.

But what can one expect from someone with a screen name of vivo, which in the Southern Cone of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, and other countries means con man, flim-flam artist, scam artist, fast talker etc.

vivo is not a very good vivo , as it is so easy to see through his inane comments. He’s more like a wannabe vivo.