Decline Of NBC Thursdays
by Mark Lashley
Television scheduling is a largely dubious, confounding and, in this day and age, increasingly irrelevant process. So what I’m about to offer isn’t the first rumination on the disconnects between audiences and programmers, between mass markets and niche markets, and it definitely won’t be the last. But this one is personal. It’s about how sometimes you can stand in one place without realizing the rest of the world is heading off somewhere else. It’s about staying alone in the stadium long after the final out. It’s about how almost nobody, save for myself and people I consider either close personal friends or cosmic allies, still watches Thursday night television on NBC.
So maybe that’s a bit melodramatic. NBC’s Thursday night lineup hasn’t been “Must See TV,” in name or in practice, for some years now. And brand loyalty, as a concept, has never really held much water in the realm of entertainment television. But there are so few certainties in life (and certainly within the media landscape) that it’s a bit of a shame when one of the sure things becomes not so sure. This dawned on me when looking at Thursday overnight ratings the past few weeks, when among adults aged 18-49, the most important demographic range for advertisers, NBC has placed fifth among broadcast networks. For reference, there are only four major American broadcast networks that air their programming in the English language. So this is quite a decline for an evening of entertainment that was, for years and years, home to the most popular and acclaimed shows on television.
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