ROSWELL, Ga. – In the last six weeks NBC has been scrambling to fix a leak in one of it’s most successful programs: the Today show. NBC News’ three-hour morning show has led its original two-hour time slot (7:00 – 9:00 a.m.) for the better part of a decade, but the show, which expanded to three hours soon after the turn of the century, has recently seen a decline in its margin of victory. For the first time in a long time, “America’s First Family” has been struggling to stay on top.

Word first spread in a late-April edition of the New York Times, announcing the firing of the show’s executive producer Tom Touchet and the “hiring” of Jim Bell, a thirtysomething Harvard alum who was the Coordinating Producer for NBC Sports’ coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. The announcement was made by Jeff Zucker, another youthful success story out of Harvard who currently heads NBC Universal Television and who was Today’s executive producer when it first took the lead in the morning ratings game.

Filed under:
Opinion/Editorial, Television by Scott A. Winer

ROSWELL, Ga. – SNL wrapped up its 30th season with an unfortunate performance by both the on and off-air crew. The writing continued to lag, as writing supervisor Paula Pell ended her time at the show. One careless tech mistake in a UPN parody and questionable staging for Coldplay ended the show’s third decade in disappointing fashion. Despite NBC’s stellar coverage of the triumphant display by Afleet Alex in the 130th running of The Preakness Stakes, led by producer David Michaels and director John Gonzalez, at Maryland’s Pimlico Race Course, the SNL finale fell short of an otherwise superb day for the network. Whether producer Steve Higgins is where the change must be made is for the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels to decide. Since the departure of Tim Herlihy in the late-1990s, Higgins has been at the helm with director Beth McCarthy Miller. McCarthy Miller, who dodged the bullet of being the director behind the disastrous Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, has remained in good standing at SNL although she was passed over by alma mater MTV for the 2004 Video Music Awards. She deserves to remain in her position on the show, but better musical guests need to be booked throughout the season in order to ensure that she has good material to work with. Furthermore, tech errors must be addressed before the show converts to high definition in coming years.

Filed under:
Late Night TV, Music/Variety, Opinion/Editorial, Sports TV, Television by Scott A. Winer

ROSWELL, Ga. – After Johnny Knoxville hosted one of the funniest episodes of Saturday Night Live all season, and possibly one of the funniest in the last few years, Will Ferrell returned last Saturday to host one of the worst SNLs I have ever seen. Aside from the “Cold Open” and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” the show got worse by the minute.

To add to the problems, SNL has been technically unsound for many of the past few episodes, a fact that is inexcusable. I have had many experiences with remote sports productions that have gone smoothly despite being in a new location every week, facing new challenges in each venue and juggling issues arising from producing TV for both standard and high definition. A show like SNL that is shot in a studio with its own control room in standard definition has no reason to be experiencing tech problems on a regular basis. Many of these errors have been made by operators rather than equipment. The show hosted by Tom Brady had several graphics that were put on screen at the wrong time; the Cameron Diaz-hosted episode was horribly flawed with misplaced or poorly-timed visual effects (like the pixelated blur made famous by “COPS”); and the Ferrell show most notably featured a cut to something other than a camera (still not sure what it was) during one of the sketches.

Filed under:
Late Night TV, Music/Variety, Opinion/Editorial, Technology, Television by Scott A. Winer