NBC/Headscratchers

• Why do they make such a big deal about Wimbledon? Thirty years ago, yeah- tennis was undergoing a popularity peak in the '70s/early '80s, there were no cable sports networks, and so on. But here it is, 2008, tennis courts all over the Western world have been sold off and bulldozed under housing/converted into skateparks/basketball courts/places to park the school buses/just left to rot, and there's ESPN ESPN 2, ESPN 8 "The Ocho", streaming Internet video, and so on. Yet, NBC still puts off The Tonight Show for 20 minutes and preempts Meet the Press for a week every summer. What gives?
  • Don't have to worry about it anymore; it's all on ESPN now beginning in 2012. However, the cachet of Wimbledon on NBC was in the way it was presented; the tradition (Breakfast at Wimbledon/strawberries and cream), the dignity, the all-white tennis outfits and the stiff upper lip treatment of Wimbledon. Alot of that has been lost now though now that ESPN treats it as the equivalent of an annoyance they deal with for two weeks because of tradition.
• Not only that, but it's been about 17 years since Classic Concentration ended production. Deal or No Deal is certainly popular, but I wouldn't exactly call it a game show.
  • NBC has a history of not even bothering with genre shows until 2006. Therefore, sci-fi/Whedon fans usually don't feel they're "losing" anything to what they put on the air, and generally don't notice the network politics.
• This one is more intended for one of NBC's subdivisions, namely USA Network - the particular issue? Who the hell watches this much NCIS? I don't mean that as a slight against fans of the show or what have you but really, why in the name of all things good and unreasonable does USA air NCIS 17 hours every Wednesday? That bugs the hell out of me.
  • Take it up with my dad, who DV Rs every episode not only during said marathon but, should he notice a marathon is on while he's watching TV, his entire day is more or less shot. The man has probably seen the entire series five times over without buying a single DVD.
  • My parents watch that much NCIS, as well.
• Jay Leno's inability to retire, which has resulted in a ratings killer that has tanked the ratings for the local night time news on NBC, and Conan's version of The Tonight Show.
  • Leno didn't even want to quit in the first place. NBC forced him to because they made a contract with Conan, guaranteeing him The Tonight Show in 2009, to stop him from moving to another network like David Letterman did in 1993. Then they gave Leno his primetime show as a consolation prize to stop him from moving to another network. It's all politics.
    • You mean like Leno forced Johnny Carson to retire? I guess what goes around comes around. That's how I see it, at least.
    • And then they tried to move the shows so, essentially, Jay Leno was getting his Tonight Show back with a different name and Conan would have gotten The Late Show back with the Tonight Show's name. This Troper doesn't know all the facts leading up to that but it sounds like they pretty much loopholed their way out of a promise.
    • Basically, that was NBC's last-ditch effort to hold on to both Leno and Conan. After Leno's prime time show was canceled, NBC faced a choice: either give Leno a show in late night or watch him skip off to another network. And so they tried to somehow fit both Leno and Conan into the late night schedule. Of course, it was impossible to create an arrangement which would please both of them for the simple reason that there is only one Tonight Show time slot and they can't both have it.
• This might sound dumb, but why does the normally semi-transparent bug turn full color during the intro of a show? (this has been going on since the bug was introduced in 1993; for its first few years they were only used during intros)
  • Another marketing gimmick; the idea is to get the full-colour logo ingrained into your brain so you'll subconsciously desire it. Same reason most successful songs play one hook over and over and over again, and why you'll hear a remix of the World 1-1 theme in every Mario game for the rest of your life.
• I know, it's been more than two months, but they showed a documentary best reserved for Dateline during the frickin' Olympics (on February 27). What?