Midseason brings not only new TV shows, but new time slots for a few old shows. Sometimes, a move is a reward for performing better than expected, as with CBS moving Blue Bloods from Fridays to higher-profile Wednesdays starting next week. Other times, no matter how superb a show is, the move is a slap in the face, a future pink slip, a slow-acting death sentence.
That's what NBC is doing this week to 30 Rock...
Despite the fact that 30 Rock, for five years now, has been the network's funniest and most inventive comedy, NBC this Thursday is moving the show to 10 p.m. ET.
That's a move to the final hour of prime time -- a move that, on broadcast network TV, is the equivalent of sending it to Siberia. The last one I remember, also presented by NBC, was United States, in 1980. And if misery loves company, at least Tina Fey should take solace in being in some superb company.
United States was a bold TV experiment by Larry Gelbart, the brilliant writer whose credits include, but are not at all limited to, the TV version of M*A*S*H, the story for the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and the movies Tootsie and Barbarians at the Gate. United States, which was riveting, starred Beau Bridges and Helen Shaver as a long-married couple dealing with everyday life -- no more, no less.
There was no laugh track or theme song (unheard of at the time), and the show mixed comedy and drama in a way that was as unusual then as it is commonplace on TV today. Three years earlier, CBS had successfully transplanted the character of Lou Grant from the sitcom world of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to the drama-with-comedy newsroom of Lou Grant, but United States was starting from scratch.
NBC, then run by Fred Silverman, didn't know what do with it -- not only because of its odd tone, but because it was so much better than anything else NBC had to offer at the time. So NBC stuck it at 10:30 p.m., after a 90-minute variety series called The Big Show.
"A good show like United States points out how truly revolting most of NBC's lineup is, and how utterly juvenile it has become," I wrote in the Fort Lauderdale News on Mar. 11, 1980. Then, trying to explain why United States had ended up in a late-hour slot (on a network where Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere and Cheers were still in the future), I named names.
"Back to NBC's problem," I wrote then. "Where do you put a show like United States in your weekly prime time schedule? After Pink Lady? Between Here's Boomer and The Facts of Life? Between -- gulp -- Diff'rent Strokes and Hello, Larry?"
Ah, those were the days.
But these are the days, too. And while 30 Rock, for years, has enjoyed prominent placement on NBC's Thursday schedule, that night is not the powerhouse it was back in the days of Seinfeld and Friends. And transplanting 30 Rock to another night just points out how "truly revolting" today's NBC lineup is as well.
To paraphrase the earlier version of myself: "Where do you put a show like 30 Rock in your weekly prime time schedule? After The Biggest Loser: Couples? Between Chuck and The Cape? Between -- gulp -- Minute to Win it and Dateline NBC?"
But instead of making better programming to support one of its few jewels, NBC is banishing 30 Rock to a time slot where it's sure to get fewer viewers, as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I know, TV time slots are supposed to mean a lot less in these days of Hulu and YouTube and iTunes.
But iThink they still matter.
And I think 30 Rock deserves better.
By the way... If you look up United States on the Internet, sources claim it premiered in March 1980, in a much earlier time slot. Those sources are wrong. I'm relying not on my own memory (which, for once, turned out to be right), but on clippings from the actual newspapers of the time. Back in the days of clippings. And newspapers.
And By the way number two... United States has never been released on home video.
But it should be...