Smashed

I was thumbing through the latest issue of TV Guide and saw that the Nielsen ratings for the previous week showed that only one NBC show - the talent contest show "The Voice" - was in the top ten. "Smash," the new drama about staging a musical, was the highest-rated NBC scripted show, coming in at . . . number 38. Even the AMC scripted drama "The Walking Dead," a cable show, came in higher, at number 35.

This is embarrassing. NBC is probably promoting "Smash" as a series that lives up to its name, but saying that it's the most-watched scripted show on NBC is like being the hippest avant-garde electronic musician in Tulsa. Even original programming on basic cable is outperforming NBC's lineup. The only thing that's probably keeping the formerly proud Peacock Network from sinking any further is a bunch of viewers like a friend of mine, who loves "Parenthood" and doesn't have cable. Because if there's one thing rarer than someone who loves an NBC show these days, it's someone who doesn't have cable.

I've been fascinated of late by NBC's utter failure to turn things around in the past eight years. This season is especially jaw-dropping. One would think that an Americanized version of "Prime Suspect," the British police drama starring Helen Mirren that was a PBS favorite, would be a huge hit. On any other network, maybe, but not on NBC - no one noticed, no one watched and no one cared. It was canceled in short order. Even an offbeat sitcom like "Community," which has developed a loyal following, was unexpectedly placed on hiatus in the middle of the season and only returned last week - but its subsequent ratings numbers have been encouraging enough to possibly gain it a fourth season. Possibly. As a cult favorite and critics' darling, it's prospered, but as a vehicle to rebuild NBC's former dominance of Thursday nights . . . ehh, not so much.

As I've noted before, Comcast is now thoroughly at the helm of NBC for the 2012-13 season, with its choices of executives to run the NBC network and oversee its programming firmly entrenched. The cancellations of current NBC fare will be many, and the schedule that emerges in September should be so unrecognizable from the current one, it'll seem like NBC is a completely different network. Whether or not that new NBC will prove to be a ratings juggernaut and get the network out of the biggest hole it's been in since the Fred Silverman era is unknown. The geniuses who ran NBC in the late nineties and early two thousand zeroes made many of the disastrous business and programming decisions that led to the current slump, which began with the 2004-05 season. The network more or less ran on the fumes of "Friends" and "Frasier" for so long, with nothing to fill the voids created when both shows ended their runs in 2004. NBC didn't get into this mess overnight; it's not going to get out of it as quickly, either.