NBC - Where art thou?

I used to love NBC. It was my favorite network, so to write a post complaining about its crap programming and failure to do anything different anymore is really a sad thing. When I found out that they were reignited Donald Trump's, "Apprentice" series and tailoring it to the new economy to try and capitalize on the success of "Undercover Boss" my jaw hit the floor. It won't work. The Trump is Trumped. It's like asking Marie Antoinnette to dole out advice to her starving peasants. NBC wants to jump on the bandwagon spoon feeding Americans doses of confidence about the executives who run the world but for what, good PR? That's all "Undercover Boss," is, just with a good dose of crying, sappy music, and loads of fancy promises. Now what would be fun is to get a homeless guy to have a show about "tips for living on the street when your boss's plans to reboot the company fail."

Reality, as everyone knows, is the seventh layer of hell of the entertainment world. "The Biggest Loser" is NBC's cornerstone reality show now and probably will be for a while longer. Meanwhile, Law & Order is still holding it down, somehow... It's always amazed me how that show just keeps going and going and going.

Now, lets be fair, NBC does do a decent job at comedy and always has. Current shows like "The Office," "Scrubs," "30 Rock" and the more recent "community" are pretty funny but does the network have anything else? Saturday Night Live is touch-and-go, and if I ever watch it, it's never Saturday night and it's only for individual skits that I can just watch on my computer. What happened to the network that had everything? Oh, don't get me wrong, they have a lot, but it's mostly mediocre. They were the network with Seinfeld, ER, Leno, Letterman, Cosby, Star Trek, Frasier and 3rd rock from the sun but what now?

Thank god they have "Wheel of Fortune" but how long is that going to last before it too is in danger? It seemed like the late shows would never go out of fashion but now... With Conan giving NBC "the finger" things are not looking good. The Leno fiascos resemble nothing but a company that doesn't know what it's doing, which is made further obvious with their choices in a lack of innovative programming in anything but comedy? "Trauma" was an obvious throwback to the "ER" days and that failed pretty bad this season.

So my point is this NBC, if you read, which you won't, but imagining you were: stop playing grab-ass with CBS and do what you used to be good at. Your parent company GE is good at innovating, you used to be to, so start innovating. Hire me as a writer, I've got a boat load of show ideas on this here computer and would love to share them with you.