As NBC looks ahead, a few looks back

NBC is wanting musical drama "Smash" can provide a midseason ratings spark. NBC Entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt was refreshingly blunt in assessing the network's performance this season, telling TV experts within the month of the month of january, "We'd a really bad fall -- worse than I'd wanted for, but in what I had been expecting.InchIf possibly he'd told us before we seen "Free Agents."Remember all people shows the network opened up inside the fourth quarter? They were really placeholders, spit and bailing wire, to hold the region together until inside a couple of days, when -- for NBC, anyway -- the summer season really begins.This Sunday's Super Bowl provides the ultimate platform, promotionally speaking, to create the network's midseason salvo, such as the musical drama "Smash" and return of last spring's surprise singing-competition hit, "The Voice." Yet since the network prepares to plant the seed items from the wanted-for turnaround, it's being nagged by uncomfortable pointers of exactly how far the old Peacock has fallen.Possibly like NBC Entertainment -- like CBS News, which must deal with people constantly dredging up recollections of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite or perhaps the Wally Disney Co., whose patriarch casts a extended shadow -- carries around extra baggage, which becomes especially difficult when it's inside the ratings basement.Watching NBC wallow in fourth place (and frequently under that inside the Nielsen standings each time a cable channel's obtaining a evening) more often than not leads to references for the network's "Must-See TV" heyday -- a pithy slogan that labored well in those days but, in hindsight, has converted into a kind of yoke upon future decades. If very little else, it's a favorite of newspaper editors and headline authors who haven't seen network TV since "Seinfeld."Actually, whatever NBC's success having its Super Bowl strategy, the network's glory days will be revisited.This spring, Doubleday will publish "The top of Rock," former NBC Entertainment Prez Warren Littlefield's dental good status for his tenure within the network, which carries the subtitle "Inside the Increase and lower of Must See TV."This is a guess: People rushing to check out their names may well be more thinking about the fall in comparison to increase.The other day, another former NBC topper, the late Brandon Tartikoff, appeared to stay in news reviews, along with his widow, Lilly, giving his correspondences and effects -- greater than 4,000 pieces -- to USC's School of movement picture Arts.The era of Tartikoff, Littlefield and bosses Grant Mess and Don Ohlmeyer includes NBC at its most dominant, full of swagger and confidence. That legacy has hung over people controlling it since, who've heard plenty of adjectives in regards to the "once-proud" Peacock, or puns like "Must-Flee TV." Littlefield, who saw the network range from third (when that really meant "last") with a dominant first and begin climbing lower again within the time, felt people demands themselves, and states they're difficult to avoid."It's daunting," he mentioned. "We succeeded incredibly within the eighties ... It's my job to felt, 'How are we able to deal with that?' " For moving across the "Must-See TV" layer, he added, "Once they hidden that logo design design a really very long time ago, it is a burden to satisfy that."The Super Bowl reflects the initial genuine test in the new regime, and may doubtless trigger additional analysis -- with, potentially, more unhelpful adjectives -- once the strategy doesn't yield apparent benefits.NBC would definitely be wise to continue tamping lower anticipation, since the NFL's large game features a spotty history in creating new programs. That describes why in 1996 a network needed the then rather bold step of airing among its finest hits after the sport rather: "We made a decision that rather than forcing everyone to check out something they probably shouldn't watch, let's permit them to watch something they wish to watch?"The network was NBC, the show was "Pals," as well as the quote came from from then-West Coast chief Ohlmeyer.Yep, for systems wanting to engineer a recovery, history might be a real discomfort. Contact John Lowry at john.lowry@variety.com