The NBC 10PM TV Programming Debacle Continues as They Try to Fill Jay Leno’s Spot

As their network’s red-headed stepchild, Conan O’Brien, is likely to walk sooner rather than later, NBC programming executives are scrambling to recycle old ideas.  Here is our inside scoop into the new shows they are considering and our take on them.  Primarily, they plan to stick to the tired format they have followed in the past that have made them the third rate network that they so long to become again today: cop shows, lawyer shows, hospital shows and Dateline “To Catch Some Sort of Freak-Ass Freak” shows.

Law & Order: SEC - Street justice for the Brooks Brothers set, featuring an ever changing cast of upstart SEC agents planning to crack the continual corruption on the most morally bankrupt street in the nation.  This new franchise opens up future possibilities for NBC programming’s somewhat less fictional reality shows with likely entries such as “I Am a Former Bank Executive…Get Me Outta Here!”

The A.D.D. D.A.- Kelsey Grammer (Frasier, Cheers, and that other thing with that Raymond shrew and maybe some other shows too), in an uncharacteristic dramatic turn, stars in this series as an ambitious, but extremely nervous, distracted, anxious, intrusive, irritating, disorganized, and vaguely boorish district attorney who must divide his workday between the Twin Cities. Despite the fact that the networks still have hopes the viewing public will bring Kelsey’s career back from life support, and the personality quirks of his character are really kind of a hoot, especially how he reacts each time he loses his Blackberry in his double chin, at press time, we still think we’ll probably watch that Italian chick from ER’s show who’s contemplating conjugal pokey visits with Mr. Big instead.

Inept Samaritan General – Previous seasons’ medical dramas were all about unbelievably hot surgeons banging each other in hospital break-rooms because not having slept for 24 hours is the ULTIMATE aphrodisiac!  Recent seasons of medical dramas have featured tough but loveable “heart o’ gold” type nurses who are the ones really running the hospitals despite having enough Oxycontin coursing through their veins to put down a herd of Rush Limbaughs.  Now comes a new and innovative show built around the real heart and soul of the hospital: the mind-numbingly grumpy old guy by reception who gives incredibly lousy directions and does so with true conviction.  It’s his job: his volunteer job.  Which means he probably never even looked at the color-coded hospital map. Except for the way to the supply room where he can lift free adult diapers.  Day in, day out in this exciting drama one man, and one man alone…provides directions.  Directions so inept that visitors can arrive hoping for a quick cappuccino before seeing a sick loved one and instead end up inadvertently getting an impromptu colonoscopy. 

And filling the schedule where needed:


Dateline NBC:  To Catch _____________________.  (Insert name of that guy in the neighborhood who “always kept to himself.”) Yeah, you know the one, so insert his name here already.  Just like the types who would have been stoned to death publicly in biblical times, but now we do it on TV!  Pass the Pop*Secret™, please.