NBC's 'Do No Harm' = Biggest Flop in Network TV History!

[bigdaddy]

Not just NBC as a network history, in the history of the three old networks, CBS, ABC, NBC and then the later Fox.

Rival networks were predicting premiere 18-49 rating a little below the 2.0 that fellow midseason NBC drama Deception recently opened to, with a 1.8 rating considered a reasonable target. But Do No Harm came in at a 0.9, the lowest in-season premiere rating for a series on the Big 4 broadcast networks. Ever.

I only saw ads for it on NBC, which no one normally watches, and no matter how many ads you show, it won't matter if they make the show look like crap.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/post-mortem-what-led-to-do-no-harms-historic-ratings-flop/

Let the NBC bashing continue!

 

[Mr. Adventure]

The premise seemed kind of tired and played out. Didn't Christian Slater have a show about living two lives? Guess NBC must be their own worst enemy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

My Own Worst Enemy was about a spy who had brainwashed himself into being a boring suburbanite when he wasn't on missions so that no one could find him and kill him. 9 episodes. The series started when the brainwashing started breaking down, and he'd be on mission and the suburbanite would pop out, or he'd be in suburbia and the spy would have sex with his wife too well. I thought it was fantastic.

Do No Harm, I saw a couple weeks ago illegally, and it was awful.

It's Jekyll and Hyde, but who cares.

The same actor is/was in another pilot that came out about the same time "Over/Under" so I assumed that that was the show which he was in because no sane bugger in the world would pick up Do No Harm.

If your alterego wants to rape all your female friends and relatives, and you don't stick a gun in your mouth and pull the tiger to stop him, it's perhaps obvious that we know who the real jerk in this equation is.

 

[Keith1701]

The premise seemed kind of tired and played out. Didn't Christian Slater have a show about living two lives? Guess NBC must be their own worst enemy.

I agree, this isn't the first time that we have seen this type of show and it always seems to get low ratings and isn't very good as well.

 

[the G-man]

Come on...who wouldn't want to watch a show that was basically "the Incredible Hulk" without special effects?

Poor white Sean...

 

[sidious618]

Networks can expect this to continue so long as they keep shoveling forward shit. There's more options now and many of those options have more quality than anything on network.

 

[1001001]

Yeah I'm not surprised. The ads looked stupid.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

NBC in particular is in desperate need of a brand identity. Lightweight sci fi isn't going to cut it. The networks in general show too little imagination and guts considering the dire straits they are facing.

People know what to expect from CBS, CW, USA, HBO, AMC and FX. ABC also has a reasonably strong identity, and FOX is burnishing its identity after allowing it to languish a bit, but what kind of show is an NBC show (and no the correct answer should not be "a total failure.") They really need to figure that out before continuing to flail around.

It's really not a question of quality. Some of the big cable hits lately, like American Horror Story and The Walking Dead, are far from uniformly praised. But shows like that can't be ignored. Bland broadcast drivel is far too easily ignored.

 

[bigdaddy]

The thing that gets me about NBC is they ordered 13 Hannibal episodes, done by Bryan Fuller, and are planning to waste them in a summer timeslot! Same thing at Fox, they have seven episodes of Goodwin Games, just going to burn them off in the summer instead of using them to fill in for Ben and Kate.

Networks don't even take risks when there is nothing to be lost.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Wow, they must have gotten cold feet about Hannibal. Maybe they didn't like what they saw in the pilot?

NBC is probably in a bind. Their young, urban, coastal audience has defected to cable (or Netflix/hulu/Amazon). They need to get them back, but they have to do it with shows that stand out in a crowd, like Revolution managed to do.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

If your alterego wants to rape all your female friends and relatives, and you don't stick a gun in your mouth and pull the tiger to stop him, it's perhaps obvious that we know who the real jerk in this equation is.

After yawning through the pilot, I came to the same conclusion. The alter already almost killed your first love and nearly raped the second, is capable of murder, does hard drugs and is actively trying to ruin your life, so...cross your fingers and hope things work out OK? I would have eaten my gun after the first incident, let alone the second.

Also, when does this guy "sleep". Are they trying to say, when he's one personality, the other is sleeping, like getting actual rest? What about his BODY, which never actually rests? He's awake 24/7 since the coma drug stopped working. At least with Awake the guy was living Mon, Mon, Tue, Tue, Wed, Wed, etc., jumping back and forth between realities, and so actually got sleep (ignoring the implications of the finale).

 

[marksound]

It's worse than My Mother The Car? Wow!

Personally, I don't watch NBC. Not since the end of Chuck.

 

[jayceee]

but what kind of show is an NBC show (and no the correct answer should not be "a total failure.")

Over most of the 2000's, I thought NBC was the Law & Order network.

(In parallel, I thought CBS was the CSI network over most of the 2000's).

 

[the G-man]

The thing that gets me about NBC is they ordered 13 Hannibal episodes, done by Bryan Fuller, and are planning to waste them in a summer timeslot...

Actually, that might not be a bad move with an "edgy" show: start it when the competition is less intense and build up a following.

For example: The first four seasons of "Mad Men" all ran during the summer. Most seasons of "Six Feet Under" did as well.

Maybe NBC is trying to follow that model.

 

[bigdaddy]

The thing that gets me about NBC is they ordered 13 Hannibal episodes, done by Bryan Fuller, and are planning to waste them in a summer timeslot...

Actually, that might not be a bad move with an "edgy" show: start it when the competition is less intense and build up a following.

For example: The first four seasons of "Mad Men" all ran during the summer. Most seasons of "Six Feet Under" did as well.

Maybe NBC is trying to follow that model.

That's what they claim but no one watches network TV in the summer. It's all light summer fluff now.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

but what kind of show is an NBC show (and no the correct answer should not be "a total failure.")

Over most of the 2000's, I thought NBC was the Law & Order network.

(In parallel, I thought CBS was the CSI network over most of the 2000's).

That's the danger of being defined too strongly by one show. NBC still has one L&O series but that's hardly enough. Even CBS will have to stop defining themselves as the police procedural channel eventually - their audience keeps aging out of the demo the advertisers want - but NBC is at that point now.

I think they need to look at the success they've had with Grimm and Revolution, and rebuild their brand around that. Not just genre TV, but with a heavy dose of genre, and compelling action-adventure across the board. Good example of a non-genre success: Chicago Fire. Broadcast isn't glutted with shows about firemen, so that stands out.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The thing that gets me about NBC is they ordered 13 Hannibal episodes, done by Bryan Fuller, and are planning to waste them in a summer timeslot...

Actually, that might not be a bad move with an "edgy" show: start it when the competition is less intense and build up a following.

For example: The first four seasons of "Mad Men" all ran during the summer. Most seasons of "Six Feet Under" did as well.

Maybe NBC is trying to follow that model.

That's what they claim but no one watches network TV in the summer. It's all light summer fluff now.

That's starting to change as networks realize they can't afford to flat out ignore summer. CBS is launching Under the Dome this summer and it sounds like they plan to make some noise with it, not just bury it. (And it's a sign they're planning for a future when their procedurals stop working so well for them.)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

but what kind of show is an NBC show (and no the correct answer should not be "a total failure.")

Over most of the 2000's, I thought NBC was the Law & Order network.

(In parallel, I thought CBS was the CSI network over most of the 2000's).

I still think of them that way, perhaps others do too and haven't returned to see what's changed?

I have heard that the younger generation is pretty agnostic when it comes to delivery, they don't really associate a program with its source, so maybe if they get the right shows they can get some viewers (for those shows at least).

 

[the G-man]

The thing that gets me about NBC is they ordered 13 Hannibal episodes, done by Bryan Fuller, and are planning to waste them in a summer timeslot...

Actually, that might not be a bad move with an "edgy" show: start it when the competition is less intense and build up a following.

For example: The first four seasons of "Mad Men" all ran during the summer. Most seasons of "Six Feet Under" did as well.

Maybe NBC is trying to follow that model.

That's what they claim but no one watches network TV in the summer. It's all light summer fluff now.

But isn't one of the criticisms of network TV that they don't do the same type of innovative things that cable does?

 

[bigdaddy]

Cable shows reruns of their shows at 11 and 12 at night, networks can't do that.

No one watches TV until 10pm at the earliest in the summer. If the weather is bad people watch fluff like America's Got Talent and SYTYCDance because if you miss parts of it that doesn't matter, you can just jump right in.