I’m going to say some harsh things in this post, but they need to be properly applied. This past year has seen some wonderful episodic TV put out by complex teamwork among creatives, producers and network executives, all of whom seem to know what they are doing. These shows are not limited to a single network, whether cable or broadcast, but run across the board, with the possible exception of NBC. Unfortunately, a record number of shows have been dumped by networks over the past two years, many not seeing more than four or five episodes aired. That adds up to a lot of expense and poor judgment.

I’ve already taken TV producers to task in my article on Dumbass Producers. For some time, I’ve been thinking about the bricks in the cog works of the horribly inefficient episodic TV mill—the network executives. The problem is widespread, but I will be focusing on NBC, where the problem is epic.

Just think for a moment about Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law, Law & Order, Seinfeld, Homicide, E.R. and Cheers. All were intensely entertaining groundbreaking series that had legs. NBC once set the bar for the best comedies and dramas throughout the 1980s and ’90s.

That has all changed.

I’m going to pick on Jeff Zucker. Jeff, by some accounts, is a brilliant guy. I’m not so sure. As president of NBC Entertainment he pressed for reality TV with the annoying The Apprentice and Fear Factor and so many more. Initially, the ratings were strong. He was promoted to president of NBC Television Group. But under his guidance NBC slipped from first in ratings to fourth. You can’t go much lower. Jeff started to show his true lack of grasp in episodic TV from his first day as boss. Series he pushed for and tightly controlled, such as the Joey and Father of the Pride, were massive failures. It was clear to me with Joey that Jeff and his underlings didn’t understand what made Friends work. Sitcoms require a lot more than one star, hype, a formula and statistics to work. IMHO Zucker is a shortsighted bottom line kinda guy who can’t see the big picture. He’s also spent his career trying to patch up holes in NBC’s programming line up caused by his own lack of insight, sometimes throwing ridiculous amounts of money at the problems, and sometimes going on the cheap. It seems like Jeff is shooting bird shot in the dark. Why is he the boss of all NBC? His “hits,” such as Heroes and Deal or No Deal, are soft-legged expensive shows that quickly became boring. (And I do applaud Heroes producers for their innovative use of cross-media promotion and final season improvements).

Think about late night NBC. It used to be king. I mean, what was Zucker thinking with Conan O’Brien? I stopped watching late night TV because of that choice. He has scrambled around blindly extending the length of shows, buying shows, trying to create shows. Finally he gave up and dedicated six hours of prime time per week to Leno. It’s a cheap deal, in spite of low ratings. The Leno show will make a profit and it relieves Zucker from having to come up with actual programming. True, when he pulled the plug on Conan, he told Charlie Rose on his show, “It’s the sign of a leader to step up and say you know when something’s not working, and have the guts to reverse it.” Too little too late. The Olympics was another way to get ratings without actually having to do anything creative.

A friend of mine who knows told me, “Jeff is like an accountant who insists on telling the surgeon how to perform an endoscopic examination of the colon.” He hasn’t got the eye and he surrounds himself with the same kind of hype-addicted blind executives. Insightful blogger Alan Sepinwall (“What’s Alan Watching”) had it right when he said, “Zucker took over as head of NBC entertainment in 2000. He has since failed his way up the corporate ladder.”

That said, I am not privy to much of what goes on behind the scenes in network conference rooms. But I do have a lot of friends in the business on all sides, and I have, over many years, observed what goes on. It is often not pretty. Setting great TV aside—because we all acknowledge that it exists, and we love it—let’s take a look at bad TV that should have been killer good.

Probably the saddest and most salient example started back in 2002 when NBC executives, unable to come up with anything very original on their own, decided to go to the numbers. At that time the BBC2 had a smash hit called Coupling. The numbers were awesome for the UK. IMHO it was one of the best written, best cast and funniest shows I’d seen. Each episode was a satisfying romp into the realm of young singles groping for answers in a complex and very funny world of relationships. Each episode left you feeling “been there, done that,” and laughing essentially at yourself as well as the show.

So looking at the numbers, but without a clue what caused them, NBC Executives headed by Zucker, decided to throw money at the ratings problem. In this case they were really on to something good. But I’m not sure any of them had actually seen the show. Head writer Steve Moffat (now head writer on Dr. Who) wrote great lines properly delivered by charming characters. Here’s an example from innocent Steve: “I like naked women. I’m a bloke. I’m supposed to like them. We’re born like that. We like naked women as soon as we’re pulled out of one. Halfway down the birth canal we’re already enjoying the view.” (Coupling, “Inferno,” original UK air date: June, 2 2000.)

Or this, from cute Sally, who says to the group: “You know, I have never understood the male obsession with lesbianism – a whole area of sex with nothing for them to do… Errr…Just answered my own question, haven’t I?” (Coupling, “Inferno,” original UK air date: 2 June 2000)

But the operative concept here is that the NBC executives had no clue what made the show work; so they bought the show and head writer Steven Moffat, thinking it was a slam dunk. They brought Steven over to the U.S. to head his handpicked team of top writers. The creative team then cast the show brilliantly, given the cultural differences across the pond. In short, it should have been, and definitely and would have been a smash hit here in the states as well. Except for one thing. The executives didn’t have a clue what made the show a hit.

They thought it was just sex, and they did what happens way too much in this industry. They decided to justify their existence by imposing their limited ideas of “funny” onto the show.

They thought they could improve upon the work of Steven Moffat and his team. As I understand it, first came those insidious little notes making suggestions about how the show should be written. Then a team of executives moved into production offices, headed by Jeff Zucker, and stripped out all of the subtly funny stuff, turning it into crasser, overtly sexual crap. Even sex has to be clever to be funny. I could not believe how bad it was, and I was a big fan of the UK version. The show had unfunny trailers and opened to a relatively small 15.6 million viewers. It lasted for four agonizing weeks before being properly put to rest after loosing 5.3 million viewers. I note, however, that most news bits on the demise only cited the writers and producers. Nobody mentioned the real culprits.

My sources tell me everybody on the show knew it was going to be a dog from the day the execs took over. Everybody, that is, except the executives who were apparently riding an ego high on their brilliant contributions to the show. This kind of brilliance was rewarded by promoting Jeff Zucker to chairman of the board. Go figure. The brilliant and talented Moffat gave us his view of the shows demise at the BBC’s TCA (Television Critic’s Award). “I can answer it with three letters: N-B-C. Very, very good writing team. Very, very good cast. The network f*****d it up because they intervened endlessly. If you really want a job to work, don’t get Jeff Zucker’s team to come help you because they’re not funny. I can say that because I don’t care about working for NBC. The way in which NBC slagged off the creative team on American Coupling after its failure was disgraceful and traitorous. So I enjoy slagging them off. That’s the end of my career in L.A.”

Later, quoted on the BBC Web site, Moffat continued, “US Coupling was commissioned by NBC, promoted as the new Friends by NBC (we asked them not to), promoted as the sexiest show on TV by NBC (we begged them not to) promoted as “the show you’re all talking about” by NBC (no one had seen it, how could they be talking about it?), scheduled by NBC, noted to death by NBC, canceled by NBC and publicly blamed and disowned by NBC.”

Eventually, Zucker expressed his point of view (and I paraphrase) that much of the programming was bad that year and that Coupling was NBC’s biggest mistake. He never took responsibility for ruining the show. It was the biggest dumbass move in a long series of such moves that NBC executives have made. (Granted, a few execs at NBC are obviously smart and competent and have made good moves, but they’re bailing the Titanic with a sand pail.)

Is it any wonder that certain executives get garner little respect on the set? One production team member on an NBC series put it this way: “Their ‘notes’ are usually the result of the perceptually challenged trying to prove the worth of their existence.” I’d heard that before. Another told me, “They are the dogs who lick themselves because they can.” The opinions continue: “They confuse the acquisition of power with the acquisition of talent.”

I’ve picked on NBC here, but this modus is rampant across network television. I’ve read many of the really clueless notes sent to writers and production staff. Many have been almost laughably pretentious and uncalled for. I recall one NBC executive (I admit it was several years ago) sending a four-page note to multi-Emmy writer Tracy Keenan Wynn explaining the symbolism and meaning of what Tracy had written. It was pretentious intellectual hogwash; the guy didn’t “get” the show at all. The notes I’ve seen clearly demonstrate that at least the mid-level executives feel they need to justify their existence by providing “input.” All too often that means destructive input with an iron hand.

All that said, some NBC guys seem to have learned a lesson or two from the Coupling debacle. Just look at the The Office, which was a huge hit in the UK first. There were many factors in this show becoming a grand success, but much of it has to do with Zucker and the boys keeping their hands off, while taking credit, of course.

When networks join forces with the great power producers who develop consistent ratings winners, they seem to know better than to mess with the shows. In fact, guys like Chuck Lorie and Steven Bochco, Jerry Bruckheimer, Anthony E. Zuiker, Hart Hanson and J.J. Abrams—along with their hand-picked team of writers—can often ignore network notes they don’t like. If the network doesn’t like it, they can look elsewhere for great shows. In that way, the producers with clout have much less interference.

We’ve all seen the partial demise of great episodic TV in favor of one-dimensional reality shows. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I watch Survivor and The Amazing Race. But my God, building a wall around an entire neighborhood and pitting neighbors against each other…with really dumb competitions and a host that could put a hurricane to sleep? There have been just as many reality show failures, and why? They’re cheaper to produce and, if they don’t stick, to shut down. By my calculations, last year alone NBC cancelled eight of its reality shows. The only one that has done well is The Biggest Loser. It taps into a major problem in this country and offers a way out. It’s interestingly iconic. What we need is to get some network and studio executives that actually understand the medium they control.

But if the bean counters continue to take over across the entertainment industry, quality suffers. For example, I think that’s how we’ll end up with Shrek 15 eventually. The Shrek creatives are great, the movies are wonderful, but it seems DreamWorks just is no longer willing to take a chance on anything new. It’s all statistics to them and risk just doesn’t have a great track record.

So why not get more creatives in executive positions? Really creative people generally do not like to be executives. Though it’s impossible to generalize, most creatives have a different mind style and way of processing the world. They aren’t as interested in cutting the deals—they want to create. But in order for great content to succeed, we need talented executives to handle the business side fluently without destroying the creative. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I hope the networks start trying to solve it or we’ll be in for years of bad TV and declining movies, with only the occasional winner. In the end it’s all a matter of taking responsibility and doing something about it.