ONTD

It's impossible to exaggerate just how bad a 2013 NBC is having. Over the last four weeks, the network has debuted three new series (1600 Penn, Deception, Do No Harm) and watched as viewers rejected each of them. New Tuesday comedies Go On and The New Normal, which seemed to be finding an audience in the fall, have seen their demo ratings cut nearly in half since losing their lead-in of The Voice. And then there's Smash, which NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt last summer called "an unqualified success" and top lieutenant Jen Salke labeled "highly anticipated by its fans": It returned this week down nearly 40 percent from its May 2012 finale, and more than 70 percent versus its premiere a year ago. In less than 30 days, whatever slow momentum NBC seemed to be building since Greenblatt's January 2011 arrival has almost completely vanished. Once again, NBC seems destined to finish the season an also-ran, just as it has every year since Friends went away in 2004. It's time to ask the question: Is it possible to save NBC, or has it passed the point of no return?

Yes, the media are always rushing to write obits for broadcast networks: Before the dream season when ABC launched Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost, that network was declared a hopeless mess; prior to Leslie Moonves's arrival at CBS nearly twenty years ago, some were sure the Tiffany network was permanently tarnished. "It's a cyclical business," TV analysts love to declare, and they've generally been right. But that TV truism was coined in an era before hundreds of cable networks, DVRs, VOD, and Emmy-caliber series that arrive thirteen episodes at a time and exist in a cloud somewhere. ABC's 2004 megarally came back when barely 7 million TV homes had DVRs; now nearly 50 million do. Netflix Instant didn't even exist. And while original programming on basic cable has been a factor for years now, past network comebacks occurred before cable shows started outdrawing everything else on broadcast (as AMC's The Walking Dead did this winter among key demo groups). It was far easier to climb out of the Nielsen basement when there was just a handful of legitimate competitors. Now NBC is fighting for eyeballs at a time when millions of viewers don't even watch TV on TV.

This should become clear in late March, when The Voice and Revolution both return. NBC's ratings will see an immediate lift on Mondays and Tuesdays, but the network will likely remain a dead zone for most of the rest of the week. For this, NBC can still blame Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman: Even though both left the Peacock long ago, their legacy of seeking short-term fixes and not investing in quality programs has left NBC without a basic foundation on which to stand. Take a look at CBS, currently TV's No. 1 network in both viewers and adults under 50. It's actually had a disastrous year in terms of launching new shows (Partners and Made in Jersey are dead; Vegas now loses half its NCIS: Los Angeles lead-in). But it has such a sound structure, with established and very long-running successes on almost every night, that it's been able to brush off these failures.

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