CBS's Motto: Television Isn't Broken; There's Nothing to Fix

UNIVERSAL CITY, Jan. 14 CBS: The latest network to insist that just because NBC had a gangrened leg amputated does not mean every network should also cut off one of its legs -- even if NBC insists one-leggedness is the new broadcast-TV paradigm.

It was CBS's day at the Why Aren't You Dumping a Time Slot Like NBC? broadcast-network portion of the I Think I'll Just Take Some of These Dinner Rolls to Feed My Hungry Children Winter TV Press Tour 2009.

Not long before this press tour started, NBC announced it was bailing on scripted series in the 10 p.m. time slot, giving Jay Leno the hour Monday through Friday for yet another late-night-esque NBC talk show.

That keeps Leno from becoming serious competition on another network to Conan O'Brien, who is taking over "The Tonight Show" this year. And it greatly reduces NBC's cost of programming the 10 p.m. hour, where it has pretty much stunk ratingswise for several years.

CBS's programming chief Nina Tassler didn't wait for the NBC question during her Q&A session, addressing it obliquely during her opening remarks:

"At the end of last year, one of our competitors made a bold programming move based on their belief that the current network television model was broken," she said. "It was certainly the right move for their network, but it doesn't and shouldn't suggest the current network television system doesn't work.

"Without question, both of our industries, television and journalism, face enormous challenges now and in the years ahead," Tassler continued, bringing the TV critics' own industry into the amputation debate -- nice touch.

"And the current economic crisis has certainly added immeasurably to these challenges," she continued to continue. "All of this creates a need for resilience and some reinvention on our part.

"But network television still works," she said, citing CBS's ratings growth this season, among other things.

This speech bit was too obtuse for at least one critic, who asked Tassler: "Were you at all concerned by NBC's decision to put Jay Leno on five nights a week?"

"Our first reaction when they did that was to say, 'Thank you!' " Tassler responded patiently. "Our 10 o'clock programs do extremely well. It's a coveted time period. The creative community was, quite frankly, shocked when they first heard about it. You have many top-tiered talent that vie for that time period every year. . . . We looked at it and said, 'Why should one network's failure in development redirect an entire scheduling strategy?' For us, it was really important that we continued to develop [scripted programming] for 10 o'clock."

Nina got upstaged a couple of hours later when Bob Greenblatt, programming chief of CBS-owned Showtime, said he thinks the time is near when the "next thing" for broadcast TV "is giving hours back to affiliates . . . and I don't mean Fox or CW."