Not Being Competent: Why The Peacock Network Is Looking Like A Turkey These Days (UPDATED)

If there were ever a major television broadcaster in need of reputation management (if not outright salvation), it’s the folks who have managed to generate great publicity for two other networks while simultaneously shredding their own status. And all in the space of a few days.

Oh NBC, you’re having quite the week.

The First Domino That Fell…

It was just a few days ago that NBC made the unprecedented move of canceling the well-received, brilliantly-acted drama Southland. Admittedly dark in tone, this Los Angeles police drama was under the aegis of now-former-NBC-golden-child John Wells, the same John Wells who drew viewers and plaudits to a network now hemmorrhaging viewers as executive producer of ER, Third Watch and The West Wing.

While the show’s sophomore season premiere had been pushed back to October 23rd, the show remained in production and six episodes were in fact completed. Furthermore, the premiere was anticipated by both critics and fans. As Gawker noted:

“The good-for-NBC Southland… did well in its original Thursday night at 10pm slot last season, where it debuted to an audience of about 10 million and won its time slot.”

And then, suddenly, the network – which surely was already acquainted with the raw and authentic tone of this remarkable show – suddenly found it “too gritty” for a 9 p.m. timeslot – a space the show was forced into because of NBC’s headscratchingly daft decision to have Jay Leno on at 10 p.m. five nights a week.

Reaction

Clearly, the network was not prepared for the size or venom of the backlash to follow.  As NPR’s Linda Holmes noted in a particularly stinging analysis of the situation

“All ribbing of Jay Leno aside, NBC’s decision yesterday to cancel Southland, a police drama that was to return to the schedule later this month, signals an abandonment of a decades-long commitment to drama that’s regrettable for the network, its viewers, and the creative people who continue to try to make things that are good and interesting and worthwhile.”

Nor did the cast and crew go quietly. Michael Cudlitz, who shone as John Cooper, a tough, mentoring cop who happened to be gay, expressed his profane and distinct displeasure via Twitter and tried to rally fans of the show to support a pick-up of Southland by another network.

Making the Other Guy Look Good, Part I.

The campaign seems to be working. According to The Hollywood Reporter, TNT a basic cable network with a natural pairing for this show in the form of Kyra Sedgwick’s off-beat procedural The Closer seems interested in scooping up Southland:

Four days after the abrupt cancellation of sophomore series “Southland” by NBC, chatter intensifies that the gritty cop drama may find a second home at TNT. TNT was an obvious choice as it shares a corporate parent with Warner Bros. TV, which produces the critically praised series with studio-based John Wells Prods. But sources on Monday indicated that talks between the two sides are advancing. ‘We continually look at all programming opportunities that fit our portfolio of brands,” TNT said in a statement.’

So if TNT does indeed take in Southland, they look smart by taking in a show that already has completed half a season’s worth of episodes, improve their line-up and win the gratitude of those of us who are sick of so-called reality television and can’t quite seem to appreciate the charms of Jay Leno.  While NBC looks cheap for preferring the much less costly talk show option — and foolish if Southland achieves great ratings on another network.

Less than Gleeful – or Making the Other Guy Look Good, Part II.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday the news broke that NBC allegedly heavy-handed Macy’s into rescinding an invitation to the cast of the witty, wonderful show Glee. Could it be that the rating-challenged broadcaster of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade does not want the talented kids starring in rival network Fox’s hit appearing? Seems like it according to an article in The Washington Post:

“An NBC insider said the network traditionally works with Macy’s to decide what performers are approached about doing numbers during the parade. In this case, says the network insider (who also did not want to be named because the person also would get in trouble), Macy’s had extended the invitation to “Glee” before informing NBC. A Macy’s rep wasn’t going there — and would only tell the TV Column that the event’s “bookings process is fluid and because of that we don’t confirm [who's performing] until Nov. 1.” Which is hooey, according to people we talked to at other non-Fox, non-NBC networks that have had cast members from their shows perform in the parade in years past and who say those bookings are often locked in as early as mid-October. Which is, of course, now. For the record, NBC and 20th Century Fox TV declined to comment for this column.”

If you’ve seen the kids starring in Glee, you know they are incredibly talented and truly adorable. This was a move akin to clubbing baby seals – and may have resulted in the cast doing a tour instead. More money for Fox and more good publicity for Glee while NBC is once again left looking like a true turkey.  At least it’s just in time for Thanksgiving….

UPDATED:  Whoops!  NBC seems to have inadvertently given the Glee cast even more positive exposure According to the Los Angeles Times, they will be performing the National Anthem at the third game of the World Series.

UPDATED AGAIN: Looks like Southland is indeed going to TNT. (The irony is, of course, I have no idea if it will be picked up by any Canadian channels….)

Alas, Poor York (University) UPDATED

The departing 43rd President of the United States once queried: “Is our children learning?“

Unfortunately, if you are a parent who has sent their child to York University, the answer is  a resounding “No.”

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

Today, while the citizens of the United States are celebrating votes resulting in positive, hopeful change, Canadians may be shaking their heads in puzzlement at a vote that may or may not take place and, as such, perpetuate a situation that is already perceived as having endured much too long: The strike launched back on November 6, 2008 by the union representing York University’s teaching assistants, Local 3903 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

To delve into the details of the strike would create a posting of epic length. The background is likely best explored by heading to the comprehensive site York Strike 2008.

But to offer a succinct sketch, yesterday’s Toronto Sun noted that the dispute is centred around “job security for contract staff.” That’s what lead approximately 3,400 “teaching assistants, graduate assistants and contract faculty…[into] locking out thousands of students from their classes.”

THE VOTE?

According to the National Post, the voting by secret ballot might yield results by tomorrow night. But since the offer came from the university’s administration rather than the union’s executive, it has not received tremendous support from CUPE’s members. The union in fact issued a press release for a rally against the passage of the vote.

A SITUATION NOBODY HANDLED WELL

As far as the strike goes, it’s a PR nightmare all-around. Nobody comes off as blameless.  CUPE seems to be perceived as grasping, especially in an economy where so many people would gladly take-up contract positions with a university.  In turn, the university administration comes off as clueless at best and completely uncaring at worst.

It’s beyond an impasse.  The situation is like a lethal game of chicken between two trucks on a twisty, icy and narrow highway route with the student body  of 50,000 trapped between two crazed drivers hurtling towards each other at ridiculous speeds.

Dagmar Kanzler, a parent of a second year student and recent online activist focused on ending the strike,  emphasized the key point that seems to have been lost in this duel in a recent article in the Toronto Star:

“Both the university and the union have completely lost track of the act that this is all about the students…It’s not about them. It’s about 50,000 people who are just in limbo right now – people whose futures are going to be permanently affected.”

A FINAL NOTE

The combatants may have also overlooked the effect that this struggle will have on their own well-being. They may not have just bitten the hand that feeds them but swallowed it to the elbow.

Recently, Ryerson University’s student paper The Eyeopener commented that “Ryerson admissions said the number of inquiries regarding undergraduate transfers from York have greatly increased this year.”

Additionally, the Toronto Star noted that “the number of Ontario high school students picking York University as their first choice for next September is down nearly 15 per cent over this time last year”.

In short, both the union and the university administration may learn a very painful lesson about cooperation — something they should have absorbed in kindergarten — as well as an advanced tutorial in what the poor management of a university’s reputation will yield.

So perhaps the time has truly come for the question at hand to morph into “what are you guys going to do to fix things – and fix them quickly?”

UPDATE: According to the Toronto Star, “the strike at York University will continue after 63 per cent of the Canadian Union of Public Employees 3903 members rejected the school’s latest offer in a forced vote that ended last night.“

Now it becomes a question of whether Ontario’s provincial government will have to step in with “back to work” legislation. (Yes, such a thing exists in Canada. There’s a very good explanation of it by the CBC here.

Now the Globe & Mail’s education reporter Elizabeth Church is reporting that:

York University is considering cutting the size of next year’s freshman class because of the sharp decline in applications for next September, the latest fallout from the strike that has cancelled most classes for 50,000 students since early November.

So it seems that what the university and the union are learning is something that any kindergartener knows: Behave badly and fail to respect your contemporaries, and you’re going to get spanked.

Smoke But No Fire:The Calgary Flames and the Bertuzzi Acquisition

The signing of Todd “Big Bert” Bertuzzi by the Calgary Flames is a controversial one.

And it’s one with which the Calgary faithful are not entirely comfortable.

Want an example? Take a look at the blog Red Mile: The Calgary Flames Blog:

“Ha Ha (nervous laugh)… I thought you said that the Flames just signed Todd Bertuzzi. That’s a good one. Ha Ha. Really… you’re killing me with your great jokes!!! ROTFL!!!”

(And that’s one of the cleaner examples I could find.)

Even my husband, a life-long die-hard Flames fan wasn’t entirely sure about this one.

After a night of really chewing the acquisition over he finally stated tersely: “Well, if he’s a Flame, and he plays well, I’ll support him.”

Why Is This Signing Controversial?

Typically, the signing of a signing of a former all-star forward for (US)$1.95 million for a year wouldn’t be a big deal.

But this isn’t typical. For those of you with only a passing acquaintance with the NHL, Bertuzzi is best remembered for an act of violence he committed while playing for the Vancouver Canucks in 2004. He slammed Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore’s head into the ice in retaliation for an earlier hit Moore made on Canucks captain Markus Naslund. And Bertuzzi’s hit was a nasty sucker punch.

See for yourself: Here or here. (Warning: It’s rather brutal.)

Bertuzzi’s attack not only left Moore concussed but also with three broken vertebrae in his neck.

And now he’ll be back playing in the same division as the Canucks and the Avalanche.

Those games could be tense.

How the Flames Have Tried to Neutralize Negative Publicity

Despite the fact that this signing would not have been necessary had the Flames been able to hold on to Owen Nolan (newly-acquired by the Minnesota Wild), they have done a very good job handling the publicity around the acquisition.

Tactic One: Have a (Really) Good Guy Speak Up for the Bad Guy

It was clever of the team to enlist Jarome Iginla, a clean player, the captain of the Flames and a bona fide hockey superstar (check out his stats on NHL.com), to speak up on behalf of the acquisition of his former Canadian Olympic Team teammate Bertuzzi.

Iginla has offered strong vocal support for Bertuzzi. On the official website of the Calgary Flames, he stated:

“I think he is a character guy…He made a bad decision. It was a bad incident. It he could take it back, I assure you he would. I do believe in second chances. He should move on and I think we should too.”

Smart Tactic Two: Limit the GM’s Airtime After He Almost Derails The PR Initiative

The efforts to win over the Calgary fans were almost derailed by their GM, Darryl Sutter in a press conference. According to the National Post, commenting on the hit on Moore, Sutter stated

“That’s a long time ago…I had a traffic ticket three years ago. I hope there’s three or four fans who can forget that I went through a red light.”

That thud in the background was the sound of the team’s PR people collapsing in agony. Those situations are not really comparable – not unless Sutter ran someone over and ended their hockey career when he ran the light…

The Flames were lucky that random comment did not explode into a big story. But they seem to have learned their lesson. Sutter’s been quite quiet since then.

Smart Tactic Three: Reinforce The Captain’s Praise

Well-respected veteran defenceman Robyn Regehr has joined Iginla in praising Bertuzzi, reinforcing the key messages that the big, bad forward is now one of them, will be good for the team and should be accepted.

As he commented in a Calgary Herald story picked up by Canada.com:

“I know Todd a little bit from playing with him at the (2000) wold championship in St. Petersburg and also at the (2006) Olympics –he’s a good person…I Know there’s some negativity that’s surrounded him in the past. I hope the fans in Calgary can look past that and give him a clean slate.”

Will It Work?

So far it seems to be working rather well. There has not been a run of negative press nor has there been a wave of cancellation of season tickets. Fans may be cursing but they’re still with their team. So far the Calgary Flames have effectively put out the smoldering danger of negative publicity before it could become a raging fire.

Do you think this was well handled?  And how would you react if Bertuzzi was signed to your team?

Stopping The Viral Spread: Obama’s Reputation Management Strategy

Face it- you think politics, you think spin. You think maneuvering. You think manipulation — not to mention rumour and innuendo. Don’t you?

That may be about to change due to a new PR tactic that the already Internet innovative BarackObama campaign has put into play: Emphasizing the truth.

How utterly strange.

Just a few days ago Senator Obama’s campaign announced the launch of a new website called www.fightthesmears.com.

The Purpose of the Site

The purpose of the website is to debunk the nasty whispered untruths that have been seeping out of the American right-wing media and spreading like wildfire across the Internet.

And, as Time magazine noted, Obama’s method for combating those ugly insinuations is through a form of community building with this website as a hub.

“Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut. Says Obama adviser Anita Dunn: ‘We will not allow Michelle — or, for that matter, Barack — to be defined by rumors.’”

It is a clever idea and a canny use of technology. And it will be fascinating to see if it works.

The Site(In Brief)

www.fightthesmears.com is well-conceived, laying out the false allegation made about the candidate and counteracting it right below, often with supportive scans of documents or video clips.

It’s fairly well done and it’s already had a lot to tackle in terms of reputation management. The New York Times gave a brief run down of the rumours that the site is currently addressing, even though the candidate has already addressed them himself in other media countless times:

” ‘Fight the Smears’ is designed to systematically dismantle Internet rumors by letting users see both ‘the smear’ and, the campaign’s response. The site already features sections fact-checking rumors that Mr. Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, or has written racially incendiary remarks into his books or that he is a Muslim.”

Will it Work?

If anybody can make this kind of approach effective, Senator Obama can. His campaign’s use of the Internet and social media has been tremendously savvy from day one. In their last edition focusing on the current crop of candidates for the President of the United States, The Economist mentioned Senator Obama’s ability to connect with his supporters via the Internet:

“His website was thus a vast social networking site….a mechanism not just for translating enthusiasm into cash but also for building a community of fired-up supporters.”

The question now is will he be able to sway those who do not yet (or just plain don’t) support him? Will this be an effective form of reputation management? Will this work? And is this method one that will be used again by PR practitioners in other political campaigns? What do you think?

You Always Hurt the One You Love? Musings on Bill & Hillary

Presidents and Presidential contenders have always had relatives they wished they could lock away until their nomination, if not their term, was over.

Remember Billy Beer?

But the latest relative that has embarrassed and seriously damaged a candidate’s chances is a genuine shock. Who would have thought the supremely savvy politician Bill Clinton would in fact be a liability rather than an asset to his wife during her historic presidential campaign

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s husband has brought her yet more negative publicity. As noted in a New Republic blog by Michael Crowley, this is due to an anger-fueled outburst concerning Todd S. Purdum, husband of President Clinton’s former Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and author of an admittedly unflattering, possibly unfair and apparently dubiously-sourced Vanity Fair article about the former President.

But it was not the ex-President’s first major gaffe during the campaign.

That unfortunate distinction falls on his ungracious handling of Senator Barack Obama’s landslide South Carolina primary victory.

As Anne E. Kornblut of the Washington Post noted, the former President’s reaction was the comment that Jesse Jackson had won in South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. It was a statement that discounted Senator Obama’s sizable victory and tacitly suggested that it was only due to the state’s strongly African-American demographics.

That, as well as his furious tirades at the press after that statement generated justified media backlash, certainly wounded his wife’s campaign.

It also raised an interesting question- How should a candidate handle negative publicity when it is generated by one who is near-and-dear to them? And what do you do when that relative is as famous as you are?

Furthermore, how did Bill Clinton, an adroit master of the political game, blunder so badly?

With Senator Obama finally having sewn up the Democratic nomination, it is unlikely that former president Clinton’s latest outburst can have any further negative impact on his wife’s political career, despite the mushrooming coverage of his ranting denunciation of Purdum as a “scumbag” (and worse) to a reporter from The Huffington Post.

But one has to wonder what might have been if the man had been on his game- if he had managed to generate positive publicity for his wife’s campaign rather than negative. Would it have made a difference?