CBS’s Tassler: NBC’s Take on Broadcast Business ‘Misguided’

Cites new hits at CBS, ABC and Fox

By Ben Grossman -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/9/2010 12:31:57 PM

CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler took issue on Saturday with NBC's statements that the Jay Leno Show experiment was in response to the business changing.
 
"What I had the most trouble with, to say this is a reflection on the whole network business, I think is misguided," she said at Saturday's Television Critics Association event in Pasadena.  "Our business is thriving right now.  We are enjoying new hit shows, as is ABC, as is Fox.  [Leno] was an experiment that did not work."
 
Tassler also said that NBC had made big statements in the past first about changing the 8 p.m. landscape and then the 10 p.m one.
 
"Ultimately there is no substitute for developing great shows," she said.
 
Tassler also tactfully threw a shout out to the writers and producers in Hollywood when talking about Leno.
 
"The unfortunate thing is our creative community was to some degree somewhat bruised by this," she said.  "A lot of people were put out of work, a lot of people saw this as having a pretty negative impact on our business."
 
And she wasn't afraid to note that CBS saw some upside in NBC's move.
 
"For us it just allowed us to get a bigger piece of the ad revenue pie at 10."
 
She also lauded the success of ABC's Modern Family and Fox's Glee.
 
"It's a good year for broadcast television," she said.
 
And she also made clear that American Idol is still the biggest player on the block.

"It's still the death star," she says.  "That show is still a force to be reckoned with."