If you can see the 30 rocks meeting on television this Thursday, you are one of the lucky ones.
Photo: NBC
In a plot twist 30 rocksNBC’s largest local affiliate groups have decided not to broadcast the next network broadcast. 30 rocks special meeting, which means that at least half of the country will not be able to see it when it opens Thursday night. Vulture learned that Gray Television, Hearst, Nexstar, Tegna and Sinclair Broadcast Group, large groups of television stations whose NBC affiliates reach approximately half of the country’s television homes, have told NBC that they plan to pre-empt. Thursday’s remote recording time.
The apparent reason for the decision, according to sources familiar with the matter: the station owners think that 30 rocks The meeting, which was produced by NBCUniversal’s advertising sales division as a replacement for the usual initial presentation, is a huge promotion for the company’s new Peacock streaming platform. Understandably, station owners are concerned that Peacock is diverting viewers from linear television, particularly as the new platform will offer replays of NBC shows the next day at its premium level (and weekly replay access to reruns. at its free level). Representatives of the station groups contacted by Vulture, including Gray and Sinclair, did not respond to requests for comment. An NBC representative confirmed the injunctions but declined to comment further.
This last second revolt does not mean that the public will not be able to see Liz Lemon and the gang in action again. NBC owns its own stations in the ten largest television markets in the country, including New York and Los Angeles, so viewers in approximately 40 percent of the country can still tune in as scheduled Thursday at 8 p.m. NBC will post the full special on its NBC.com website, cable video-on-demand platforms and, yes, Peacock on Friday morning. (Hulu users take note: the special will no broadcast there.) But Lemonheads living in Las Vegas or South Bend, Indiana (where Gray runs the NBC affiliate) will have to wait a few hours to see what happens to him. Girl show gang.
It is unprecedented that affiliates to TV stations are ahead of network programming; individual stations do it all the time for sports or news coverage, and occasionally if a local station thinks the content of a show is too controversial for that city or town. Stations have also sometimes taken very low-rated primetime shows and replaced them with local or syndicated content due to financial considerations – that is, they think they can make more money with off-network programming. But boycotting a prime-time special on multiple major station groups is not common at all, and is possibly a symptom of the unhappiness of the station groups with NBCU’s Peacock plans.
Earlier this year, station owners rejected Peacock’s decision to air episodes of Tonight’s show and Late at night A few hours before the broadcast, though NBCU Television and Streaming President Mark Lazarus recently told Vulture that he had been working to address Peacock affiliate concerns. “The affiliates definitely had a reaction to that,” Lazaro said late last month, referring to the dispute early in the evening. “Subsequently we have had many, many meetings and conversations about what Peacock will be like. They have a financial interest in our programming for the current season and we respect that financial interest. So we are working with them to make sure that their contribution … is recognized. I feel very confident about that. “
As big as this 30 rocks the preference is that NBC will feel no direct financial sting from the affiliate’s decision. On the one hand, the 30 rocks The special won’t have any traditional advertisers ads – it’s basically an infomercial for everything related to NBCUniversal, which, again, is why local stations seem to have decided to drop it, even if it means denying it. 30 rocks Stans immediate gratification on a gathering of characters from the show. The boycott denies NBC a broad platform on which to promote its non-NBC networks and its new streaming platform, which is surely a loss for the company. On the other hand, by making it difficult for their viewers to watch on television, local affiliate groups will ironically encourage the public to interact with the very platforms they are upset with, including Peacock.
