Will The Voice Save NBC? (Should it?)

I’ve been hoping NBC could get its act together. I mean, the network deserves nearly all the flak it’s been getting: Its programming choices lately haven’t just been bad so much as almost painfully scatterbrained and insecure, and I’m sure they’ve killed at least a couple promising shows by simply having no idea what they’re doing with themselves.

All that said, NBC is home to some of my favorite programming — Chuck, The Office, Community — and is right behind Fox when it comes to putting unique and interesting shows on the air. It’s just way ahead of Fox when it comes to pulling them off the air, because their execution can range from inconsistent to terrible, which is why I keep hoping they’ll get their act together.

Now, it seems like they’ve found a genuine hit: ratings for Tuesday’s second episode of The Voice made short-term history, as it’s the only new show this season to gain viewers the week after its premiere. And while I’m happy that NBC found a way to make people watch it again, I’m not sure it’s great news that this is the show that did it.

Yeah, a big part of that is because I don’t like reality shows. But NBC isn’t exactly a stranger to the format: even beyond giving over most of the middle of its week to The Biggest Loser or Minute to Win It, this is the network that thought America wanted to see Jay Leno in primetime five days a week. Given the less-than-enthusiastic take on scripted programming that The Jay Leno Show business demonstrated, I was a little worried about NBC getting a new excuse to hang its hat on reality shows, but with Comcast’s throwing out $300 million in extra cash for TV programming it looks like they won’t try that again.

Six seasons and a movie!

My real concern is that NBC may not really deserve a hit show right now. The network has never really been short on clever programming: It’s been bizarrely good at turning out clever shows that get nowhere near as many viewers as they deserve (that’s your Community or Friday Night Lights), and even better at turning out shows that should be clever except they totally bungled the execution (let’s say The Cape).

Their problem seems to be that they don’t seem to know what actually makes a show good, so it seems like an accident every time they get the formula right. That’s not a problem The Voice is going to solve.

Actually, it’s a problem that might hurt The Voice. If you were watching this week, you might have noticed that the coaches basically ran out of contestants they wanted to pick, so they gave a second chance to a bunch of the ones they eliminated. I’ll chalk that up to a freshman mistake by guys who aren’t used to running a singing competition, but for a show that already features a non-trivial number of former American Idol hopefuls, advertising your shallow talent pool isn’t exactly a pro move.

Then again, if one of the second-chance contestants goes on to have an inspiring rise into the finals or something, the move could look like genius. The Voice already seems to have a pretty good sense of timing, premiering not long after Idol‘s Pia elimination saga left America wondering if we needed a show where the judges did more than lob warm fuzzies. Voice‘s model of having the pros actually tutor the singers and compete against each other seems like a much more mature system that could be just what we’re looking for.

But all that’s luck.  What NBC needs to show is that it can deliver quality on a consistent basis and manage its properties well.  One of the reasons Fox’s shows are so solidly done is that the network’s programming people reportedly have good relationships with the showrunners and know how to plan ahead — admittedly, a lesson they seemed to learn the hard way with Firefly.  By contrast, forcing Chuck to make two season finales per year because they don’t know what their episode order will be doesn’t make for great programming.

NBC probably wasn’t ever in danger of disappearing as a network or anything, but its almost comical run of bad programming choices made the possibility of its permanently dropping away from the Big Three and into CW territory at least conceivable. Maybe The Voice will put that fear to rest, but NBC still has a lot of work to do to get its house in order. Here’s hoping they’re still keen on doing it.

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