NEW YORK—With one week to go before the start of its first post-Seinfeld fall season, NBC unveiled its new “Please-See TV” Thursday-night lineup Monday.
“This fall,” network president Warren Littlefield said, “NBC is the place to be for the shows you’ll want to watch if you have any sense of compassion.”
Created by the same ad agency that conceived CBS’s “We’re Dyin’ Here” campaign, NBC’s “Please See” promotion touts a revamped Thursday-night lineup that includes Veronica’s Closet, Frasier and the new sitcom Jesse, which Littlefield described as “something I pray you’ll be willing to watch for the sake of all the NBC executives with families to support.”
“With Jerry gone, we certainly can’t tell viewers that they must see these NBC shows,” Littlefield said. “But we are confident we can ask very nicely.”
The NBC campaign is part of an emerging trend toward network groveling. ABC’s new on-air spots feature footage of laid-off employees weeping as they clean out their desks, and Fox is prepping a year-long “Watch Millennium If You Have A Shred Of Human Decency” campaign.
