Zucker to NBC affiliates: Drop dead

Jeff Zucker, the guy those covering the TV industry love to not love, gave a speech yesterday declaring that he’s “ripping apart old business models” at NBC-Universal. (I thought he did that when his leadership helped NBC drop from No. 1 to No. 4.)

Per Broadcasting & Cable:

“NBCU is focused on two areas: digital and international. And that means delivering its shows using more than one-dozen methods that, although [Zucker] did not explicitly make the point, don't include delivering the shows to NBC-affiliated TV stations.

“Saying that the future of those platforms depends on protecting the content from intellectual-property pirates, Zucker enumerated the options available now, or "within the next few weeks," for anyone who might miss Thursday night's debut of 30 Rock: A viewer can stream it free at NBC.com; download it free-of-charge and keep it for seven days, also at NBC.com; buy it at Amazon.com and keep it "forever"; watch it "on-demand" on some cable and satellite systems; watch it on a cell phone; "in a few weeks" time, stream it at Hulu.com, the new joint venture with News Corp.; or even buy the DVD at the end of the season.”

In other words: Thanks for playing, KNBC. Have fun dying and slowly turning into oil deep beneath the earth’s surface like the dinosaur you are.

In a way, it would seem that Zucker is suggesting that maybe ratings don’t count for so much anymore if a show fares well on other platforms. (Good news for sci-fi and paranormal shows that have plenty of online fans.)

Which might mean that the networks could operate more on the cable model and let shows run out their string of 13 episodes rather than quickly canceling them (which always hacks viewers off), since the emphasis no longer seems to be what serves the affiliates best – not to mention that of late anything that replaces a low-rated show seems to garner even lower ratings, so better to go with the devil you know and all that.

Or it might just mean that Zucker is just trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about but is just as clueless as everyone else as to how this is all going to shake out.