This week marks an important milestone in television history. For the first time in 33 years, NBC did not air a single sitcom as part of its regular Thursday-night programming. There have been a few exceptions, of course, especially during random summer nights, Peter Pan Live! (which was in some ways a different form of comedy), or big events like the 2007–2008 WGA strike, but as far as regularly scheduled programming is concerned, it was a significant and symbolic move for NBC.





REMEMBERING THE LEGACY OF MUST-SEE TV

While we're probably best served not buying into the mythology that NBC has built on its own accord over the last three decades (what up, 20 Years of Must-See TV special from 2002), it's impossible to ignore the legacy of the network's Thursday-night comedy block. For at least two generations of people, NBC Thursdays were the bastion for intelligent small-screen comedy. Trying to choose between the network's three big comedy eras—the early-to-mid 80s, which featured Cheers, The Cosby Show, Night Court, and Family Ties; the Friends, Seinfeld, and Mad About You trifecta of the 1990s; and the recent run with 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Community—is like trying to name your favorite sports team's best individual season, or maybe even your favorite Kardashian.

And the legacy is just as pronounced within the industry. Since the fall of 1982 when Cheers opened its doors, NBC comedies have done extremely well at the Emmys, earning 16 wins for writing, 11 for directing, 29 combined for supporting actor/actress, 29 combined for lead actor/actress, and 19 for outstanding series. That dominance has been curbed a bit by the recent success of Modern Family and some CBS and HBO actors (Jim Parsons and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, most notably), but it still illustrates NBC's extended preeminence in the comedy department. (It's worth noting that many of these wins came for Frasier, a show that didn't air all of its episodes on Thursday, but that did spend chunks of three or four seasons there.)

Whether or not you've enjoyed NBC's sitcoms—no doubt there were some awful ones, both in the mid-'90s heyday of the network's "We'll Do Whatever We Want" approach and the '00s era of "Jeff Zucker Has No Idea What He's Doing"—its Thursday block has been nothing short of a cultural institution. From the days of the mass audience in the '80s and early '90s to the hyper-fragmented, uber-nichified audiences of the 2010s, the programming generally thrived, and adapted fairly consistently enough to survive. On one network, on one particular night, American audiences knew exactly what to expect, and the cachet of "Must-See TV" helped transform shows like Seinfeld and Friends into global phenomenons. Saying goodbye feels like losing a fundamental piece of American television history.





WHERE NBC WENT WRONG WITH THURSDAYS

Of course, though NBC's decision to forego any and all comedy presence on Thursday (we'll be getting the dramatic trio of upcoming miniseries The Slap, newly transplanted from Mondays The Blacklist, and brand-new spy drama Allegiance, by the way) makes me sad, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Depending on who you ask, NBC's Thursday comedy block actually died with the end of Friends, those weird years where it aired alongside Donald Trump's Apprentice and later The Jay Leno Show, or when The Office and 30 Rock ended a few years ago. Heck, it's possible you didn't even realize that NBC was still airing comedies on Thursdays at all, given that the two sitcoms it debuted there this past fall were A to Z and Bad Judge, both of which have already been canceled. Parks and Rec, the sole survivor from the "Comedy Night Done Right," is nearing the end of a burned-off final season on Tuesdays, while newer offerings like About A Boy and Marry Me have been kept away from Thursday because it's become such a poisoned well of a night for the network (and they're both on the verge of cancellation, anyway). The situation is so dire that NBC and the studio straight-up sold The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Netflix before airing a single episode.

If you want to point fingers at the current NBC executive team, primarily chairman Bob Greenblatt, you absolutely could. Greenblatt took the job in early 2011, inheriting a Thursday-night schedule that featured a young Community and Parks and an aging-but-still respected 30 Rock and The Office. Since then, he and NBC have worked quite hard to move away from niche comedy and toward more broadly appealing offerings. Greenblatt unabashedly promoted this broad comedy initiative before the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 TV seasons, but the sitcoms developed under that directive (Animal Practice, Guys with Kids, The Michael J. Fox Show, Sean Saves the World, etc.) all failed to garner a second season.

Yes, About a Boy is still around, but it seems sensible to imagine that its survival had something to do with the network wanting to stay in business with series creator Jason Katims, he of Parenthood and Friday Night Lights fame. Like Up All Night and Whitney before it, About a Boy is unlikely to see a third season—something no Greenblatt-led comedy has achieved as of yet. Meanwhile, shows developed by former NBC comedy talents (The Mindy Project and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) are continuing to deliver "NBC-esque" programs elsewhere.

Consider the following: Since the season after Friends ended (2004–2005), NBC has aired or produced at least a few episodes of 47 sitcoms (including shows produced elsewhere, like Welcome to Sweden). Only 11 of those series were renewed for a second season, and only five of those 11 (My Name Is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Rec) have made it to a Season 3. But in Greenblatt's four years at the helm alone, NBC has offered up 26 different comedies, and 20 of them have failed or never even aired (with Craig Robinson's effort still to come, maybe). That means the network has been churning out more comedies than ever in the last four years, with basically no success.





Page 2: Why NBC isn't the only one struggling, and what's next for its Thursday nights