The most memorable moment of Sunday’s Super Bowl wasn’t Ahmad Bradshaw’s awkward flop into the end zone for the Giants’ game-winning touchdown. It was the three-minute musical commercial for the game’s host network, NBC, before the game began.
The genius of this commercial was how well it captured the essence of NBC. It was smart, self-aware and full of unadulterated joy.
Sure, I am falling hard for a blatant marketing ploy, but if being swayed by this multimillion-dollar ad is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
The ad opened with the characters of “30 Rock” at a Super Bowl party hosted by fictional network vice-president Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin). He tells his employee and mentee Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) that he invited them all over to celebrate the game because hosting the Super Bowl is a big day for NBC.
What could have been a passing attempt to remind Super Bowl viewers to flip back to NBC the other 364 days of the year quickly evolved into something more.
Donaghy tells Lemon that they’re a family despite the fact that they’re all a part of a cold corporate landscape. The camera shifts, Lemon looks up from a nacho plate the size of a large baby and Donaghy begins to sing that there’s “one great club that all of us are in.”
Cue the entrance of Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) onto “The Office” set and suddenly the entire NBC lineup is taking turns gleefully singing “The Brotherhood of Man” from the Broadway musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
Now here’s where it gets good. In the current Broadway musical, the song is sung by J. Pierrepont Finch, just as the struggling company he works for is about to fire everyone. His song says that, despite the cut-throat corporate climate, they’re all a part of something bigger, “The Brotherhood of Man.”
NBC has long been the lagging network ““ the underdog, if you will. And while it continues to try and fight back for the ratings, there are just as many moments when the network owns up to the plight and is just plain self-deprecating.
It’s difficult to call rooting for a multi-billion dollar media corporation rooting for the underdog. But there’s something about NBC that makes it a little more endearing.
I think it’s the fact that I believe them when the cast members say they’re all a part of the NBC family. When Kristen Wiig and the rest of the “Saturday Night Live” cast ask, “Aren’t you proud to be, right here on NBC?” I find myself cheering as if Eli Manning just did something awesome on the field (my football knowledge only goes so far).
It’s the home of the underdog. Look at the Thursday night comedy block for December 2011. It includes a mid-level paper company office (“The Office”), a small town parks and recreation department (“Parks and Recreation”) and a community college study group (“Community”). It’s on a network that specializes in these niche communities where you would think to find mediocrity. Instead you find heart.
But it goes beyond the individual shows. There’s something about NBC and its ability to keep cast members loyal to the network. Just look at the former “Saturday Night Live” cast members that are still working for the peacock network: Tina Fey as Liz Lemon on “30 Rock.” Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope on “Parks and Recreation.” Maya Rudolph as Ava Alexander on “Up All Night.” Jimmy Fallon hosts “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
In Conan O’Brien’s “The Tonight Show” goodbye speech, he was legally allowed to say whatever he wanted about NBC. It was an opportunity to bash the network that had kicked him out in favor of a returning Leno.
But despite everything that had happened, Conan said one thing loud and clear: NBC was his second home. Between “SNL,” “The Late Night Show” and “The Tonight Show” he spent 20 years with the peacock network, and he was proud of the work they had done together. As a Conan fan myself, this was the saddest thing: the idea of Conan working for someone who wasn’t NBC.
Why should this matter to someone outside of the NBC fan fold? Maybe it shouldn’t. But there’s something about NBC that goes beyond the programming. It’s something about the fabric of the network itself.
Yes, it’s the branding and the culmination of years of marketing, but I doubt it was anyone’s goal to be viewed as the bottom of the heap. That just comes with dumb luck and inexplicably low ratings. It takes a special sort to embrace the low ratings as a part of its identity.
Maybe NBC isn’t winning in the rating game, but it seems to be having a lot of fun at the bottom.
If you are emotionally attached to a television network, email Suchland at ssuchland@media.ucla.edu. “Remote Life” runs every Tuesday.