NBC TO REFEATHER LOGO FOR ITS NEW NEST AS NO. 2

First it was “the Big N.” Then it was “the Proud N.” Now it’s “the Dead N.” NBC’s trademark is going the way of new, improved Coke: off to the land of corporate clinkers. NBC will be phasing out the N over the coming months and introducing a new symbol that combines a redesigned version of the peacock with all three letters of NBC’s name.

The Big N should disappear entirely by next June, when the new symbol’s takeover is complete.

Decisions on such weighty matters are not made capriciously. This one took years. It was always the goal of former NBC Chairman Fred Silverman to phase out the Big N and replace it with the peacock, a symbol he rescued from the corporate attic (parent company RCA had used it in the ‘50s and ‘60s to push the sale of color TV sets) because he thought the peacock denoted “pride” in NBC’s programming.

NBC Executive Vice President M. S. Rukeyser Jr., vacationing in the South of France, said from his hotel there that Silverman ordered up something called the Proud N as a transitional symbol in the interim. “Proud” is the Big N with a peacock embedded in it. Rukeyser conceded that the Proud N was something of a flop, one which will now follow Silverman into exile.

“The peacock is round and sort of playful, while the N is rigid and geometric, and they don’t work together,” Rukeyser said. Designer Ivan Chermayeff is now putting finishing touches on the new peacock, which will be “simplified” so that it’ll look better in print. The old one tended to turn into a seashell when reduced in size to fit on company stationery.

“Instead of 11 feathers, the new peacock has six,” Rukeyser patiently explained. “Each feather will be a different color, and each color will be a signature for a part of NBC.” Rukeyser said the timing for making these monumental changes seems just right. After all, NBC is on the upswing in ratings and celebrates its 60th anniversary next year.

“Since the company’s doing better, it seems a good idea,” Rukeyser said. “Everyone thought it would be a little insane when we were in the dumps to start worrying about our logo.”

Rukeyser declined to authorize release of a picture of the new peacock on the grounds that NBC affiliates should see it before it’s released to us in the outside world. That may not be until November, Rukeyser said. Then he hung up the phone and went back to his bouillabaisse.

And so, as it must to any N, death comes to the big one. It’s hard to remember now, but this stalwart letter was born in a huge brouhaha back in 1976. It was then that NBC unveiled the N, designed by the firm of Lippincott and Margulies, as a replacement for its previous trademark, called the Snake because of the way the C in NBC curled down under the N and the B. Little did NBC realize what a can of worms the N would open.

Soon after the unveiling, NBC was informed that it had violated the copyright of the Nebraska Educational Television Network, which had unleashed its own N on the world eight months earlier. NBC had spent about $750,000 to develop its N and Nebraska ETV had spent less than $100 on its--but, N-barrassingly enough, the two symbols were almost identical.

NBC’s costs went up still further. To escape litigation over ownership of the trademark (and avoid dragging the Big N through a long, messy custody battle), NBC gave Nebraska ETV $500,000 in new equipment in return for exclusive domain over the N. NBC also gave the Nebraskans another $25,000 to develop a new logo of their own. They came up with what might be called the small n, since it’s lower-case.

Now everybody is happy, although Jack McBride, who for 30 years has been general manager of Nebraska ETV, says that some of the cameras NBC gave him nine years ago have conked out and been retired.

Asked if he would like to reclaim the Big N, now that it is a free agent again, McBride said, “I doubt seriously that we would be interested in returning to that. Actually, in a very democratic process, we had developed in-house three different possibilities for a new logo at the time, and the one NBC later took was the winner only by a very narrow margin.”

Apparently no more tears will be shed over the departure of the Big N than were shed over the ugly Snake. Said one NBC insider: “It really doesn’t tell the story, and it is kind of cold.” And getting colder.

For the Big N, it’s the Big Chill. But for NBC, all’s well, you might say, that ‘n’s well.