Plus We’ve Got That Neat Peacock

General Electric, parent of NBC, requested in an acerbic press release Tuesday that journalists remove the adjectives “beleaguered” and “embattled” when writing about the network. GE said it believes “those words might actually be programmed into journalists’ computers.”

In its defense, GE took the unusual step of releasing financial projections that estimate NBC will have pretax income approaching $350 million in 1993 and cash flow close to $300 million. Furthermore, GE noted, NBC is in second place among viewers 18 to 49 years old.

The release failed to note that in the last year NBC has lost David Letterman to CBS, staged a phony truck crash on one of its news programs, forced out its news division president and hired a new executive to oversee West Coast programming.