NBC Exec Wants Less Sex, More Diversity in Shows

NBC wants less sex on its airwaves and fewer programs set in New York City, the home of one of its greatest hits, “Seinfeld,” the network’s new entertainment president, Scott Sassa, said Thursday.

Sassa, speaking to TV critics in Pasadena, said he also wants to see more traditional families and greater ethnic diversity featured in NBC shows.

Sassa’s vision for NBC contrasted vividly with the network’s current situation comedies, including “Friends,” “Just Shoot Me,” “Will and Grace” and several other shows based in New York and often utilizing sex as a topic.

Those shows attract the 18-to-49-year-old viewers that advertisers covet for their spending power.

The new programming chief, who took NBC’s programming reins from industry veteran Warren Littlefield in October and will assume NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer’s duties when Ohlmeyer retires, said the move would give NBC more balance.

“We need to make sure the shows we have on air accurately represent the people viewing them,” Sassa told the Television Critics Assn.’s annual winter gathering.

The network’s ratings slipped after top-rated sitcom “Seinfeld” shut in the fall and left NBC’s Thursday night lineup with a huge hole at 9 p.m. Replacement “Frasier” has not won the kind of ratings “Seinfeld” used to get, and NBC has seen its share of the younger audience decline.

Defining what he meant by “less sex” on NBC’s shows seemed difficult for the young executive. He said he wanted to see fewer gratuitous references to sex, and when sex was used in a show, he wanted to see it done “in a smart way.”

He added that “diversity” meant boosting the representation of ethnic groups. Setting fewer shows in New York was not meant as disrespect for the Big Apple; rather, he said NBC’s programs simply needed to be more reflective of the country.

“I just believe this is the way we need to move,” he said about the changes, adding later that he wanted to “find a different way of doing things.”

He offered NBC’s new drama “Providence,” which premiered this month, as representative of the new philosophy because it is set in that Rhode Island city and is built around a woman’s return to her family roots.

Sassa said his call for “more traditional families” was not meant to conjure up images of conservative family values, and he said NBC was “not trying to create a family channel.”

He said few of the network’s sitcoms revolved around a mother, a father and their children, a formula “which was popular in the 1960s and 1970s,” and he would like to change that.

Critics grilled Sassa on whether the network, by appealing to a broader audience, was refocusing its strategy away from younger viewers, but Sassa said that was not the case.

Several networks have defended their falling ratings to critics this winter by trumpeting that they reach far more viewers than cable television--their fiercest competitor--can, and the networks say they want to maintain a broad reach despite the emphasis in recent years on catering to young viewers.

“You want to get the biggest audience you can get, and you want to cast a net as far as you can. However, you get paid more by reaching certain demographics,” Sassa said, alluding to the 18- to 49-year-olds.

Look for changes in NBC’s emphasis next fall when the networks annually premiere shows at the start of a new television season.

NBC is owned by General Electric Co.