NBC News: The Recycle Bin Is Full

NBC News has become facile at the art of repackaging its interviews and news reports for use across the TV spectrum, from the broadcast network itself to cable siblings CNBC and MSNBC. But now it wants more original material.

NBC News President Andrew Lack said his division plans to expand its news-gathering budget by almost $10 million, rising eventually to “double-digit millions,” in an effort to put more resources into an operation stretched thin by multiple programming demands from the “Today” show to newsmagazine “Dateline” to the cable channels.

“Amortization,” or reuse, of news material has hit its limits, Lack said. Some of the new resources are expected to go into two prime-time shows on the all-news MSNBC that currently include heavy doses of reworked material, updated with new interviews: the Matt Lauer-anchored biography “Headliners & Legends,” and “Special Edition With Ann Curry,” which repackages mostly “Dateline” reports.

Lack said he’d like to find ways to make “Headliners” able to react more quickly when people are in the news. “Special Edition,” he said, “needs more resources and people and original thought.”

Lack said one of his biggest problems is finding producers for projects, such as two potential shows NBC News has discussed with Pax TV, the fledgling family-oriented network. NBC acquired 32% of Pax parent Paxson Communications for $415 million on Sept. 16.

In one of the first concrete indications of how NBC plans to get involved in Pax, NBC News is developing two news-based pilots for the network, one for prime time and one for early evening, Lack said. They’re expected to be ready by the end of the year.

In its brief existence, Pax has shied away from doing news programming because its executives believe much of the subject matter, including crime coverage, isn’t appropriate for a family network. “I’m not too anxious to have my 16-year-old daughter hear about President Clinton,” Paxson Chairman Lowell “Bud” Paxson said in an interview earlier this year. If the network did news, he said, he would want the coverage to have a more positive slant.

Lack said, however, that the shows he has discussed with Pax could include “news of the day” headlines and would be appropriate for any network, including NBC.