NewsRadio - Relationship With Network

Relationship With Network

NBC had pushed for a "Sam and Diane"-type relationship between Dave and Lisa, but Paul Simms opted to have the characters sleep together in the second episode and have tension come from the aftermath. Later, NBC ordered a wedding to be incorporated into the show to boost ratings, and in response, the show "Our Fiftieth Episode" featured a B-story in which Jimmy tries to force Joe and Lisa into a fake on-air marriage, which Lisa outright refuses. The show's producers would later relent in its final season, and Lisa married Johnny Johnson in an episode that became NBC's "Spotlight of the Week". Another instance of network interference was an October 10, 1995 promotional gimmick NBC planned in order to capitalize on the success of the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral. As a twist on the title of the film, NBC planned for three of its Tuesday night sitcoms to have funerals as the central plot and the fourth to feature a wedding; NewsRadio was given one of the funeral episodes (which were also given to Wings and Frasier, while The Pursuit of Happiness got the wedding episode). Rather than fulfilling NBC's directive in a straightforward manner, the writing staff wrote "Rat Funeral", an episode in which the WNYX staff befriend a rat, then mourn its death. The show also tweaked NBC later by having a previously unmentioned worker named Ted die offscreen, leaving Dave (who didn't know the guy but is wrongly assumed by everyone to have been his best friend) to handle the eulogy, only to learn that Ted was a veteran member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Another major point of contention between NBC and the show was NBC's insistence that the show include story arcs, while the producers strongly preferred shows that were self-contained. Story arcs often concluded hastily. One example is a late third season arc in which Lisa decides she wants to have a baby with Dave but doesn't want to get married; after being introduced, the idea was dropped in the episode "Mistake" with barely a mention. NBC would also on occasion display displeasure with the content of episodes. For instance, many episodes in the second season feature a comedic cold open ending with Matthew injuring himself or knocking something over before the title sequence. According to DVD commentary, NBC ordered a halt to this because they found it tiresome. One episode, "Injury", was produced early in the second season, but did not air until the summer following the third season, due to excessive use of the word "penis". The writers later admitted that they were trying to see how many times they could use the word on-air in response to NBC's relaxing of standards for other shows. The episode remained in the censorship offices for nearly two years, with the number of instances cut down in the footage by three. "Injury" appears on both the Season 2 and 3 DVD releases, but only in the later, edited down form. Paul Simms eventually went public with his frustration that NBC never gave his show a chance to run on Thursday nights, as they had with many other poorly-reviewed series that earned large ratings thanks to powerhouse lead-ins like "Seinfeld" and "ER".

NBC briefly canceled NewsRadio in May 1998, after its fourth season, but the decision was reversed two weeks later, with an order of 22 episodes placed for a fifth season. Ten days after its renewal, Phil Hartman was killed by his wife, and his absence cast a pall over the fifth season. NBC left the series "on the bubble" until the day the final episode of the fifth season aired, months after production had wrapped. The fifth season ending storyline where Jimmy James buys a radio station in a small New Hampshire town was intended to provide a new setting for a potential sixth season, if NBC officially did not cancel the series.