Suddenly There is Music in the Sound of Your Name…


In the past three weeks, the following things have all happened on the National Broadcasting Company:

  • Mr. Daniel Radcliffe hosted Saturday Night Live
  • Smash, premiered to great fanfare (if NBC-level numbers)
  • Mr. Matthew Broderick appeared in a heavily promoted ad during NBC’s highest rated program of 2012 (I don’t think it’s premature to make that pronouncement now)
  • The NBC Promotions department put together a Superbowl spot in which the casts of many of its shows performed a slightly modified version of “Brotherhood of Man”.

Do you know what didn’t happen in the past three weeks?

  • The Parks & Recreation character Tammy Two did not appear in said promo spot.

Look, I know we fans of musical theater are only a diminishingly small fraction of NBC’s diminishingly small audience. And I know that the Radcliffe and Broderick appearances are mere coincidence that probably didn’t even register on anyone’s radar. But if you’re going to do that damn number, maybe you ask Megan Mullally—one of the all-time best Rosemarys, who has been awfully good for your network for a really long time—to pop in for a second.

Of course, that would require NBC’s promo department to know something about musical theater and they have enough trouble trying to figure out how television works, so I should let it go.