Nbc

Responding to pressure from the NAACP to increase diversity on television programs, NBC executives will announce today they have set up a minority recruitment program and will make efforts to further increase the racial diversity of the company's board members, an NAACP official said yesterday. The network will be the first of the four major networks -- among ABC, CBS and FOX-TV -- to make policy changes after the civil rights organization's criticism of them last summer. The announcements, which are scheduled to come at a morning news conference in New York, will detail a package of some 30 agreements between NBC and the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said John C. White, NAACP spokesman.

NEW YORK - When ABC's Peter Jennings was forced to leave the anchor chair in April to seek treatment for lung cancer, the already topsy-turvy world of network evening news seemed poised for more chaos. Dan Rather had retired from the CBS Evening News a month earlier, replaced temporarily by Bob Schieffer. And NBC had just gone through its own transition, when Brian Williams succeeded Tom Brokaw in December. The shift at ABC was more jarring. After announcing his diagnosis, Jennings immediately took a leave to begin chemotherapy.

Looking through the sports media notebook while wondering when The Sun's Beijing correspondents are going to get an interview with General Tso: * Each time Michael Phelps gets near any water, NBC wants to be there. The network has announced plans for a reality series, Two Parts Hydrogen, One Part Oxygen, All Parts Phelps, featuring his encounters not only in the practice pool but also with showers, baths, sprinklers and even spilled glasses of water by clumsy waiters. No? What NBC really has announced is the network will carry swimming's world championships in Rome next year and the U.S. championships in 2009 through 2011.

NBC, which appears headed for a third-place finish this season, is nevertheless sticking with its long-time formula -- a lineup dominated by familiar faces in sophisticated sitcoms. When the Peacock announces its fall schedule on Monday, it will feature four new comedies starring Michael Richards ("Seinfeld"), Katey Sagal ("Married ... With Children"), Steven Weber ("Wings"), Delta Burke ("Designing Women") and David Alan Grier. By the end of next week, all six networks will have announced their fall schedules, and started selling advertising time for the 2000-2001 season.

Last March, NBC President Jeff Zucker stood on the Los Angeles set of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno after a meeting with advertisers and lamented the network's "disappointing season." This week, he gets his chance to convince them that next season won't be a repeat. Tomorrow in New York, Zucker will present the new series that he has hand-picked to help NBC climb back from fourth place in television rankings among young viewers: "We really need a home run," Zucker, 40, said. "We are missing the one breakout hit that will make the difference."

NEW YORK -- Unveiling a broad plan that civil rights leaders and television officials called "unprecedented," the NAACP and NBC yesterday announced a multimillion-dollar agreement to open more jobs at the network to minority writers, producers, directors and contractors. The nine-page memorandum of understanding, which focuses mainly on behind-the-camera changes at NBC, sets no quotas but outlines plans to create several dozen new network positions for minority media professionals, links employee pay raises to achieving a more diverse workplace and vows to double NBC's $10 million spending with minority suppliers.

NBC is betting a large chunk of its fortunes this year on a thick-headed character named Joey and a financial wizard whose casinos teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Tonight, with the premiere of the Friends spin-off, Joey, and the return of Donald Trump in the reality series, The Apprentice, the network will play its super-size poker hand as tens of millions of Americans watch. Since 1984, NBC has dominated Thursday night prime-time television with a string of successes including The Cosby Show, Friends, Seinfeld and Cheers.

When she got word late yesterday morning, Joanna Giddon, a pregnant NBC spokeswoman, bolted to an exit on the 25th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City. As she ran, she shouted over her shoulder: "Everybody get out of the building - there's anthrax!" With a mixture of resignation, gallows humor and outright alarm, the city's tightly knit community of journalists tried to keep focused yesterday on telling the larger story, even as they became part of it themselves. The newspapers and the nightly news are filled each day with developments about the terrorist attacks and subsequent military activity in Afghanistan.

"Seinfeld," the most popular television comedy of the 1990s and the centerpiece of the most profitable night in television history, will stop production at the end of this season, Jerry Seinfeld, the show's creator and star, said yesterday.The loss of "Seinfeld," which made the country laugh at the soup Nazi, close-talkers, chip double-dippers and loaves of marble rye is a serious blow to NBC, which has already seen its prime-time strength begin to weaken this season.The show has anchored NBC's big Thursday night since 1993, leading the network to its No. 1 position and to record-making profits, approaching $1 billion this year.

Since the first telecast in 1960, the Olympics have been one of television's biggest productions, attracting tens of millions of viewers and making huge profits for the network that owned broadcast rights. But with audiences hopelessly fragmented, analysts are wondering whether there are any events large enough to rally viewers of all ages to watch a contest on TV in real time as the nation once did when the U.S. hockey team beat the Russians. NBC faces a host of major challenges as it prepares to offer a record 3,600 hours of coverage of the Beijing Olympics starting Friday.