TV Merch Feeds NBC Family

MANHATTAN, NY–New York New York, it’s a wonderful town–to promote NBC.

The Peacock network is in your face all over mid-town Manhattan. Get in a cab, there’s a TV set in the seat back with Craig Robinson from The Office welcoming you to NBC Taxi TV. Plenty of NBC (as well as other networks) bus and billboard ads on the streets and around Times Square. Depending on which U.S. air carrier you flew in on, you may have been held hostage by NBC stars like Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey setting up clips for NBC shows you are forced to watch. (I had choice on Air Canada and love to get caught up on Modern Family episodes from the seat back on-screen menu.)

The NBC store at Rockefeller Plaza is the ultimate network merch zone. T-shirts, hats, mugs, pens, DVDs–they are everywhere. 

And not just from the usual suspects like The Tonight Show, 30 Rock, SNL and The Office. Friends and Seinfeld gear are right up near the front entrance–surrounded by shoppers. NBC’s golden gooses are still laying gold. There’s even a large mug featuring the likeness of the actor who played the Soup Nazi. No returns for you.

As were T-shirts from oldies like The A-Team, Knight Rider and Star Trek. Stuff you might not associate with NBC like The Smurfs and Animal House (a Universal film) and even The Simpons (?) were on display. House (on Fox but a NBC Universal TV production) also get plenty of rack space. You can buy those giant red tennis balls House has in his office. Way back in the store, on the clearance wall, sat unloved junk from Heroes. How the mighty have fallen.

Also not selling: Mad Money crap featuring that biz hack Kramer and MSNBC mugs and shirts hawking Rachel Maddow. Dr Oz and The Biggest Loser had their own racks.

The SNL wall had a screen showing Sinead O’Connor tearing the Pope’s picture in half. Below it, MacGruber and “More Cowbell” T’s. There’s a message there, I just don’t know what it is.