NBC Upfront Comedy Showcase "Partly Just Fun." Sure.

(MoneyWatch)  It's beyond disingenuous for NBC Entertainment's Ben Silverman to say the network is running an advertiser-and-agency only comedy showcase because it's "partly just fun." The lineup of Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon and a special Weekend Update segment from "SNL" is, if not a Super Bowl of stand-up comedy, at least akin to the home run derby at Major League Baseball's All-Star game.

The event is running on May 19, in the thick of the broadcast TV networks' upfront presentations, and it's craftily designed, of course, not only to build support for the new comedy line-up at NBC, but also to wow gullible advertisers and agencies with NBC's star power. In case you haven't been paying attention -- and I guess many of us haven't been because we're not watching too much NBC anymore -- the network's fortunes have slipped quite a bit since the "Must-See TV" days. (In a particularly delicious note in today's story about the comedy showcase by The New York Times' Bill Carter, he points out that, "NBC announced with some fanfare two years ago that it was pulling back from the often garish presentations that marked past upfronts.")

NBC must be banking on the fact that, sometimes, despite sorry ratings, new media options and other reasons why buying network TV isn't the best idea, getting dollars from advertisers comes down to this: advertiser-sees-Jay-Leno-live; advertiser-has-picture-taken-with-Jay-Leno; advertiser-convinces-agency-to-buy-commercial-time-on-Jay-Leno's-show. Major corporate decision-making made simple!