Someone at Public Policy Polling clearly has a sense of humor, because they included comedian Roseanne Barr, who is pursuing the Green Party nomination for President in their latest national polling survey. And even more surprising, the survey found that in a three-way race between President Obama, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Roseanne, Roseanne pulls 6 percent, ahead of undecided at 5 percent. Those are still minuscule numbers in comparison to Obama, who leads with 47 percent, and Romney, who follows him with 42 percent. And it’s not clear that Roseanne’s numbers will hold under any circumstances: she has a 63 percent disapproval rating and a 14 percent approval rating.

Perhaps the people who should be really interested Roseanne’s poll results are the executives at NBC, who have hired the comedienne for a new show about the recession, Downwardly Mobile. In that show, Roseanne’s co-star from her titular hit show, John Goodman, will join her on screen again. Even though Roseanne’s overall numbers are bad, there’s one bright spot for NBC, which is desperate for key viewers in the 18-49 demographics: in the Romney-Obama-Barr matchup, she pulled 19 percent of polled voters between the ages of 18-29.

The bridge is yours.

-There is no place that Star Wars can’t penetrate, even Pintrest.

-Why is it so hard to get people to adopt new musical intstruments?

-Go inside John Waters’ house in Baltimore.

-NBC: still not taking my suggestions.

-I would totally watch a show where Justice Sonia Sotomayor solves fairy-tale disputes. Someone call the USA Network!

It strikes me as unpromising for Roseanne’s new recession-themed sitcom, Downwardly Mobile, that the comedienne is splitting time between it, and pursuing the Green Party’s nomination for president. I’d be happier with a world where I thought the woman who gave us Roseanne was seriously focused on giving us the show the networks haven’t in difficult economic times. But seeing her step in a disorganized fashion into Ralph Nader’s vacated shoes seems of a piece with her self-aggrandizing, un-self-aware and now-cancelled show about running a macadamia nut farm: scattershot, arrogant, and not particularly attuned to what’s meaningful. Plus, it means NBC has yet another equal time problem on its hands. Per Deadline:

For the time being, Barr’s presidential run does not pose a problem for NBC as the project, which she co-created and stars in, is in a pilot stage. But things will get dicier if NBC picks it up to series in May and Barr ends up as the Green Party presidential nominee as the campaign doesn’t wrap until the November election, well into the fall season, which starts in September. According to FCC’s equal-time rule, which applies to “all legally qualified candidates” who have “substantial showing” in the campaign, TV and radio stations are obligated to offer equivalent time to competing political candidates if one gets free airtime. While the rule’s application to entertainment shows featuring candidates is more ambiguous than when the candidates do news programs, networks err on the side of caution. For example, when Fred D. Thompson entered the race for the Republican nomination in 2008, he quit NBC’s Law & Order and NBC stopped rerunning episodes of the show that he was featured in. Last year, NBC also indicated that The Apprentice star Trump would be recast if he chose to run for President. Similarly, Alec Baldwin of NBC’s comedy 30 Rock toyed with the idea of leaving the show in order to run for office. (Isn’t it strange that its always talent on NBC shows that have political aspirations?) Barr is known for outrageous moves, including her recent plan to behead bankers who don’t return profits. Still, the timing for her presidential run is strange as it comes just as the actress signed a seven-year deal with 20th Century TV for Downwardly Mobile.

If only NBC would get all creative on us and solve the equal time problem Roseanne presents by casting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as antagonists on Parks and Recreation. Mitt could team up with Marcia Langman to complain that the Parks Department’s programs are inculcating the very poor with the wrong values, or something, and Barack could represent the Parks Department pro-bono when they get hit with a Mitt-funded lawsuit. Huzzah for aligning the interests of quality television and legal doctrines. In reality, what NBC should and probably will do is not go forward with Downwardly Mobile if Roseanne, unlike Donald Trump, sticks with the campaign. Which, if its star is spending more time stumping than thinking intelligently about how to develop her show, might be the right thing to do creatively anyway.

NBC’s released the pilot episode of Smash, its new (and quite good) drama about the making of a Broadway musical on iTunes, and while in many ways, it’s handsome without being revolutionary, there’s also something to just having a show based in a setting where the dominant perspectives are those of women and gay men:

Of the main characters, musical writer Julia (Debra Messing), scenery-chomping producer Eileen (Anjelica Huston), ingenues Karen (Katherine McPhee) and Ivy (Megan Hilty) are all women, Julia’s writing partner Tom (Christian Borle) is definitively gay, and his ambitious new assistant Ellis (Jamie Cepero) is potentially gay. The only straight men are high-powered-and-he-knows-it director Derek (Jack Davenport) and Frank (Brian d’Arcy James), Julia’s husband.

They both feel varying resentments towards the dominant paradigms that govern their lives. “All that fawning over the actress,” Jack complains. “Gay men piss me off.” “That’s an unfortunate sentiment to express in the American musical theater,” Eileen deadpans at him. His solution to being a straight man in a gay man’s world seems to be to benefit from it, or at least to try. He calls Karen to his house at 10 p.m. the night before her callback, expecting her to show up to seduce him, and even when she’s visibly upset, talks her into proceeding with a sexy-Marilyn impression, if not all the way in to bed.

Frank joins Chris on Up All Night as the second major stay-at-home father NBC’s put on television this season. He’s upset when Julia dives into the Marilyn musical, breaking her promise to him that she’ll take the year off so they can focus on their adoption. And when it’s clear that she’s determined to move forward, he decides he has to go back to work: waiting for the adoption to come through and tending their domestic life isn’t enough for them. There’s something very interesting going on here in NBC’s decision to put the emotional struggles of stay-at-home mothers in the mouths of men, and I’d be curious to know how much it’s resonating with straight male viewers — if any of them are tuning in.

I’d argue that even if you are a straight dude, Smash is worth a trying if you’ve been looking for some fascinating female characters on television. Julia’s clearly very creatively driven, sometimes to the point of neglecting her home life. She forgets to dress up for a social worker’s visit that’s a condition of their adoption, but charms the woman when it turns out they share a love of her subject matter. Watching her watch Marilyn movies in bed and light up while she’s doing it is wonderful — Messing may tend towards light fare, but there’s no question that she’s a delight to watch. And as a writer (though, of course, one of the representatives of the chattering classes who nearly give Julia a heart attack), the show has a sense if not for the actual process of writing, which we don’t see in the pilot, the itchy compulsion to do it.

Similarly, Huston is tough as nails: her production company’s in bad trouble, tied up in escrow while she and her husband fight out an extremely nasty divorce. It’s a nice illustration of how divorce can really take something away from a person. “I’m not out of the game and I don’t have to prove it,” she snaps at Derek as they walk through Times Square discussing their fledgling production. Sure, the competition is supposed to be between Karen and Ivy (at the moment, I’m Team Ivy, since the show seems to be trying awfully hard to get me to be Team Karen). But watching these big, grown-up women with big lives making things on television is lovely.

At a lively session at the Television Critics Association press tour this morning, ABC News President Ben Sherwood pushed back against charges that his network was airing more soft news, explained Christiane Amanpour’s departure from The Week, and drew distinctions between his programming and that of NBC News.

“I reject completely these distinctions and these labels, totally,” he said when asked whether the perception that ABC focusing on soft news, like interviewing kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard, at the expense of reporting. “We believe our guiding philosophy is relevance…we believe that our mission as you saw is to give people the whole picture so they can change their futures…we have had exclusive interviews with Mubarak and Assad..our anchor Diane Sawyer was the only evening news anchor to go to Japan to cover the Biblical disaster here…We will cede no ground on investigative journalism, on hard-hitting news.” But he also suggested that it was no longer the role of news anchors to act as “priests of news [who] presented at the end of the day one menu of news that they had decided was the most important in the order of importance,” saying it was much more critical to look to the audience’s needs. He cited aggressive coverage of Bank of America’s proposed $5 debit card fee as the kind of story that was responsive to the economic concerns of viewers. And he argued that Christiane Amanpour’s interviews and coverage of the Arab Spring were proof that Nightline was not a lifestyle program.

Speaking of Amanpour, who had her last day on The Week yesterday, Sherwood said that the move was part a product of a desire to focus on American politics in an election year, recasting the charge that Amanpour couldn’t deliver domestic nes as a strength: “We thought her tremendous strengths, her world-beating strengths, are best deployed in her area of strength and also her personal passion.” He insisted that despite the decision to move Amanpour away from The Week, 2011 was “probably one of the greatest years of her career this year. If you look at her domination in terms of big interviews all across the Arab Spring, just an incredible year.” And Sherwood said the move would allow Amanpour to work with CNN in a “unique arrangement.”

And Sherwood set his sites on NBC. In response to one question about whether NBC was trying to imitate George Stephanopoulos by hiring the daughters of former presidents like Chelsea Clinton, saying Stephanopoulos “is a first-rate journalist. And he has, over the last 15 years, developed an incredible set of skills. He’s developed a whole new set of skills in the morning…I think that is an unfair question.” More substantively, Sherwood praised Good Morning America for cutting the Today Show’s lead by “30 to 40 percent.” He acknowledged that “the Today show is very mighty, and they’ve been very mighty for a very long time,” but said of Good Morning America that “It’s dynamic, it’s incredibly watchable, it’s surprising, it’s really fun.” Earlier in the week, NBC’s Bob Greenblatt said that he hoped and expected that Matt Lauer would remain on Today, so it’ll be fascinating to see that rivalry heat up in the year to come.

NBC is the network that everyone seems to want to succeed. It gave us Community! And the Office! And Parks and Recreation! And while I think we all recognize that it’s extraordinarily unlikely that shows like that will ever become massive hits, it would feel more just if the network reaped some good karma down the road for doing right by the medium and taking some time out to pander to the lowest common denominator. But there isn’t really karma in business, just work and product development. And the biggest question I had coming out of NBC’s sessions at the Television Critics Association press tour are how long Bob Greenblatt will be given to turn the network around.

“The good news about NBC today is that we have new owners and they’re investing in our business not only with significant financial resources but with their patience,” Greenblatt said. “They’re providing me with everything we need at NBC entertainment to go after prime time.”

The interesting question is how long that patience lasts. Todd VanDerWerff and I were chatting about this, and he pointed out that the network’s cautiousness with The Voice, which they’re running in a normal schedule instead of oversaturating in the name of a quick ratings bump, is a good sign of a long-term game plan. And only the silliest person would have trouble with the concept that it takes a long time to turn a network around, something that effectively means changing audience expectations and consuming patterns. But NBC’s transformation is part of a tricky double-act: the network’s struggle up the ratings ladder as its head of programming learns how to run a network instead of a cable channel.

Greenblatt clearly is in the midst of an adjustment between a cable mindset and a network one. “I’m done with cable. It’s a dying business,” he joked, “And ruining the culture of America.” But there’s no question that he misses cable: he talked with surprising frequency about how sorry he was Prime Suspect hadn’t done better, and said that had it been a cable show, it “would have been picked up in the third episode and declared a hit”; and said that “if I was at Showtime, you’d be calling me a genius for launching one or two good shows in a season.”

And in the short term, NBC’s new launches actually feel very much like cable’s strengths: those that are precision-cut and diamond-honed like Smash, and then inexpensive junk like Are You There, Chelsea?, and very little in between. And in between is network television’s sweet spot. Cable is all about the stuff that you just have to pay to get access to because it’s so compelling, and the stuff that you watch because it’s there and it’s all about getting your money’s worth. Network is the stuff that’s pretty solid. The Firm feels like it ought to be that sort of pretty solid show, something mid-level and pleasant without needing to be either revolutionary in its concepts or perspectives or gorgeous in its execution. But the premise for it is so silly—does Mitch ever come back to testify against the firm? Why would he and Abby ever quit their Caribbean early retirement? What is it with this dude and Evil Law Firms?—that I worry it won’t make it over the hump. A show can be cheap and effective or cheap and cheap, and it’s easier to find the latter than the former—see:Fashion Star—but important to at least seem like you’re searching for the former.

Beyond the three-tier question, there’s the problem of the network’s identity and sense of its core demographics, because nerds isn’t going to cut it (Awake’s Kyle Killen joked at his panel that a room full of critics made up most of Community‘s fan base). At Showtime, Greenblatt developed a set of shows that I think could best be described as melancholy anti-heroes, more accessible and diverse than HBO and FX’s somewhat-scary mostly-white dudes. There’s definitely not a pattern that strong in the slate of programming he rolled out here in Pasadena.

And in terms of demographics, I suppose I’d suggest that between Smash, Bent, Are You There, Chelsea? and Fashion Star, they’re aiming for a less-wealthy version of Bravo’s smart lady contingency. When I followed up with Greenblatt about whether the network could rebuild by trying to lure demographics who have largely walked away from the networks back, he said that seeing more diversity in ensemble casts is “going to happen much faster than a black family or an Asian family show…If somebody brings me the great Asian family show or the great black family show, we’re developing some of that. I just think it’s more likely to see large ensembles with diversity.” Which I think is probably correct, though it remains unfortunate that the representative American family on television is still a majority-white one. If we’re going to be a majority minority nation in 2050 (aeons in entertainment-land), we’re going to need more shows like Rob about white folks learning to live with minorities, except not terrible. I’d love to see Future NBC do something like that.

First day of press tour is done, and tomorrow I dive into the waters of MSNBC, Bravo, and SyFy. More to come, but here were the best and worst trends from NBC’s presentations today:

Worst: Big Scary Lesbians. NBC has two pilots where plots appear to be motivated by the presence of outsized, aggressive lesbians. After her lovely work on Glee, Dot Jones deserves far better than to be cast as a butch lesbian who sexually harasses Laura Prepon while they’re both in lockup on Are You There, Chelsea? And the heavy lesbian contractor who gets passed over in favor of a hottie love interest for the main character on Bent manages to simultaneously reinforce stereotypes about lesbians, and about women and home improvement.

Best: Support for Working Mothers. Amanda Peet mentioned at the Bent panel that NBC had been wonderful about accommodating and supporting her being a working mother during production of the show. Debra Messing says of her character on Smash, “The hero’s a woman who is very passionate about her creative life and needs that part of her life fulfilled, but also is a proud mother who has that home life and wants that part of her life fulfilled. The way Theresa writes, there’s such richness.” Not that we need aggressive emphasis of characters HAVING IT ALL constantly, but it’s nice to hear that the network practices off-set some of the better things it preaches on-screen.

Worst: Uncertainty. Bob Greenblatt doesn’t know when Community‘s coming back. No one knows when Awake will air. Scheduling’s not easy, we know, but stop torturing us here.

Meh: Alcohol: It sounds like the drinking on Are You There, Chelsea? will get tired quickly, but J.B. Smoove as an addict in recovery? That could be intriguing territory. Television’s got a lot of serious drinkers, but fewer people showing us what it’s like to live in a world where most people treat drinking as if it ranges from no big deal to the linchpin of their social lives.

Best: A lack of sniping. NBC may have to fight its way back to the top, but the network seems aware that it’s not close enough to its rivals to tear them down. The folks behind Smash acknowledge that Glee opened the door without slagging anything they don’t like about it. Bob Greenblatt was blunt about the network’s need to find its own way without complaining that his rivals are being wrongly rewarded for less risky programming. When The Voice criticized its rivals, it was on substance and format, which is fair game. NBC’s biggest asset is the fact that people want to like it. It’s clear they have no intention of relinquishing it.

Maybe we should all blame Judd Apatow, but I find the way Hollywood handles older virgins kind of fascinating, something that came up again earlier today in the panel for Are You There, Chelsea?, the new NBC comedy for alcoholics with a lot of rage at their families*. A lot of the time it’s just the amazement that people have made it past whatever arbitrary age—18, 25, 40—without having sex. And sure, there are not a ton of older virgins, but they’re hardly mythical creatures. Sometimes, it just doesn’t happen for people.

But more to the point, there’s the idea that if someone is a virgin at an advanced age, they need to be fixed, as if virginity is inherently a flaw or the result of someone being damaged. Sometimes, as The 40 Year Old Virgin put it, sex jus doesn’t happen for people. That movie was probably the most positive way to spin that particular kind of plot arc—Andy wants to have sex, but after some bad experiences, has essentially stopped trying. That it hasn’t happened isn’t really his fault, and he’s not an inherently damaged person. The advice he’s given turns out to be mostly BS, too: there is no secret code for getting with women or having satisfying sex. He just has to find someone he feels comfortable with.

That hasn’t exactly been the case with television recently, though. Glee‘s played out Emma as an incredibly damaged person who does bad things to other people by virtue of refusing to fix herself. I don’t know what will happen in the upcoming arc where Will proposes to her. But the show has not exactly handled her with delicacy and empathy. Now, Are You There, Chelsea? is going to have its bitter, alcoholic party girl rooming with another late-twenties virgin, Dee Dee, who I am informed by the network no longer has her eyes pop all the time. Lauren Lapkus, who plays Dee Dee explains: “She has really strong morals, religious morals. But she’s able to go with the flow. And then kind of help her open herself up in different ways. And over the course of the season she has experiences she wouldn’t necessarily have with different guys.” Which, you know, okay. I like the idea of a sympathetic religious character on network television. But I really hope they treat her as if she has something to bring to the table, rather than having her deliver moralistic sermons on subjects that Chelsea’s already made her mind up on. And as for her getting opened up to new experiences? I’m not sure Chelsea Handler, fictional or otherwise, is someone who should guide someone in a sensitive way towards their deflowering.

*Chelsea Handler’s explanation for why she’s playing a character based on her own sister? “I have a sister. Period. Her name isn’t Sloane. And we had to change her name for legal reasons, so my own family can’t sue me…Everything I’ve been accusing her of my whole life I can now reenact before her eyes.”

At this morning’s executive session, I asked NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt if the network could turn itself around by taking its success building fanatical fanbases for its shows among nerds and identify underserved demographics like black and Latino viewers and program to their needs*. His answer wasn’t particularly specific, but it was revealing, and suggested that NBC is doing some development work in that direction. He told me:

It’s always tricky to think about the niche and trying to build on the niche. Because unfortunately that’s been the good news and the bad news of a show like Community. It has such a strong core audience, and yet it’s been hard to expand that audience. What we’re trying to do is seize on the audience that’s going to come to it at the beginning…we’re developing all kinds of those things. I’m not sure yet what it’ll yield out of development. But we have to some degree do the thing that no one else is doing but we have to be broad. You can just program for 18-year-old twins and get a hit show on a cable network. We just have to figure out how to seize on that but also not end up in the narrow place.

I think this is probably true, even if it’s deeply unfortunate that shows aimed at a black audience, or that star black or Latino characters, count as such a niche that programming in that direction means networks assume they’re giving up white viewers. But a recession seems like a good time to try to win some minority viewers back to the networks by showing them that cable isn’t the only place that will tell stories about their lives or meet their needs. NBC’s very good at fan service for nerds. It would be cool to see them try to do something similar for other categories of underserved viewers. And it would be nice for someone to demonstrate an understanding that Tyler Perry products aren’t just popular because they’re Tyler Perry products, but because they’re an entrant in a comparatively bare market.

*I maaaay have used Living Single as an example of a black sitcom that’s the kind of thing NBC could do. The Hollywood Reporter may have made fun of me for it, but NBC would flip if it had a freshman comedy that pulled 9 million viewers per episode in its first season.