PASADENA, Calif. -- Oh, NBC, you've gotten yourself in quite a scrape: Too few people watch your smart, quasi-sophisticated programs ("Chuck," "Friday Night Lights," "Kings"), but the shows critics loathe are not doing any better ("Knight Rider," "Merlin," "The Listener").

This is what years of mismanagement have wrought. Angela Bromstad, prime-time entertainment president, owned up to that fact yesterday when asked to define the NBC brand.

"I think we have fallen short in the past couple of years," she said.

She said "Heroes," "The Office," "30 Rock" and "Law & Order: SVU" all "live up to the legacy of what NBC has always stood for. ... Our goal is to bring back high-quality, sophisticated dramas and comedies and a brand of alternative that lifts into that. 'Biggest Loser' does that. 'The Apprentice' does as well."

So, basically, if it airs on NBC, it must be on-brand? Really? That's the definition of NBC's brand?

"That's something we've spent a lot of recent focus on in terms of the core pillars of what is and isn't an NBC show," said Paul Telegdy, executive vice president of alternative programming. "We refer to certain key identifying characteristics of NBC shows. They're human first, they deal with real people, people our viewers identify with. They're fundamentally positive. ..."

The NBC brand is a muddle of quality series ("30 Rock," "The Office") and a lot of forgettable junk (most of last season's new shows). And it seems unlikely that adding "The Jay Leno Show" to weeknights at 10 will help clarify the brand.

The Leno plan is a sign of defeat, an admission that for the better part of the past decade, NBC has squandered opportunities to build on past hits.

That doesn't mean Leno won't work on some level. He'll be on with new shows 46 weeks a year, so ratings are bound to rise when other networks' 10 p.m. shows are in reruns. A lot of people prefer him to Conan O'Brien, new host of "The Tonight Show," but the Leno gambit has all the marks of a desperate move intended to shore up short-term success at the expense of the network's long-term interests, including its '80s and '90s brand of popular quality programming.

NBC, which has come under fire for declaring O'Brien the new king of late night soon after his debut, only to see ratings sink in subsequent weeks, remains defiant about its strategy on the one hand ("I think it's fair to say we're going to declare victories where we have them," Bromstad said) and perhaps chastened on the other ("It is a marathon," Bromstad said of judging Leno's success. "It's not going to be determined in the first five days of the show").

Maybe it would be easier to believe NBC has a plan for its future if executives answered questions about the recent past in a way that was a little less disingenuous. When asked about the recent departure of partying executive Ben Silverman, who once called his role running NBC primetime as his "dream job," Bromstad said, "I think this has always been Ben's plan. ..."

And then the room full of media representatives erupted in laughter, startling Bromstad.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to elicit ... It's always been Ben's plan to transition back to his entrepreneurial roots," she said. "I don't think he was looking to be at NBC for a long-term thing."

These days, very little at NBC seems to be built for the long-term.

Tuesday on the "Private Practice" set, which series creator Shonda Rhimes called "the medical practice of my dreams," actress Amy Brenneman was present, talking to reporters. In the May cliffhanger, her character, Violet, was held by a psycho intent on cutting Violet's baby out of her womb.

"I don't even know what Amy Brenneman is doing here, because she dies. Maybe no one told her," joked Chris Lowell, who plays office manager/nurse Dell.

"Maybe she's a ghost," Rhimes said, then thought better of the joke when she realized she's already done that with Dead Denny on "Grey's Anatomy."

The new season will pick up 20 minutes after the cliffhanger, and it's safe to say that Violet seems likely to survive. Rhimes said the interesting part of "putting somebody in that position is watching to see them get out of it."

This is the third season Rhimes will be running both "Practice" and "Grey's." She said over time the writers have figured out what kind of stories fit each show best.

"When we're discussing medical stories and the writers argue over what to do, it's an episode of 'Private Practice,' " she said. When the characters have to rise to the challenge of a medical case, it's a story for "Grey's."

Still, "Practice" has never been the hit "Grey's" once was and many fans complained in the first season when Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh), who spun off from "Grey's," seemed to get defanged. Even Walsh acknowledged the character changed, but she said Addison has always been changing.

"It's a different dynamic but the truth of the matter is on 'Grey's' she changed as well," Walsh said, sitting in the Oceanside Wellness Group waiting room. "She was deconstructed over three seasons and became more vulnerable and more human."

In the third episode of the new season, Addison will get a visitor from "Grey's": Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) will "visit to do a procedure," Rhimes said, "and make her own comments about what's going on here."

Philadelphia Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm and I will answer TV questions today at 11 a.m. at post-gazette.com. Type in your questions about the new TV season, returning shows or anything TV-related. We'll type back our responses. And you can read more coverage from the press tour in the Tuned In Journal at post-gazette.com/tv.

TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" returned Monday, drawing 4 million viewers at 9 p.m. and 4.2 million viewers at 9:30 p.m., below the show's best ratings but still better than its ratings pre-scandal. ... Ratings for the 11 p.m. news Tuesday coverage of the shootings in Collier stacked up this way: KDKA (12.2/23), WTAE (6.5/12), WPXI (6.1/11).