Business: Peacock v. the Pea

In the fall of 1974, NBC decided to replace its timeworn symbols, the rainbow-plumed peacock and the cursive cluster of letters known affectionately as "the snake." The network retained Lippincott & Margulies, a Manhattan firm specializing in corporate facelifts. After 14 months, at a cost estimated to be as high as $750,000, L. & M. produced an abstract N composed of two trapezoids, one red, one blue. NBC is now emblazoning the N on cameras, microphones, stationery, packaging, uniforms, and office walls. Probable total cost: another couple of million.

Then somebody discovered that the same twin-trapezoid N, only in solid red, has been since last June the official logo of the Lincoln-based Nebraska Educational Television Network. NETV Art Director Bill Korbus, working on salaried time, had developed the design. Total additional cost: less than $100, says Korbus. "It's hysterical," chuckles NBC Newscaster Tom Snyder. "It's one of those things that happen when executives sit down to do something creative."

NBC professes confidence that the carbon-copy symbols will cause no confusion. Officials of NETV—whose program Anyone for Tennyson? is being broadcast on public TV nationwide—doubt that. Says Program Manager Ron Hull: "If you see that in New York, you're going to say, 'Those Nebraska hicks stole NBC's symbol.' And that's not true." Lawyers for both networks are pondering whether NETV can claim prior use and force NBC to dust off the peacock.