When the inspiration for your extremely expensive, adult-targeted CGI show is nearly mauled to death by one of your show's characters, there are a couple of different ways to handle it. You can ignore the shredded magician quietly recuperating in his mansion until he's recovered, or you can drag in a camera crew and shoot some footage to assure the advertisers and the public that the scarred and partially paralyzed freak is gonna be OK. Remember which one tiny super-executive team Jeff Zucker and Jeffrey Katzenberg chose? The LAT reminds us:

At New York's Radio City Music Hall, the network showed clips from "Father of the Pride," along with excerpts from an interview with a scarred and partially paralyzed Horn on a huge video screen. "It really gave people the creeps," said Shari Anne Brill, programming director for ad-buying firm Carat USA. "You know, the public's memory is very fleeting, but then they put that guy up there and they remind you that [he] was almost murdered by the cartoon characters this show is based on."

Zucker acknowledged that NBC "did a bad job" with the clips.

Do you think? It probably wasn't in the budget to fully recreate the mauling in CGI, where we could have seen for ourselves that a white tiger with a mouth full of blood-drenched sequins really isn't as bad as it sounds.

UPDATE: We've seen this before, but it's worth passing on again: The Siegfried & Roy attack video.

• With 'Pride' Problems, NBC Finds It's a Jungle Out There [LAT, reg. req'd.]


• The Jeff Zucker Upfront Video: From Naked Mini-Exec To Mauled Freak [Defamer]


• Maria Shriver Interviews Roy Horn, Avoids Near-Fatal Mauling By Siegfried [Defamer]

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