Academic

NBC, Desperation, and Jay Leno

By Tung Yin

TV Guide has an interesting column titled "Is Jay Leno Killing NBC?," that basically wonders whether NBC's decision to give the weeknight 10-11 pm time slot to Jay Leno has doomed the network.

To recap -- a few years ago, NBC announced that Conan O'Brien, host of "The Late Show with Conan O'Brien," would take over as host of "The Tonight Show" in 2009.  Jay Leno, who had been host of "The Tonight Show" since the early 1990s, was apparently going to be put out to the pasture, except that Leno wasn't ready to retire.  Since Leno routinely beat his competition (David Letterman) in the late night ratings, he was a hot commodity for other networks, and there were serious talks about bringing him over to ABC.  To keep Leno, NBC offered him a 5-night-a-week prime time show that he could develop as he saw fit, which meant he was basically taking his version of "The Tonight Show" to prime time: same skits, same monologue, same soft celebrity interviews.

You couldn't expect him to match the ratings of scripted shows, but then NBC's been essentially a disaster in that department, and -- this is the key thing -- an hour of Leno would be A LOT cheaper to produce than an hour of a scripted show.  So NBC expected big cost-savings as a result of airing Leno, even if he didn't boost ratings.

One problem is that the NBC affiliates (that is, the local markets) aren't happy at all, because Leno is delivering smaller audiences to the late night local news . . . .

But what the TV Guide article crystallized for me is basically how *bad* NBC's other shows have become.  When I was in my formative years in the 1980s, it seemed like NBC was THE network, with "The Cosby Show," "Cheers," "The A-Team," "Family Ties," "Miami Vice," and "L.A. Law."  NBC dominated in the 1990s as well with that Thursday night block of "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Mad About You," and "ER" -- whatever it aired in the middle of that group did well, even when the shows sucked (ahem, "Caroline in the City," "The Single Guy").

But now?  Bleech.  My boys are starting to like football, so I actually had "Sunday Night Football" on last night.  Apart from that . . . it's pretty barren as far as the Peacock network goes on my TiVo.  CBS has the best reality TV shows ("Survivor" and "The Amazing Race"), Fox has the best thriller/dramas ("24," "Fringe") as well as "So You Think You Can Dance," and ABC has some interesting serial shows ("Lost," "FlashForward") and the predictable but amusing "Castle."  It just goes to underline how desperate NBC has become that airing Leno five nights a week in prime time may make sense from a financial standpoint.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on October 12, 2009 (boomark / email).