There wasn’t anything new in the latest story in Variety focusing on The Jay Leno Show in primetime, though it was a good recap of a lot the discussion points. As a bonus they proliferated some of the “what if” scenario theories that Bill and I both find pretty nutty:
On the flip side, if “Leno” is considered a bust, the first seeds of discontent might be sown at the affiliate level — particularly if their 11 p.m. newscasts take a huge hit during the November sweeps.
NBC managed to quickly shut down Boston affiliate WHDH’s attempt to preempt “Leno” with a 10 p.m. newscast. But if it becomes a real revolution, the Peacock might have a hard time containing its affils.
At that point, some execs — including former NBC entertainment prexy Garth Ancier, now head of BBC Worldwide America — predict Peacock execs may give stations the 10 p.m. slot for their local news and air “Jay Leno” at 10:30 instead, straight into “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien.”
Unless NBC is of the mind “we make our 10pm with Jay Leno, or we give up on the hour completely like FOX,” I see little chance of something like that happening. Besides, Leno’s ratings will have to noticeably worse than NBC did in primetime last year for the affiliates to have a legitimate beef. Last year, besides Law & Order: SVU, and some of the episodes of ER leading up to its season finale, it’s not like it was doing so hot at 10pm!
Once you give the local affiliates 10pm, getting it back would be very difficult. It’s also not something that can be executed with a couple of phone calls either, it would take some time to plan that. Not to mention that such an approach seems even worse for The Tonight Show with Conan than having Leno on at 10pm. I think they’ll stick with Leno at 10pm all season regardless of the ratings, but I’d think “Sorry, Conan, we’re putting Jay back on The Tonight Show” is a more likely outcome than NBC giving the affiliates 10pm.
Some rivals also expect NBC to cut back “The Jay Leno Show” to three nights a week if it’s having ratings troubles. In that scenario, the net might bring back scripted fare to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
But Leno (whose deal with NBC spans two years) himself has said that’s a non-starter. It’s pretty much five days or nothing for Leno, who appears ready to throw in the towel altogether if this experiment is a dud.
Who are these rivals who think this? I find this theory wackiest of them all.
As noted by Bill and others, the cost to do The Jay Leno Show for three nights a week wouldn’t really be any less than doing it for five nights. Since a lot of the motivation for Leno in primetime was cost savings, such an approach doesn’t make much sense.
“Well, OK, we’ll move Law & Order: SVU to 10pm one night, and we’ll find a hit show for another night to make the local affiliates happy…” Again, who are the rivals who expect this?
Then there’s the possibility that “The Jay Leno Show” is a hit — but everything else around it, including “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” and the rest of primetime, collapses.
“NBC is a network that has said nobody watches at 8 o’clock,” one exec said. “They’re airing only eight hours of scripted programming this fall. They could find that the whole thing just falls apart. What if local news falls apart, Conan’s hurt, and the only thing working for them is Jay Leno?”
I understand some of the thinking that produces the blurb above, but not all of it, and I think it confuses some things that aren’t related. There’s a chance that The Jay Leno Show could be successful at Conan’s expense. I’m not sure that’s the case, but at least I understand the thinking.
But “what if The Jay Leno Show succeeds and everything else collapses?” With rare exception, 10pm wasn’t a big deal for NBC last year.
Sunday Night Football isn’t going to collapse. I can see The Biggest Loser and Law & Order: SVU having normal ratings erosion, but a complete collapse? Is The Office going to do worse at 9pm on Thursdays because Jay Leno is in primetime?
We’ll know a lot more in a couple of months after the hoopla settles down. Barring sub 1.3 adults 18-49 demo averages, I expect Leno to air in primetime all season regardless of the ratings, with no schedule cutbacks, or givebacks of the 10p-10:30p half hour to local affiliates.
There are a lot of people rooting for this show to fail, so it could be that we see more conspiracies if the show is doing reasonably OK (adults 18-49 rating of 1.5 or better) than if it does worse. In theory, if the show is doing a 2.0 adults 18-49 rating or better, we shouldn’t hear anything at all about unhappy affiliates.
But in this case, as the people who are against Leno succeeding in primetime work their media connections, we might actually hear more about unhappy (but unnamed) affiliates and more wacky theories and expectations from (unnamed) rival executives if the show is doing reasonably well!
You know, it’s all a matter of scale…if NBC finds shows they feel could cover their costs and the profits of Jay one night a week, then I think it’s feasible after a year that they would reduce the show to three nights, and despite what Variety seems to think, Jay has expressly said he’d do three nights. The issue to me is not the profits, as that they’ll already be jammed packed with slots to fill. Southland? Parks and Recs? Trauma, given early reviews? Heroes, if quality and viewership trends continue? They’re already clambering for content!
Scott, good point about the likelihood of NBC clamoring for more content as it winnows out its ratings misses.
But that doesn’t necessarily argue for scaling Leno back, it might argue for expansion! maybe twice a week there will be TWO hours of THE JAY LENO SHOW
Nothing did really great at 10 on NBC, but most the shows stayed above a 2.0 (and were canceled when the dropped much below that). Lipstick Jungle was moved to Fridays when it hit 1.7 and Enemy was canceled at 1.8. In the spring they had decent numbers 4 nights a week– Medium on Mondays (averaging 2.4), SVU Tuesdays (3.3), L&O Wednesdays (2.1), and ER Thursdays (3.4-ish not including the finale). Yes, ER is gone now, but the affiliates at least had reason to believe that NBC was going to try to keep the ratings above a 2.0. Now NBC is going to be thrilled with a 1.5.
The article brings up the what-if of the entire schedule collapsing, save Leno, something I really don’t think will happen. NBC has been utterly unable to program a 22 hour schedule for the past several seasons, and Jay locks down 5 hours of that. Even if he manages a 1.5 in adults (which I think is likely in the long-run), NBC now only has to program 10 hours a week. Can they do it? I think so. The Biggest Loser takes care of Tuesday, Law & Order does Wednesday and comedies finish Thursday. The only trouble spots are Monday, Friday and Sunday post-football.
Another interesting point is the possibility of the networks abandoning Saturdays altogether. I see NBC as the first to do this, but I’m not sure, out of CBS, ABC and Fox, who would blink first. ABC, probably, as nothing they do on Saturdays has done anything in the ratings, save college football. Fox’s reality is likely almost pure-profit for the network, as is CBS’s re-run slate. ABC’s repeats, meanwhile, do such margin numbers that I doubt it would make a difference anyway.
Holly, good points, although one thing we do not see is average Mon-Fri 10pm timeslot ratings. Because of the nature of the way tracking S-T-D info on individual shows is not always apples to apples (due to # of reruns), doesn’t add up to 100% of the time slot and can be massaged by special designation, we can’t tell you what NBC averaged in that timeslot Mon-Friday.
Maybe this is something we can find out for the last September-May season — I’ll check into it, it would be a good stat to have both for the whole Mon-Fri period and on a day-by-day basis.
Though theoretically, Leno’s relative summer season numbers should be better (though there was plenty of repeat fare and Dateline in the high 1.X range even in the summer).
Doug, I did find the bit about potentially abandoning Saturday interesting too, I don’t see that as a function of Leno vs. scripted the other nights so I didn’t include it. I’m not sure the affiliates of any of the networks would be clamoring to get Saturday night handed over to them though.
I think that abandoning Saturdays will happen eventually – but who goes first? There’s an interesting book called “Three Blind Mice,” chronicling the troubles of ABC, NBC and CBS. One of their theories is that the networks will abandon Saturdays due to declining ratings. When was this book published? 1992, when the networks were doing double or even triple what they’re now doing on Saturdays. The fact that the networks have continually increased ad rates while ratings have decreased 50% or more is perhaps the greatest swindle of our times, Bernie Madoff not withstanding.
@doug
Doug
The networks have increased ad rates per million viewers however they are still taking less money as eyeballs have fallen so far.
I heard an argument once where the TV companies really like fragmentation as it in effect costs advertisers so much more to reach the same audience, the problem is that each advertising outlet (TV, Internet, Radio, Newsprint etc…) gets so much less of the increased cake.
Perhaps a little Lacan in the morning, Cragiuk – there is no big other. The loss of revenue will surely outweigh abstract happiness.
1.x? We aren’t talking about the pie shrinking any more, were talking about who gets the cookie.
Craig, compared to 10-15 years ago, ad rates are much higher – the amount that the networks rake in,
According to this article, Seinfeld got $600,000 for a 30 second spot in the 97/98 season, when it was averaging 32 million viewers and likely a 13-14 demo rating. Today, American Idol commands $700,000 for a 30 second spot, with ratings around 25 million and an 8-9 demo.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19483582.html
That season, the network upfront haul was $6 billion, while this season, it was $9.2 billion. Meanwhile, the overall audience has fallen 25% in that time. Even account for inflation, that’s quite a haul.
I think NBC will stick with Leno for at least a year or two but I imagine it will be reduced to three nights a week if it is a bust. I wonder what effects Leno at 10pm will have on Conan or indeed the rest of latenight.
It’s not good to say that Leno will perform well against repeats especially with CBS where they repeat very well, it’s going to be weird seeing Leno third in a timeslot when he was first when he hosted the Tonight Show.
I’m predicting huge numbers for Leno tonight. I mean American Idol big. I think it will easily be the biggest premiere this season even if the numbers fade over time.
Tonight will definitely be big for him… people like me who couldn’t stand him in the past and want this entire endeavor to fail… will watch tonight at least.
It’s like passing a car wreck. You want to see what’s up.
Ouch. Eric you are so mean! LOL! Why would you want poor multi-millionaire Jay to fail? LOL! I too agree that this will be a big night/week for Jay and Company. To me, I wonder if he is TRULY excited about starting the grind of another show this late in his career? You know, how he (has conveniently reminded everyone) that he took over “Tonight” when it was number one and handed it off (a rip on Conan?) at number one?
The workload on this show is probably a lot more and judging by the pressures that are associated with doing it five nights a week, even the most egotistical/insecure star (Leno?) would probably say “f-it” after a week or season. Either way, Leno will be “refreshing” in prime time and I am looking forward to the premiere. Now please send your hate mail to Jeff Zucker in hopes that he will get tossed out on his keester.
Sorry for my grammar, I could not correct it….LOL…
I never did like Leno on the the tonight show…
but he was on Real Time with Bill Maher a few weeks ago… and I have to admit, I sort of liked what he had to say. If any of that gets reflected in his new show I could maybe grow to be a fan.
But with trying to gain a huge audience, I doubt he does anything controversial or political or really speaks his mind. It’ll just be watered down nonsense to make every grandma, grandson, and grand buffoon laugh their asses off.
Leno is going to hurt the local news of Fox and the CW and maybe the weaker 10pm shows. 5 nights a week is a bit much, 1 hour a week would have been sufficient. He might wear out his welcome.
I do think its a rather genius way to lower cost for a hurt network, will it work, I don’t know. Will I watch, maybe a few times. This week will gauge how well things are to come.
I can’t believe how hard NBC is pushing on promoting Jay Leno’s new show. At lambeau feild they were giving away t shirts that said “The Jay Leno Show” on them and everything. Also, doesn’t NBC have ties with MTV? Because that whole Kanye West incident was totally staged for marketing reasons, like Kanye being on leno tonight. Next all Leno needs is to get tayler swift on the show. Marketing at it’s finnest.
Also, doesn’t NBC have ties with MTV?
No. MTV is Viacom, which was formerly part of CBS Corp.
I like to watch Supernatural and also Lost, becous the sexy cast lol. BTW found this site on google, searched for some TV Show Plot.