Jay Leno to stay at NBC and air at 10 p.m.

Cry?

 

He's likely to draw an even bigger audience, simply because there are more TVs on at 10 compared with 11:35 -- something like 15 percent more. And a talk show is super cheap to produce. So a Leno show is going to be even more of a cash cow than it is now.

 

You first, then your wife -- for hours.

 

I just don't see it happening. Will it be more profitable than what NBC has done at 10 p.m.? Absolutely. But I'd be surprised if it will generate more viewers. NBC is getting between 3 and 7 million viewers a night in that slot.

 

Alan Sepinwall -- one of the best TV journos -- absolutely nails this column.

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2008/12/sepinwall_on_tv_nbc_has_nothin.html

 

I think Leno can consistently hit those numbers. It won't be the same 5 mil every night because Leno will do what he does best: be the default option that no one really likes but everyone can live with. "Nothing good on tonight, might as well flip over to Leno and see if he has any interesting guests."

 

I haven't seen anyone touch on what I think could be the biggest challenge NBC faces with this:

The local affiliates are likely to shit a brick.

Leno will become the lead-in to the local news every night of the week. How often do you stick around to the end of his show (or Letterman, or Conan, or whoever)? He has the big guest of the night on in the first half hour, and by the final 15 minutes you're down to Fred Travelina or a band you've never heard of. By contrast, the hour-long dramas are designed to hold viewers to the closing seconds. No one turns off "CSI" or "Law and Order" with 5 minutes, but they'll do that to Leno with no hesitation. That can kill the local news.

I don't blame NBC for doing it. They can probably get comparable ratings to what they have now at maybe 15% of the cost, if that. But this could get ugly with the affiliates.

 

HBO has ruined me for any kind of dramatic TV shows. After getting so engrossed in The Sopranos and The Wire, nothin on any network can come close. I was a huge fan of NYPD Blue and still watch Law and Order from time to time, but so many of the dramas that are on are just hard for me to get into. The first three or four seasons of CSI were good, but after that they started to go overboard with some of the stories.

Does Leno being on at 10 mean that L&O is going to air at 9?

 

Why isn't HE running NBC?

 

Part of the reason people rarely stick around for the end of Jay/Dave/Conan is that 85% of America is asleep by then. It becomes a battle of "stay up to watch this guest vs. get some shut eye." Not as much of a problem when you are the news lead-in because most people want to stay awake long enough to hear about the weather. And I don't Jay is going to lose any more viewers at the end of his show than, say, the last Dateline story of an episode did back in its heyday. If I am in charge of an affiliate, I am probably ambivalent to slightly happy. The numbers are more likely to be consistent from night to night and Jay is a proven commodity. Jay is much more likely to keep viewers as a lead-in than 95% of the shows NBC has on the air.

 

NPR had the TV beat writer from the New York Times on today to discuss this whole situation. He brought up a lot of different aspects of this deal that I wouldn't have thought of -- several of which have been mentioned here.

In the end, he said it was a big gamble but could be a great move by NBC -- as long as it actually works out.

 

This whole situation is like if a newspaper decided people didn't want NEWS in the paper and instead began publishing what readers were talking about with regard to the news. Or putting pictures of people's dogs in the paper and no longer calling what you put in the paper news anymore, but started referring to it as "content."

And GE stock dropped more than 5 percent today, the rest of the DJIA dropped just over 2 percent.