More late night tv drama
Posted: December 9th, 2008, 10:04 am
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/s ... -at-10-pm/
I've always liked the NBC late night shows better than CBS, and Conan was always my favorite but the last two years I haven't watched because it wasn't that funny. I think maybe he and his staff were just going through the motions since they knew they'd be taking over for Jay in a few years.
UPDATE: My source was correct, and NBC will be announcing shortly this major primetime move to strip Jay Leno at 10 PM in valuable and visible primetime. It certainly makes sense because NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker couldn't afford to let late night's No. 1 host go to a competitor. So this way Jay Leno would stay at the network even though Zucker threw him under the bus five years ago by giving The Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien in 2009. It keeps ABC (and also-rans Fox and Sony) away from Leno. And it may very well secure NBC's 10 PM slot and Jay's legacy. Or it could all go into the crapper if Leno's 11:30 PM audience fails to follow him. Or if Jay doesn't attract more eyeballs than his most recent average of 4.8 million viewers tantamount to a mere pittance for primetime. Or if Leno's show cuts into Conan's viewers which cuts into new Late Night host Jimmy Fallon's audience because there's 3 similar programs in a row (and 3 1/2 if you count Carson Daly's abysmal half-hour). Suddenly, there's talk show format fatigue. Conventional wisdom has it that late night viewers are creatures of habit, so the success of a major change like this is far from a given. But NBC's beleaguered owned-and-operated TV stations and affiliates may like this new set-up since it could conceivably provide a stong lead-in for their local news shows. And with NBC's primetime tanking, they may well prefer a known quantity like Leno to another scripted or reality 10 PM ratings disaster. Anyway, news of this NBC shocker began circulating in Hollywood this afternoon, real enough that my first source was getting frantic calls from rival networks about it. It comes right as NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker foreshadowed to an investors conference today that he's considering cutting the number of hours and even the number of nights that the network airs programming. And after Zucker fired his top TV network/studio programming staff -- but not Ben Silverman -- Friday and this morning.
I've always liked the NBC late night shows better than CBS, and Conan was always my favorite but the last two years I haven't watched because it wasn't that funny. I think maybe he and his staff were just going through the motions since they knew they'd be taking over for Jay in a few years.
