Jay Leno to stay with NBC; New 10 PM show

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DeToxRox

This is mainly for Jon, but what do you make of this? I realize it's incredibly hard to compare 2009 to 2010 so I wonder what, if anything, there is to this?

What I make of it is pretty much what I've said in the past: anyone buying network late night to reach 18-49 is a damned fool. That's not it's strength, it's rarely if ever cost efficient to use it that way, and (in most cases) you're being lazy if that's what you're buying it for.

[Galaxy]

Interesting news is that NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker is apparently stepping down.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Interesting news is that NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker is apparently stepping down.

Sorta. He is leaving when Comcast takes NBC over next year. He is "stepping down" because they were not keeping him.

[larrymcg421]

Why would anyone want to keep him? The network took an epic fucking nosedive under his watch.

As for the thread topic, I realized I hadn't checked the rating lately so I looked at this week's numbers. Letterman beat Leno on 3 of 4 days and that's total households, not demos.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Yeah, about that whole "we need more scripted TV on NBC" thing

Deadline.com » Blog Archive » NBC’s 10 PM Falls Below ‘Jay Leno Show’ As Networks Grapple With Erosion In The Hour

[larrymcg421]

Bwahahahaha.

‘Late Show’ Sweeps ‘The Tonight Show’ in Viewers, Adults 18-49 and Adults 25-54 for the First Time Since Jay Leno’s Return

[Galaxy]

And Conan starts next Monday.

[larrymcg421]

Yeah, he won't be able to compete head to head with them, but he will take a portion of their audience. It'll be interesting to see the end result.

[stevew]

Kimmel to 11:35

what does this do to the landscape?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by stevew

Kimmel to 11:35

what does this do to the landscape?

I think there's a fair question of whether it does much of anything. Does Kimmel's audience follow him to the earlier time slot? How much available new audience is there for his show at that time? I don't see it doing much to Leno, maybe dings Dave a bit more. There'll be sampling but long term, I think the audiences are pretty locked in on their guy, any growth for Kimmel will be new eyeballs.

[Matthean]

It's solidifying him for when Leno and Dave do step down.

[kcchief19]

In crunching some numbers for the Jimmy Kimmel thread, I thought I'd bump this and revisit the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno.

Leno's ratings upon returning to his time slot aren't what they once where. Much was made of Conan dropping 2 million Leno viewers during his run, but Leno has dropped 1.25 million viewers compared to his 2008 self. Conan's ratings were about 1 million less than Leno is now but he beat Leno's 18-49 demo by 15%. In fact, Conan's 18-49 number during his run is higher than anybody's on now.

Considering that Conan had to deal with the horrific lead-in caused by Leno's 10 p.m. prime time show that killed NBC local news ratings, could that have been worth a million viewers? Had NBC never installed Leno at 10 p.m., would Conan's numbers have been higher? His demo was fabulous, so all he really needed was to maybe match Letterman's total viewers at 3.2 million.

I know the doubters will say that Conan is only hitting 1 million at TBS and losing to Stewart and Handler and not beating George Lopez's numbers. That's apples to oranges. Chelsea Handler may beat Conan on cable at 11 p.m., but does anybody think she gets Conan's Tonight Show numbers on NBC at 11:30? Plus I think there was more to Lopez's demographic appeal than most people calculated -- the only Hispanic late night talk show is a big draw. Plus Conan is damaged goods now too.

If NBC sticks with Conan and kicks Leno to the curb, everybody expected ABC to go after Leno. Would they? Would Leno's audience follow him to ABC? He's clearly damaged goods now; would have have been damaged goods with a network switch? And how would ABC have juggled him, Nightline and Kimmel? If ABC decided to dump Kimmel for Leno, would CBS have dumped Craig Ferguson to get a clearer heir apparent for Letterman?

I can see it going lots of ways. The only think I think is clear is that NBC made the worst possible choice. Trying to keep Leno around with that 10 p.m. show killed their prime time lineup in ways that has taken them four years to dig themselves out of. It absolutely killed relations with many of their affiliates that took time to mend. It damaged Leno to the point that he's not the same guy he was four years ago.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

but does anybody think she gets Conan's Tonight Show numbers on NBC at 11:30?

I think she'd have ended up closer than you'd suspect on first blush.
And considerably cheaper to get there.

As for how ABC would have hypothetically juggled a Leno/Kimmel/Nightline trio, I suspect that at the time it would have spelled doom for Jimmy. I think now (if the same situation emerged but minus the Leno 10p experiment) they'd probably just sink Nightline instead, the new time slot is going to kill it anyway.