News & Rants: Leno, Conan and the Mess that is NBC

For the last 24 - 36 hours, the Internet, forums and twitter have been buzzing about a unconfirmed reports that NBC will be doing "Something" with The Jay Leno Show. Over this last day and a half, the story morphed from NBC canceling the Jay Leno Show and firing Jay to Jay Leno moving to 11:35pm and bumping Conan's The Tonight Show to 12:05am. What are we to believe? what will really happen? Do we really care?

I think we can all admit that The Jay Leno Show experiment is a complete failure. It now rarely meets the lowered expectations that NBC set forth to turn a direct profit from the show. Never mind how it lowers ratings and profits for the Local news casts from the affiliates and NBC's own Owner & Operated stations. The Jay Leno Show was a failure from the beginning of the idea.

Now, NBC is trying to figure out a way to keep everyone happy. The affiliates want stronger lead ins for the news. Leno wants a show and Conan wants to STILL be Tonight Show Host. And, they all want to be paid. But, NBC is so screwed up (From top to bottom) they they will not only screw this up, but I do predict they will make things even worse.

If Leno moves to a 30 minute program at 11:35, viewers will see it as him returning back to the Tonight Show, no mater what the actual title of the show is. Conan will be come 2nd banana in late night for the network despite HAVING The Tonight Show. And Jimmy Fallon just sucks, so no one really cares about his show or him.

The nearly 50 year old brand and tradition that is The Tonight Show will be further tarnished and devalued with a move to 12:05am. Leno will be sink even further because viewers will lose confidence in a 3rd time change in less than 12 months. Loyal Conan viewers will stick with him, but what is now 2.5 million will drop to about 1.7 million when/if the change comes.

I know that NBC can't realistically fire anyone and just eat their large contracts, but I would suspect that NBC will lose even more money putting a band-aid on this disaster instead doing what is right. Needless to say, what ever NBC decides to do, I will not be watching. Never have liked Leno, Conan is average and the NBC schedule is littered with bad programs.

Comcast, You cant take control soon enough!

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