Jay Leno in prime time: This is a win-win-win situation
UPDATED with radio.
UPDATE 2: TVB reader Don Day called for NBC to do this two months ago!
The amazing thing about NBC's deal to give Jay Leno the last hour of prime time is not that they offered it. Have you seen the NBC prime time lineup lately? It's got more holes in it than O.J.'s defense.
The amazing thing is that Jay said yes. And by saying yes, Jay Leno has given NBC permission to create a fourth hour of late night to go with its four hours of morning news. Who said you can't do "The TOnight Show" at 9 p.m. in the Midwest? You can do "The Today Show" at 10 a.m. nowadays, can't you?
Bill Carter has the full details, which is only fitting, since he's been reporting the life of Leno since 1992. Here's my take:
There are so many ways this deal works. Off the top of my head:
It gives the local affiliates a sure, stable lead-in to their late local news -- you've got to think GM's everywhere are popping corks after suffering through years of dismal lead-ins. Here in Kansas City KSHB suffered doubly in the November book because of appallingly low numbers from "My Own Worst Enemy" (aptly titled) and other lead-ins to late news. It took a hit in the evenings, and then took another hit in the mornings when people woke up and tuned into whatever network affiliate they were watching the night before.
It gets NBC out of the 22-hours-a-week prime time programming business, at which it was presently sucking, and into the 17-hours-a-week business, just like Fox.
And of course, it locks up Jay Leno and prevents him from going to ABC -- where, frankly, he would not have done as well as he will here.
It's also a plus for Leno's audience, which was feeling like NBC was forcing Conan O'Brien on them while taking Leno off the air, possibly for as long as a year. This reduces that ill will and puts Leno on at a more viewer-friendly hour, without taking anything away from O'Brien.
It's true that Leno is delivering less than 5 million viewers a night, which is impressive by late night standards but is low even for NBC prime time. However, I think that number will rise slightly given the fact that it's on at an earlier hour. Turning to the July 2008 Nielsen book for Kansas City, I see the HUT level for KSHB at 10:30 p.m. averaged between 48 percent and 52 percent depending on the night of the week. HUT means households using television. At 9 p.m., the HUT levels for KSHB ranged from 62 percent to 67 percent, excluding Fridays which were a statistical anomaly. So if you extrapolate, it's not hard to imagine Leno getting 1.2 million to 1.4 million more viewers a night just based on TV usage -- and that's not even including the suddenly solid lead-ins NBC will deliver Leno with shows like "SVU."
More to come (as they say on the show) ....
I talked about this some more on the radio. Here are two clips: one, the CBS Radio News, the second on KMJ Radio with Chris Daniel:
