Jay Xed

Late word from NBC is that Jay Leno's prime time talk show has been canceled, and it will air its last show next month. Its time slot will be temporarily filled by Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver, which will likely result in lower ratings for that slot.

Perhaps they have have some dramas to fill the 10 PM Eastern time slot after the Vancouver Games are done, but NBC still has the aftermath of this failed late-night talk show experiment to sort out. With Leno out of prime time and O'Brien in worse shape by actually still being on the air, and with everyone having acknowledging that Leno should have been left on "The Tonight Show," how does NBC right itself without doing more short-term damage?

Simple - it can't. NBC's troubles with late-night talk began, interestingly enough, with an emphasis at short-term ratings and the expense of long-term thinking. They were in a rush to drop Jay Leno in 2004 when his ratings slipped against Letterman at CBS, but when his ratings improved as it came time for him to relinquish "The Tonight Show" to O'Brien, the network bent over backwards to keep Leno from moving to ABC. They still hoped to keep Conan O'Brien and somehow thought that late-night talk overkill would be the way out of last place in the overall ratings. The damage has been so great from this experiment that, if either comedian chose to leave NBC now, he would re-enter the job market with less heat than before. How is it that ABC is owned by Disney, yet NBC is acting like a Mickey Mouse operation?

Oh yeah, the bottom line. That was actually the best part of Leno's prime time show; it was actually making money for the network, despite its low ratings, because it was so cheap to produce and air. But its poor performance with Mr. Nielsen and company affected the local news reports of the affiliates that followed Jay Leno in numerous regional markets. I'm no media economist, but, if I'm not mistaken, that makes advertising time on NBC in the 10 PM Eastern slot less valuable. in fact, some affiliates had threatened to air the local news at 10 PM Eastern / 9 PM Central and then air Leno's show afterwards, which would have made selling advertising time really difficult for the network.

The idea now is to move Leno to 11:35 Eastern for a half-hour show, followed by O'Brien at 12:05 AM Eastern, with Jimmy Fallon remaining at "Late Night." This is supposedly to keep both Leno and O'Brien and avoid bruised egos, but does NBC do that when they're halving the running times of both the Leno and O'Brien shows? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the television equivalent of "troubled assets."

Conan the Comedian

Conan O'Brien became the fifth host of "The Tonight Show" on NBC Monday, and he hopes to put a more youthful, more hip spin on the program. I haven't seen him yet, but I hope to find the time.

The big issue is how O'Brien's only living predecessor is going to fare this fall. Jay Leno is preparing to do another talk show, an weeknightly show at 10 PM Eastern Time on NBC, given to him in part to keep Leno from jumping to another network (now that he's been getting better ratings than he got when Conan O'Brien was announced as the new "Tonight Show" host five years ago) and in part to fill the one-hour 10 PM ET time slot.

All of NBC's drama shows in that slot have failed, and its one reliable drama, "ER," finally sang its swan song after fifteen years this April. Their general programming isn't any better; all but one of the shows premiered on the so-called Peacock Network that premiered in September 2008 are gone.) NBC needs to cut costs, and talk shows are cheaper and easier to produce. NBC still hasn't climbed out of its ratings slump since going from first to worst in 2004.

Their best hope of making that time slot work with a new talk show for Leno is to give it a distinctive image that separates it from just being a prime-time version of "The Tonight Show," otherwise O'Brien will seem redundant. Because if Leno does what he's been doing for the past seventeen years, O'Brien might be the one jumping to another network.

And if Leno doesn't make it the second time around, NBC might want to go the way of Fox and surrender that time slot to one-hour newscasts from local affiliates.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon is getting impressive ratings as the host of "Late Night." I couldn't believe it either.