Tuesday, January 12, 2010

NBC: Late-Night Mess

As we all know by now, Jay Leno’s 10 PM talk show was cancelled by NBC, and he’d like his late night 11:35 timeslot back. Of course, this would delay Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon’s shows. Now Conan has responded to the issue of moving The Tonight Show to 12:05 AM, and he is against it. It seems that this network has learned nothing from the Leno/Letterman situation in the 1990's.

I'll admit that while I will always respect his contribution to the early years of The Simpsons, that I'm not the biggest fan of Conan as a talk show host, (I honestly either watch Letterman or Chelsea most nights around this time), but after reading that response of his, I agree with him. The Tonight Show is an institution that has been in the same slot for over 6 decades. This is a big enough mess and I think re-accommodating Jay will just add to the problem. And not to mention, a very classy response from Mr. O'Brien.

I don’t know what NBC was thinking in the first place by giving Jay a 5-night-a-week timeslot in the first place. It would have been one thing to give him a weekly or bi-weekly show, but it’s been proven over and over that letting a show air multiple times per week in a network primetime slot is just asking for failure (see Millionaire and Deal or No Deal). Just another bad decision by this network and it’s all the more reason why Jeff Zucker should have gotten his pink slip a long time ago.

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