Ready for Prime Time Talker

If this article is correct — and many sources suggest it is — NBC will announce tomorrow that Jay Leno will stay with the network when he leaves The Tonight Show next May. At some as-yet-unspecified date, he will move his hour long show to 10 PM each night, probably renaming it The Jay Leno Show or something of the sort.

Of all the options that had been discussed in the media — Jay going to ABC, Jay going to Fox, Jay doing specials for NBC, etc. — this probably makes the most sense from the network's point-of-view. They've had trouble filling their time slots lately and have been looking for programs that don't cost two million bucks an hour to produce. In fact, Jeff Zucker (who runs NBC) had been floating trial balloons for the idea that NBC might offer its affiliates fewer hours of network programming per week and let local stations fill some time slots. The affiliates will probably like this better, especially if Leno delivers a strong lead-in to the local 11:00 newscasts.

But this is such a radical change that no one had suggested it out loud. It will make Leno the most visible star ever on a network. No one has ever filled five hours per week of prime-time network programming. He is undoubtedly to receive staggering amounts of money if this works…or even if it doesn't.

The move will piss a lot of people off, including producers who'd been hoping to sell new shows to NBC. Leno's going to consume five hours that could have been available for their wares. And you have to wonder how Conan O'Brien's viewing it since he'll still be second-in-line for the big guests…and now that he'll be in Hollywood also, that may make it very difficult. The folks behind Jimmy Fallon's new program, which will take over Conan's old time slot, have to be wondering if viewers will really want to watch three talk shows in a row. There are a lot of things to think about here and it's all so unprecedented, it's hard to know what to think.

Anyway, congrats to Mr. Leno. I'm going to be at his taping on Wednesday and I'll report back if he says anything about this to the studio audience. And I'm sure I'll be back with more thoughts as this whole concept settles in. It's a major sea change for network television.