Well, I got my CBS-owned stations back on my Time-Warner Cable and my TiVo finally realized they were back. I re-took my Season Pass for Craig Ferguson but apart from his show and the occasional Letterman, I don't find myself watching much on CBS at all.
While I was at it, I told my TiVo to grab the first week of Arsenio Hall's new late night show which debuts next Monday. He's already achieved something miraculous in not only coming back from the dead but getting a pretty good lineup of station clearances. A year or so ago if you'd asked the experts, most of them would have told you that Arsenio was old news; that stations wouldn't fall in place for a guy with an outta-date track record. It's been nineteen years since his last talk show went off the air.
But here he comes with close to 95% of the nation sold. I have no idea how well he'll do or how he'll impact the Jay/Dave/Jimmy race. He may not matter one bit to it. A theory is floating around show biz that he won't matter if he succeeds but that he will if he fails. At some point soon, Mr. Leno will be a free agent to begin entertaining offers for a new late night show. Since we have no access to his contract, we don't know for sure when that would be…but his contract reportedly binds him to NBC through next September and it's not unusual for deals to allow the performer to negotiate with others beginning six months before a pact's expiration.
The success of The Arsenio Hall Show might convince the industry that a new late night talk show not from one of the three oldest networks is viable. Then again, Arsenio would be sitting in a lot of time slots that wouldn't be available to a new Jay show. On the other hand, the failure of The Arsenio Hall Show might convince the industry that the market is glutted with talk shows and there's no room for another. Then again, depending on when the show failed, all those time slots might be available at the time someone was trying to sell a new show with Leno…who does, after all, have a current, impressive track record. Just another thing to think about.
What I find interesting is that absolutely no one is talking about a talk show that would be much different from what's already on. Arsenio's advance publicity is not promising anything different. They seem to even be promising the same show that was successful for a time back when it was on against (and taking audience away from) Johnny Carson. His first week guest list seems to be the same folks you see on all the shows: Lisa Kudrow, Magic Johnson, Penn & Teller, etc. He's even having on George Lopez, who for my money was the worst talk show host in history.
Arsenio, by contrast, was a pretty good one. But with interest in that kind of show trending downward, you'd think someone would be offering up a show in that time slot that didn't look like all the rest. Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?