Surrender Terms

Folks are writing to ask me what I think about rumors that the NBC network will soon stop programming its 10 PM to 11 PM time slot and turn that time back to local stations to fill. One finds all sorts of speculation around that many of those stations would expand their 11 PM newscasts to an hour and move 'em to 10 PM with network programming resuming at 11 PM. That way, The Tonight Show could get a half-hour jump on its competition. Other configurations are possible.

What do I think? I think I have no inside information on how likely this is or what it would mean. I also think it's been discussed before. NBC has long had a real problem filling that 10 PM hour with shows that anyone wanted to watch. The disastrous Jay Leno Show that went in there briefly in 2009 was in part a capitulation: "We know we're going to lose with whatever we put there so let's put on something that's cheap to produce."

That was one reason for the experiment. The other was to keep Leno from going to ABC or Fox, doing a late night show for them and putting them in the late night talk show business the way Letterman put CBS into the late night talk show business. In any case, it didn't work.  And one of the reasons they put Jay back on The Tonight Show was that Jay had long demonstrated an ability to win the 11:35 time slot no matter what NBC had on at 10, whereas Conan O'Brien almost instantly could not. For Jimmy Fallon's first few years hosting The Tonight Show, he could…but lately, he can't either.

There is no question that ABC, NBC and CBS are going to change a lot in the coming years. You can't keep losing audience share as they all have and not make some major adjustments. NBC giving up that hour would be a big move, especially since they might not ever be able to get it back.

If I were in charge, I'd try more programming like The Jay Leno Show before I gave up. It might even have succeeded then if NBC had let Jay do his Tonight Show in that time slot and call it something else.  But in a clumsy effort to "protect" Conan's Tonight Show, they put all sorts of crippling restrictions on Jay, like he couldn't have a desk, he couldn't have a second guest and he had to do signature pieces like "Headlines" at the end of the program instead of up front where they belonged.

But maybe NBC's situation is so grave, we're past that as an option. I really don't know. I don't pay a lot of attention to NBC these days, no matter what they put on. And maybe there are so many people like me, they have no alternative. The question may not be if they'll give up that hour but when.