Unnamed sources are saying that NBC has made or is about to make the decision to cancel The Jay Leno Show. Given the hostile reaction from affiliates to its impact on their 11 PM newscasts, this does not come as a great surprise. It would be more of a surprise if NBC has something promising to replace it with.
I am always a bit wary of rumors from within any network. Many years ago, I was in a meeting with Fred Silverman. This was back when he was running NBC. The topic was a Saturday morning show with which I was to be involved and in the conversation, someone asked about our time slot, and would we have a certain other show as our lead-in? Fred said, "Don't worry about that show. It's a piece of crap and I'm cancelling it." Well, that's a pretty good "source," right? I mean, Fred was the guy who cancelled shows at NBC.
That very evening, a friend of mine who worked on that show called and said, "Hey, I have an offer to go do another series for CBS but I think we're going to get picked up so I'm turning it down." Naturally, I told my friend what Mr. Silverman had said. Naturally, he thanked me and took the offer for the CBS show. And unnaturally, a week or so later, Fred renewed the show he'd said he was going to cancel. I think my friend still believes I lied to him or at least misunderstood. Anyway, I always keep that in mind when I hear a rumor out of any network, especially one with no source attached.
For what little it may be worth, what I've been hearing out of the Leno program for the last month or so was that they were trying to fix it, trying to launch "The Jay Leno Show 2.0," as one person put it with new segments, new correspondents, etc. But apart from a minor tweak of the opening, I haven't seen anything change. Admittedly, I haven't been watching much. I'm still a fan of Mr. Leno but most nights, I find myself bailing after the monologue or sometimes the first bit, if I even watch at all. The program just has a cheap, "forced" feel to it and even elements that worked well on his Tonight Show seem strained to me. The Green Car Challenge especially feels like they know it's a bore but they spent all that money building the raceway so they feel they have to use it.
The earlier rumor out of the network was that they were going to cut Jay back to three nights a week and drop in two hours of Dateline NBC. That hasn't happened either, probably because it's not a solution to their problem…just a way of making Leno's show cost more per night.
Jay's numbers were actually up a bit last month, probably because he was against a lot of reruns or otherwise weak competition. Still, the underlying premise of the experiment — that it could still be profitable in that hour and not hurt affiliates' local news — remains unproven and likely to remain that way. My guess is that if there's anything to the current rumors, it's that the network has decided they'll never prove it and they're quietly asking suppliers to pitch shows that can run at 10 PM. If that's the case, it won't stay quiet for long.