They already tried programming Friday and that didn’t work out so well.

NBC was going to have to cancel more shows then it had new ones in production. If Kings, Merlin, and the Philanthopist all fail, they’ll be even happier with this. I’m not saying they will. Plus Medium is pretty much on the bubble and likely to be ended. If all this happens, they’res no way NBC could fill all it’s time. Eliminating the 10:00 hour on weeknights makes it possible.

Mon:
Heroes
Kings

Tue:
The Biggest Loser
The Biggest Loser

Wed:
The Philanthropist
Law & Order: SVU

Thu:
My Name Is Earl
Amy Poehler
The Office
30 Rock

Fri:
Chuck
Law & Order

They could save Dateline, The Apprentice, and new shows for Midseason once football is over. A whole bunch of new shows in the fall would be too big a risk considering that leno’s performance is still a question mark.

The best thing about this is that Friday doesn’t have to be a throwaway night anymore. They have enough programming now to at least *try* on Fridays.

I think this spells the end for
Knight Rider
Kath & Kim
Friday Night Lights
Deal Or No Deal (now that they have enough to air on Fridays, even NBC doesn’t have to settle for 5 mil and a 1.3 in the demo)

I also seriously doubt that Howie Do It, Momma’s Boys, or Superstars of Dance will do well enough for a return. Much less a fall berth… if they do well enough they can be filler for repeating shows or midseason replacements.

Nice to see that somebody out there still believes in the traditional model.

“No broadcast network has ever before offered the same show in prime time five nights a week.”

Warren Littlefield would beg to differ, since his solution to all of NBC’s problems was 5 editions of “Dateline” a week. (That and 20 “upscale” multi-cam sitcoms set in New York City with sassy white chicks working for newspapers, magazines, tabloids, promotions agencies and/or lingerie companies.)

Not to mention that DuMont had a 5-night-a-week prime time show all the way back in 1947, with the kiddie program, “Small Fry Club.” CBS followed with “Face the Music” in 1948.

David- “The Leno-less Tonight Show with Conan OBrien will fail because he is not as personable and fun to watch as Leno.”

Conan appeals to a younger crowd. No one at my university ever comes to class talking about something that Leno did but they do talk about how funny Conan was.

Canceling Law & Order would be big mistake for NBC.

Hell, it even beat it’s lead in, Life, by 3 Million!

As for the claims that Chuck is treading water, it is the only show to increase its viewship from the start of the year to date for NBC — up a total of one million with a peak up of 1.25 million. It comes just shy of 7 million this week and it holds its demo week-in, week-out. In the new world order of NBC, that is a success.

The following shows should be retired:

Earl — has gone one season too far — the tornado episode this year was a train wreck. Jason Lee is phoning it in too.
L&O — time to bury the old dog, she just won’t hunt no more.
Knight Rider — honestly, I think we can all agree on this one.
Life — I love it, I really do, but its demo numbers are not good at all.
K&K — the single worst comedy in the last 5 years to air on TV, in my opinion.

Shows already retiring or retired:

ER — going out properly and with some dignity. A procedural never gets that.
My Own Worst Enemy — good concept; bad execution.
Lipstick Jungle — unappealling then, unappealing now.
Deal or No Deal — when it came back as a special; nowhere near what it once was.

Shows to be modified or used differently:

Biggest Loser — cut it to one hour; use two hour special for opener and closer. Move to Sunday opposite Extreme Home Makeover at 8pm after football in winter.
Medium — keep as mid-season show with 13 show run — Sundays after Biggest Loser.

Just my thoughts, but if NBC really is going to cut and run. I’d:
1) Try to program a real Friday, like CBS — target an audience and get it — if that means Biggest Loser and some other reality show great. I won’t watch, but I know my mom and sister-in-laws will.
2) Plan a real Sunday for after football — men watch football; target men with something-like Chuck, Kings, Burn Notice, etc. and advertise the hell out of it during football season. Again, target an audience and go out and get it.
3) Put your stars on Leno at 10pm; Put your stars in the hosting role of SNL.

Wow that was fun to get out.

You don’t need huge ratings to be a hit on Saturday night. You need to be exciting. Don’t bury the audience before its dead. Is Cops the most entertaining program we can come up with on Saturday? CBS has Craig Ferguson who is one of the best talk show hosts on any network. Why not give him an hour or two on Saturday night? Who knows what might develop?

Leno won’t be the last talk show to make it to primetime. This is just the beginning. Over 50 years ago, Pat Weaver saved network radio with an audacious experiment called Monitor, 40 hours a weekend, a show that broke the rules, a show that had no format. It lasted 20 years. He joked that it was a “kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria,” news, comedy, music, all together in one program. Network television needs its own kaleidoscopic phantasmagorias.

I don’t think it will work. Leno will go against some of CBS big shows. I don’t think Leno will beat CSI:Miami, CSI:NY, Without a Trace, Private Pratice, Numbe3s even 11th hour would do good against Leno.

Then you will have shows like L&O:SUV and L&O that will go against The Mentalist on Monday and Criminal Minds and Lost on Wednesday or CSI and Grey on Thursday, they can try for Sunday but that is where we will find Cold Case and DH. So what is left for NBC Friday and Saturday nights. Not a lot of choices.

What NBC should have done was to fire both Zucker and Silverman, hire someone that will give the audience what it does want like CBS did with The Mentalist.
The Mentalist is a huge success for CBS because CBS gave its audience what it wanted, some may not like The Mentalist (I don’t like it) but it is a success.

Instead of trying to get the next big hit NBC is going for cheap, easy solution that may work in the short run but not in the long run. I see this move as working maybe a month or two but not a season. Plus the real loser in this apart from the viewers who like scripted shows, is Conan O’Brien. After an hour of Leno, who I am sure most guests will want to appear on his show since he will be in primetime, who will want to stay up, wait for the news so they can watch Conan? Not me unless he’s got guests that I really want to see.

Monday: Heroes and new drama
Tuesday: ?, L&O SVU
Wednesday:?, L&O
Thursday: 4 Comedies
Friday: Medium and ??
Sunday (post football): throw in a midseason dramas,comedies.

Man, itll work
You guys are making a fuss over nothing.
change is what the networks need

To be quite honest, I have no idea which it will be. I lean toward disaster, but considering the pablum people make into Top Ten shows these days, it may work out for them. As pointed out, he only needs a 2.5 to 3.0 demo to make this very successful, based on cost per hour. Of course, the last people Leno appeals to are the 18-34 crowd. I just can’t imagine many of them will watch.

No matter what, however, this will boost ABC and CBS through the roof at 10 pm, which is very good news for viewers such as us. Now the chances are better for success from some of these 10 pm shows that have been getting cancelled by the bucketload. Perhaps ABC and CBS will use this opportunity to try some interesting stuff at that hour, rather than just more soaps and/or procedurals.

On the whole, however, the biggest thing I take from this is that Ben Silverman is an abject failure. With a massively successful Olympics to promote his fall schedule, Silverman has produced zero hits and presided over the demise of the few hot shows he did have. He mis-programmed both Chuck and MOWE into near-oblivion and oblivion, respectively, and he has sat by idly while Tim Kring has run Heroes into the ground. He also used his honeymoon year to put absolute crap like Knight Rider and Kath and Kim on the air, neither of which had any chance of being a big hit, while he cancelled ER, a show that is far and away one of the most successful still on NBC’s airwaves. And now his boss has had to eliminate the ten o’clock hour in favor of a low rent talk show that has the potential to be mildly profitable but no chance to be a huge success, while sacrificing their ability to ever program another E.R. now that they have no 10 pm slot to place it into.

That’s the oddest part of the Leno announcement. While it might be successful on its own terms, it has zero chance to be the type of monster smash that NBC desperately needs to pull themselves back to respectibility.

Still, if it works out, and if NBC could ever find something that would let them dominate a night or two again, it could work for them. I doubt it will, but it could. Either way, however, Silverman has to be history. Keeping him would be tantamount to admitting you just don’t care anymore.

They are just lucky that John McCain pulled one of the biggest political blunders in history, which helped prop up two different shows. Think about that, sportsfans. John McCain has done more to help NBC than Ben Silverman.

What happens when Leno’s second half hour loses viewers, and cannot provide a strong lead in for local news? NBC is grasping at straws with this move. But then again, they made their own mess giving the Tonight Show away to Conan OBrien.

Chuck – 1 hour
Heroes – 1 hour
Office – 30 mins
30 Rock – 30 mins
Earl – 30 mins
Law & Order: SVU – 1 hour
Biggest Loser – 2 hour

Thus leaving 11.5 hours

If NBC does not pick up Chuck, does anybody see maybe CW picking it up. Chuck is produced by Warner Bros. Studios and they own half of CW.

Desperation? Perhaps. But they’re not desperate for higher ratings. They’re desperate for profit. Mikey’s post above put it very succinctly – “most efficient” rather than “highest rated.”

As long as enough advertisers pay enough money to turn a profit, then NBC is not really a failure. They’re only a failure if advertisers stop buying. From the Variety article – they advertisers have stopped buying on every network, not just NBC.

I somewhat agree. This move virtually guarantees that NBC will finish last among the major networks in the A18-49 race every year that they strip Leno. It would take a massive, American Idol-sized hit show to prevent them from being a perennial fourth. Yet they’ve decided to do this anyway.

They clearly are focusing on “most efficient” rather than “highest-rated”

I think it’s optimistic to think that Leno will continue to average a 5 share in the demo at 10pm. Competition will be exponentially tougher. I’m sure there will be a novelty dividend in the first one or two months but I suspect this thing will settle at more like a 3 share in the demo.

Chuck – 1 hour
Heroes – 1 hour
Office – 30 mins
30 Rock – 30 mins
Earl – 30 mins
Law & Order: SVU – 1 hour

That leaves 12.5 hours to go. I guess you can knock out some hours with
Sunday Night Football in the fall. But where does that leave you???

Does Medium return??? Does Life get a 3rd chance?? What about the few new shows coming — Amy Poehler’s show??? The “I already believe there is no chance in hell this show suceeds” Knights??? What are they going to move Burn Notice over from USA???

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg for NBC. Ben is as good as bye-bye. And someone is going to have to find some quality shows.

No they aren’t. What you see here is NBC desperately trying to do anything because they are acknowledging that they are failing at the TV business because their Nielsen ratings suck. How is this NBC ignoring that?

Second, Leno did a good job in his tenure as Late Night host, and in some respects went out “on top.” He dominated Letterman in the ratings and while he wasn’t as good as Johnny Carson, he certainly did a respectable job and never made himself or NBC the target of significant controversy. (Unlike Letterman, who has repeatedly acted like a jerk and has turned off large portions of his audience by being excessively liberal and/or mean-spirited). But now he’s going to be associated with a boondoggle, which will just tarnish his brand on his way into retirement.

Third, NBC is going to get pwned by doing this. The fact that Leno couldn’t appreciably raise his ratings during November Sweeps shows you that he has a very stagnant audience. Why is that audience going to double at 10:00? Simply because there are more total viewers at 10:00? If they are going for “default viewers,” NBC may as well just air encores of its more popular shows at 10:00.
Les Moonves is definitely doing the snoopy dance right about now.

NBC just might find a way to cut ad rates way low here. Provided the advertisers can be “sold” on the idea that enough eyeballs are wathcing their ads, they just might buy into the operation. How many eyeballs is “enough,” though? Who shall define that metric?

If I had to buy an ad spot in the 10pm hour, how much would I pay per million potential viewers? What’s my cost-benefit structure, and all that jazz…

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117996347.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

Is the Jay Leno option a baby step in the “drop an hour” direction? Excerpt from the linked article:
“Among the possible scenarios: One of the traditional major nets — ABC, NBC or CBS — could mirror the Fox sked and drop an hour of primetime, airing only from 8 to 10 p.m. (or perhaps 9 to 11 p.m.) and return that extra hour to the affiliates.”

The Jay Leno option keeps the hour within the networks, maybe easing the process more than an outright return of the hour to affiliates.

I can’t believe this network used to have shows like Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, E.R, Homicide: Life on the Street…how pathetic they have become…

Wasting money keeping alive shows like Friday Night Lights for sentimental reasons is another reason why NBC has gone into the crapper.

How will Leno do at 10pm? Considering where NBC is right now, they could do worse. The ratings will be interesting to watch.

When they see that Tonight show have failed at 10 pm, they will replace this for local programming.

the cbs crime dramas at 10pm should improve a millions without the competion of L&O.

But hey, I guess they got to do something. Good luck on those key demos. (unless this is a nod to David E. Kelly’s cut to Madison Ave. from last night BL finale.

I’m planning on starting to watch the show on Hulu over the Hoidays, but if an annoying “save our show from eval NBC!!1!” drive takes over this site, I won’t.

I was rooting for Life and Chuck to make the cut for another year, but I have to wonder now if they are both goners. (I know things were already looking somewhat questionable for Life.) If “characters” really are “welcome”, maybe these shows can head over to the USA Network. (?)

Regardless, if Universal hopes to keep people from just giving those viewing hours over to CBS & ABC shows, then I hope USA, Sci-Fi, Bravo, etc., programming has some attractive options because the 23% Leno Solution is no solution at all.