NBC local affiliates have been grumbling ever since it was announced that Jay Leno would get the 10pm timeslot every weekday. They're worried that their late local news, among the most profitable programming, will because Tonight Show ratings (with Leno) typically trended down at the end of the show. Now, they've commissioned a study. What a bold move. And Leno and NBC may not even listen to them. I can't imagine that Jay would be excited about getting show editorial direction from the local affiliates.
From NBC Affils Launch Study to Shape 'Leno' - Broadcasting & Cable.
Hoping for unprecedented input into Jay Leno's fall primetime program, the NBC affiliates board has launched an exhaustive research study designed to keep local newscasts from suffering due to the network's decision to move Leno to 10 p.m. [...]
“NBC has promised the affiliates' input into the structure of the show, and we believe this research will help us represent the key drivers that will best flow a Jay Leno viewer into affiliates' local late news,” Lawlor says.
Of course, how much Leno and NBC will listen is up in the air. An NBC network spokesperson declined to comment.
Affiliates were split on the idea of Leno taking over the 10 p.m. slot when it was announced in December, many fearing it will never be a ratings Smash in a time slot vital for serving up viewers to local late news.
So the study was put forth, including one question asking viewers how 13 elements of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno figure in their decision to tune in. The parts include Leno's monologue, celebrity guests and “Jaywalking.” Another one asks viewers if watching local news plays a part in their decision to tune in to The Tonight Show.
The survey will conclude in the coming weeks. “Once we get our arms around the research, we'll sit down with NBC and figure out what we both want to see and what decisions will be made,” Lawlor says.
The affiliates board is adamant about addressing The Tonight Show's tendency to lose viewers toward the end, which will be partially mitigated with Leno on 95 minutes earlier in the fall. One survey question zeroes in on how long viewers watch Tonight, offering 11 different points for tuning out. Respondents are asked if they stick around through the first or second guest, whether they watch through Jay's “Headlines,” whether they watch until the end, or even stay on for Late Night With Conan O'Brien after Jay.
There’s a major fallacy here. Part of the reason why Leno loses viewers towards the end is that a lot of people go to sleep before midnight. This effect will be much less at 10:30.
Michael, The article (and research) addresses that. Read the last paragraph.
Seems like you just move your A guest to the back of the show.
There’s only so much you can do. They’re still going to lose audience during the hour but that would help.
This could be crazy, but how about local news at 10pm EST, and then Leno at 1030pm?
Dan – that model works fine for Fox, as I understand it. But wouldn’t they really screw up The Tonight Show? You’d have Leno running into the Tonight Show running into Late Night.
This Leno-At-10:00pm concept is an incredibly bad idea, by the way. The reason Leno was successful was that Johnny Carson stepped down and went off TV completely. So his viewers naturally migrated to Leno. Here, Leno isn’t going off the air, which means that the viewers who are loyal to Leno may very well just follow Leno to 10:00 and may not watch The Tonight Show.
Why do something this risky, this will slop and NBC will loose a mass of veiwers and will to spend more money later on on new shows being highly promoted to bring back the veiwers.
On paper moving the local news to 10 isn’t entirely bad (and Outlander the timings should work themselves out because you wouldn’t then have local news at 11) however would the NBC affiliates really be any happier with that? Do they really want to be going against the CBS and ABC 10PM blocks? It works ok for Fox because that’s how its always been, I’m not sure the NBC affiliates would like it any more than Leno as a lead-in and fittingly if some of NBC’s 9PM performances are anything to go by they wouldn’t be getting a much improved lead-in anyway.
In general terms though I think Leno’s new show needs some kind of format change and not because of the Tonight Shows rating trends but because I think it needs to be a new show (or as new as it can be) that moves into that 10PM block.
Fin technically Leno at 10 should make NBC more money than anything else they currently have in the 10PM slot, unless Leno completely flops and I don’t think he will. And it costing them more money in the long run only works out if they ultimately ditch the idea.
Will Jay Leno show be like The Tonight Show,like News Headlines?
NBC is the NEW CW…..this FaLL
it’s already the new CW.
All this ‘new CW’ talk is flawed since it implies that something has happened to the old CW… it hasn’t.
Next up for NBC affiliates: their data mining reveals a greater correlation between the number of those watching the late-night news and what’s actually going on in the world on any given evening rather than on who’s on Leno. NBC affiliates then adopt plan of committing arson, setting rabid pitbulls loose in senior citizen centers and having affairs with underage celebrities in order to increase late-night news ratings.
Leno @10 fits into what Jeff Zucker said last week that NBC will make most of its revenue from its cable outlets and the costs producing Jay are considerably less than actually doing a scripted show so he’d have to fail really BIG for them to cancel him even if the affiliates don’t like it.
Wow. I’ll say this, this is really a big risk on NBC’s part.
Leno five nights a week could make more money but not the most money.
So in Zucker/Silverman’s “profit-margins-over-ratings” scheme, how do the affiliates fit in? If the affiliates can’t get enough advertising to make a profit, will we see NBC loosing coverage? Or will NBC Universal operate all the affiliates at a loss?
10 of the local affiliates are owned by NBCU, so they will directly share at least part of the financial pain generated by Leno at 10 for local stations. As for the 200ish other NBC affiliates, NBCU feels their pain less directly, but their voices may get pretty loud depending on how Jay does.
I think it is a smart move on NBC’s part. For several reasons:
- Besides Jay’s 30 mill+ salary it is incredibly cheap to produce this show vs scripted.
- the show runs about 40ish weeks a year vs a scripted show’s 20ish thus delivering more bang for the buck.
- Because it runs 20 or so more weeks a year they may not win every week in the ratings but I think they will deliver when other shows are on re-runs.
- 10 PM shows high numbers for viewers watching live vs DVR… this is good with the advertisers.
- Why get risk loosing a “show” that is pulling almost 30% higher viewership than your competitors?
- If you can grip viewers you have to potential to lock them for 5 nights a week vs 1 night a week?
Personally i DVR leno because it is on too late or because im watching a dvr recording while he is on. But even playing the DVR back I sometimes delete it after his monologue and frequently after his second segment. Even with all of that said, i still think that the are going to pick up viewers just because they don’t like any of the scripted shows on other channels. Just because I watch CSI:Miami at 10PM on mondays doesn’t mean that I am going to watch the mentalist at 10PM on tuesday on CBS. I might watch Jay instead.
This is a very risky move. On one hand, what might seem like a no-brainer financially, (respectable ratings, more new shows, low prod. costs), might be seriously overestimating America’s desire for celebrity chat. Do we really want the late night talk show circuit pulled an hour or two earlier in our lives?
For decades we relied on celebrity talk shows for late night, after the news, and before that, original or reality programming. Now it’s being sucked even earlier. The risk is that people are used to the way things are, and might resist this change in TV lifestyle, even if they might experiment for the first several months.
On the other hand, if God forbid, the ratings/production cost ratio ends up favorable for the first year, the other networks unleash their talk shows at 10pm! We might have a whole new genre of TV on the way.
The problem I have with that, is also the reason why over the long haul, the Jay Leno show will not work:
The Jay Leno Show was not created out of some incredible demand for more talk shows or for more Jay Leno. It was created because NBC painted itself into a corner contractually with the Conan/Leno situation as the sequel to the 1992 Letterman/Leno situation, and this new show is merely a solution to their own f*** up, not one created by the market. I don’t see a 10pm talk show becoming a permanent part of the TV lexicon.