In a completely unsurprising development, Boston's local NBC affiliate WHDH has announced it will air Jay Leno in prime-time after all. From Variety:
The show will go on for Jay Leno in Boston.
NBC and Boston affil WHDH have resolved their dispute - and the Sunbeam Television-owned station confirmed Monday morning that it will air Leno's new primetime program after all.
"Upon further consideration, we have decided to telecast Jay Leno at 10:00 p.m. starting in September," WHDH owner Ed Ansin said. "Jay is from Andover where I went to school. I enjoy his humor. We hope the new show is a big success."
It looks like a dog with its tail between its legs to me...
“Jay is from Andover where I went to school. I enjoy his humor. We hope the new show is a big success.”
loooool
How long will this last? How many more people will watch Leno in primetime that didn’t watch him in Late Night? Five nights a week?
So 10 is primetime for them, eh
10pm is prime time for everyone [edit, at least for ABC, CBS and NBC -- Fox and the CW turn 10pm over to their local affiliates]
You know, if NBC really wants to rebound, they might try airing actual television shows that people will watch. Seriously, unless they take risks with real programming, they are only delaying the inevitable. They should forget about the Leno “five night a week”, pick up some pilots and try to get a hit show. NBC has come a long way from Seinfeld and Friends.
8-11pm is primetime for the Eastern and Pacific time zones, for Central and Mountain prime time is 7-10;)
Bill,
correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the central time zone the only one that airs primetime from 7pm-10pm, with the other three time zones all airing 8pm-11pm???
I am almost certain this case, and I believe it was done because so many ct states are close to the et that they wanted to air at the same time.
I could certainly be wrong about Mountain time zone prime-time. I expect another commenter will let us know definitively before much longer
Mountain time airs 7pm-10pm as well, coolbreeze. Example:
http://www.nbc.com/Schedule/?tz=MT
Robert,
Thanks for the info. I had been under the wrong assumption for many years (well since as long as I was old enough to understand the distance of the broadcast time zones).
Maybe you can take it a step further and educate as to why the networks broadcast at different times in different time zones?
thanks
Arizona, which half the year is mountain and half the year pacific, is 7-10 the whole year. Go figure.
The only thing I’ve ever known about Mountain is from a commercial for Clarissa Explains it All on Nick about a million years ago. Melissa Joan Hart announced that the show was on at 8 (or was it 9?) Eastern and Pacific, 7 (or 8?) Central, and Mountain could be either one.
In the UK a few years back we had Wogan air a 3 times a week talk show on the BBC in the early evening (for you guys across the Pond Wogan is a British institution with a Radio show on BBC Radio 2 that must be nearly 30 years old I guess). He’s very witty and self deprecating and doesn’t use scriptwriters (imagine Bob Hope but without the writing staff!!).
Now this was only a 30 minute show and even then the ratings were totally dictated by the guests fairly quickly, viewers get bored very fast of guests who are just their to promote their latest book/movie/album/scandal/cosmetic range (insert as appropriate). Guest dictated shows quickly become inversely proportional to the guest (i.e. The rarity of a guest improves rating – but the more often that guest appears the less their rarity!!).
So this was 90 minutes a week in Primetime and way before the multi channel viewer fest we see these days. When Wogan tried to repeat the format about 10 years later (when we did have multi channel TV) it bombed faster then a very fast bombing thing. The simple reason being that any product/news story worth it’s salt is saturated in the 24 hour news cycle we now have, if I want to know about XYZ I google the news feeds and can get the information I want much more conveniently (As an example google the madoff vanity fair articles, they probably give more insight into what went on then pretty much all the mainstream media did and I found them online).
So I have to ask myself are NBC really trying to send a warning shot to the current delivery model ($3m-$10m pilots and then if it’s a success NBC have to pay more for the same product?).
The reality though is that give the very low production costs for 5 hours of chat show per week NBC may well have a profitable model even if the viewing figures are awful. How long though before the guests start asking huge appearance fees – their agents will get wise to this game very quickly.
Ah. Terry Wogan – a funny guy! Since I follow my favorite rock band, the Irish family band The Corrs, and he used to make fun of them by calling the three gorgeous sisters “a bag of old spanners” (to their delight), I knew about him. He also hosted their appearance in Hyde Park a few years back. Also, I have a clip of him interviewing one of my favorite Brit actresses, Stephanie Beacham.
The thing is, I’m not sure how much celebrity guests get on late night US TV vs Brit TV. I don’t think they can command huge fees here since basically they’re here for promo of whatever they’re doing, so the networks feel they don’t owe them any money. Most celebrity guests probably wouldn’t even do any of this stuff if their studio or network or whoever they’re working for didn’t tell them to do it.
Nobody’s going to pay a celebrity guest even a fraction of the sort of money it would cost to produce an episode of any scripted show, that’s for sure.
I never understood why Boston of all places would refuse to air the show when Leno is from the area.
Richard
I don’t think I made my point very well in the original post…..
If the show in effect just becomes a plug fest then people will switch off in droves (because Entertainment tonight et al serve the plug fest market very well), what will draw viewers back is ‘rare’ guests who are not on the show to plug some product…..however they will want a fee (i.e. I would be more likely to watch say The Dalai Lama then Britney for the 6th time – OK bad example because he wouldn’t want a fee…but you get my point).
Look at the wikipedia entry for the Wogan show and you’ll see in 7 years there’s only maybe 20 memorable/notable events.
If Leno is pulling in say sub 3m viewers average per show per week how long before the affiliates (do affiliates still exist?) start looking around for other programming or other networks?
Oh and finally to give you some idea of numbers the Wogan radio show in the morning get’s 8m listeners every morning and that’s in a landscape where most people can receive about 50 radio stations.
I was about to post what Ricardo’s posted, but he obviously beat me to it.
I don’t know, I think everyone is too quick to think that Leno will be a total flop. Sure 10pm ratings will be down, but people do watch Leno the most in late night.
The whole idea of “NBC should just keep cranking out pilots to get back on top!!” is a nice theory in a perfect world, but they’ve tried that already. They had lots of scripted pilots this season and none of them were big hits.
Personally I think the truth is NBC really needs to focus on actually getting two hours per night of successful primetime series under their belt before they can start tackling three hours a night again.
jay leno is sexy, i want to ride his hog
LOL sounds like they couldn’t get out of their contract and were probably scared of losing their NBC affiliation…