Sure, the World Series was on, but the thing is, the CSI: NY repeat aired against the World Series too, and it did better than The Jay Leno Show ( 2.2 adults 18-49 rating vs. 1.5). Leno was also thrashed on Monday Night versus a rerun of CSI: Miami (3.1 vs. 1.3) and tied with a repeat of The Good Wife on Tuesday.
One of the things NBC publicly predicted was that with Leno airing about 46 weeks a year, since scripted shows air only about 22 new episodes a year, Leno would fare better when it was up against repeats. While "fare better" doesn't necessarily mean "win", the early data is that Leno isn't faring better against the reruns. At least not in terms of seeing any ratings increases. The gap between Leno and the CBS dramas may be a smaller when they are in reruns, but so far the ratings the dramas lose in reruns have resulted in any gains for The Jay Leno Show.
Oh come on, seriously. Castle lost big to a CSI:Miami repeat, too. And as lousy as a 2.2 is, did Eastwick really do better? NBC has huge problems, one of them being that even Heroes and SVU originals could well be expected to lose to CSI:Miami and NCIS repeats. In short the real scary thing is not that Leno is scraping the bottom of NBC’s expectations, it’s that the scripted programming is not realistically doing any better than Leno.
I don’t think it’s a good thing for Castle that it loses to reruns, but seriously, a.) at least Castle did not get THRASHED against the rerun, (2.5. vs. 3.1 is better than 1.3 vs. 3.1) and b.)ABC set no public expectations for how Castle would perform against reruns, and made no proclamations. NBC did with Leno.
That said, when it comes to ratings, I agree Leno is but one issue for NBC and not the cause of its ratings ails. NBC was in 4th place last year too…
Truthfully, I’m not sure if these isolated weeks of reruns are the best gauge of what NBC is hoping for. I believe they are looking more at the holiday season and summer, when viewers are in the habit of expecting reruns for long periods of time. I’ll be very interested to see how Jay does after the November sweeps end.
But here’s some worse news for NBC:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010475.html?categoryid=14&cs=1
Losing more than a quarter of your audience in a year is astounding. Might be extenuating circumstances, but come on, down 26%? And this is for an NBC O&O, which means NBCUni is going to see a hit to the bottom line.
In my opinion, there are two problems with Leno.
The first is the time, because I think people would always rather watch a good scripted show than a talkshow. As much as people enjoy the late night shows, a good percentage of that must be down to the fact that there isn’t really much else on.
Secondly, the Leno show just isn’t that good. Ignoring for a moment that I don’t *personally* like him as a host/presenter, I don’t think the format works at all. It was better when he sat down for the whole show rather than this new format which has a largely unlikeable format and unpleasant set.
I’m pretty sure the affiliates aren’t impressed either.
Can’t wait to see the latest spin cycle from the PR suits at NBC to explain this one. Should be creative, full of long words that require the use of a dictionary, and nonsensical.
I hope Leno gets canceled.. he never impressed me.. after all, he is just an opportunist trash.. he stabbed Carson and Letterman.. dumped his cancer-battling manager, and stole sketches from Stern and other shows!
OK, sure, but Castle had a more than decent first place DWTS lead in and Leno had bottomscraping Trauma. In the end my point there wasn’t really comparing Leno with Castle, it was “Would you look at how effing healthy the CBS repeats are!!!”
I do post about how healthy CBS is in repeats. Mondays from 9p-11p and NCIS are AMAZING. But Leno is a story unto itself.
To SB’s point above, the info about relative performance versus repeats IS important because one of the things NBC is at least trying to do is assuage affiliates with “it will all average out better because of how Leno will do against repeats”. But the early results are that it looks like repeats (at least on CBS) won’t help the averages any.
So far Leno’s performance appears marginal–but in the NBC world these days, marginal is pretty good. The main question is what the affiliates think, and so far they seem willing to stay quiet and see how the year progresses. The Variety article on KNBC is interesting, but the change in the 11:00 anchor makes it difficult to pin their woes on Leno (plus the fact that they’re down far more in the 11:00 newscast than in their 10:00 hour). In the end it doesn’t really matter that Leno does worse than CSI reruns because NBC isn’t in a position to offer ANYTHING comparable to CSI reruns. Really the only bright spot in scripted shows for them is The Office.
My suggestion, if they really want to save money at 10:00: show reruns of their old, good shows. How’s this for a schedule: Rockford Files on Monday, Ironside on Tuesday, Hill Street Blues on Wednesday, Columbo on Thursday….
I didn’t expect Leno to beat CBS repeats, but I did expect him to improve.
I think this demonstrates that the typical Leno viewer isn’t the CBS 10pm drama viewer.
There are a lot of suggestions to move Leno back to the 11:35 slot. This is easier said than done. NBC has become a bit of a house of cards with its talkshow talent.
Leno does have a four year contract with a two year minimum at $30 million a year. Not sure of all the contract details, but it’s safe to say that Jay gets paid for two years no matter what. Also, there is not really anywhere else to put Jay on NBC for there is also a contract with Conan and Jimmy likely with financial “guarantees”. NBC would have to lose less by paying out to the talent AND adding the expense of 10:00 programming.
With Leno’s ratings not at all trending positively, I’m sure the bean counters are working on this out now.
I don’t watch Jay anymore cause I don’t agree with the timeslot choice of NBC. What amazes me is how well repeats play for CBS. None of the other network reruns even come close. Almost seems as if some Neilson people in their areas only get CBS programs or they just never change the channel.
Burair you nailed it. Can’t wait for Leno to be gone for good.
It seems that Leno has a floor and a ceiling as far as ratings are concerned, between 1.3 and 2.0(this far). Within that range there are two factors that can inluence where in that range the numbers will fall, lead in and competition. This week the lead ins have been Trauma at 1.9, Biggest Loser at 4.3 and L&O SVU at 2.7. The combined demos of the competition were Monday 5.6, Tuesday 3.6 and Wednesday 4.0. Leno’s worst night was Monday at 1.3 with the worst leadin and the strongest competition. Tuesday and Wednesday the competition was similar but the lead in was much better on Tuesday than on Wednesday. NBC may plan on Leno’s rating improving against repeats, but I think a case can be made that his ratings are as much if not more affected by his lead in than by the competition. If that is the case then Leno will continue to do poorly until the NBC lineup itself improves.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Leno should be on Friday, Saturday and Sunday before football at 7PM. Leno could do a football themed show on Sunday’s during football season with monolouge and interviews with players, etc. Why Friday and Saturday? well, because no show is expected to do very well on those days and besides it would give viewers something different on Saturday instead of stale repeats.
But as I’ve also said before–Leno wouldn’t go for it. It’s M-F or nothing. We’re also stuck with him at least until the start of the 2010-2011 season.
What could NBC do to keep Leno happy and gracefully give up his five day per week show? Give him a big development deal to develop projects for NBC. Give him 6-8 specials per season (ala Bob Hope). But they will not and Jay would not take back “Tonight”.
Forgot a bit there, on Tuesday Leno got 1.7 and 1.5 on Wednesday.
Chuck, I think Jay would at least consider taking back 11:35. By the time his scheduled time to step down came around, he wasn’t too big on the idea of leaving anyway. He was winning at 11:35 and probably would be able to take the ratings lead back, since he was managing to beat Dave for so many years. While there is the issue of the Tonight brand being even further damaged goods now after Conan, I still think Jay wouldn’t be completely averse to going back, especially since his contract wouldn’t change. Many of his comments about NBC like his “not my problem” quote about their ratings suggest he is unconcerned with he rest of the state of the network as long as he’s getting paid, and you can’t blame him for that. It’s not like he’d have to change his show much to go back to the old time…
Jay’s ALWAYS sucked. I never understood at he beat Letterman- a true talent. Jimmy Fallon’s even worse. He’s so bad, it’s uncomfortable even watching him. He’s the worst of all time. NBC’s run by morons. Conan’s their only talent- but he doesn’t compare to Letterman. The only solution will be to cancel Leno at 10–and put him on at 12:30 against Ferguson. LOL! NOW that would be funny. (Even though Ferguson’s more talented than all of them- and he’d eventually flush the talentless Leno down the toilet.. Ferguson’s funnier in his sleep than Leno. And he’ll be funnier than Fallon- even when he’s dead!
If you’re not regularly watching Leno, why would you watch on a night when something you usually watch on one of the other networks is off or on repeats? This isn’t 1973, if it’s Tuesday night and “The Good Wife” isn’t on, I’m not going to flip to Leno just because. If I was interested in both I would Tivo both. That’s really dumb thinking on NBC’s part. For a company that owns a bunch of cable channels, they seem to be pretty stupid when it comes to viewer options and choice these days.
How can the same entertainment division that puts out great shows on USA Network be so dumb when it comes to the Mother Ship?
Jay Leno can’t be too happy with those numbers. Pretty soon he’ll be on the same level with cable and CW shows.