FuzzyDunlop
Diamond Member
- Jan 30, 2008
- 3,260
- 12
- 81
I never understood why Leno was so popular. I always thought he was the worst host out of all the late shows. I rather watch Carson Daly.
- Nov 30, 2005
- 50,231
- 118
- 116
RiDE
Platinum Member
- Jul 8, 2004
- 2,139
- 0
- 76
Jay Leno was doing a pretty shitty job with his new show as well. Should they can him too?
techs
Lifer
- Sep 26, 2000
- 28,559
- 4
- 0
C'mon. This whole thing was planned out beforehand.
NBC had the Olympics this year which would have interrupted their 10 pm programming. Instead of scheduling newly creating scripted shows, and returning shows in the 10pm hour and having them at a tremendous disadvantage against other networks due to the Olympics break, they came up with the Leno strategy.
Put a low cost show like Leno in the 10pm slot. Something so cheap they would make money because it was so cheap to produce. Move Conan to Leno's spot.
If Leno does better than expected, and Conan does ok, then it's a great idea. If Leno bombs, and Conan does great, then Leno goes to 11:35 and Conan to 12:30. If Conan bombs then Leno back to 11:35 and Conan back to late night.
Basically NBC didn't have to put up money for scripted shows in this years 10pm slot, only to have them killed by the Olympics.
Smart move, NBC.
NBC had the Olympics this year which would have interrupted their 10 pm programming. Instead of scheduling newly creating scripted shows, and returning shows in the 10pm hour and having them at a tremendous disadvantage against other networks due to the Olympics break, they came up with the Leno strategy.
Put a low cost show like Leno in the 10pm slot. Something so cheap they would make money because it was so cheap to produce. Move Conan to Leno's spot.
If Leno does better than expected, and Conan does ok, then it's a great idea. If Leno bombs, and Conan does great, then Leno goes to 11:35 and Conan to 12:30. If Conan bombs then Leno back to 11:35 and Conan back to late night.
Basically NBC didn't have to put up money for scripted shows in this years 10pm slot, only to have them killed by the Olympics.
Smart move, NBC.
mugs
Lifer
- Apr 29, 2003
- 48,920
- 46
- 91
MercenaryYoureFired
Senior member
- Nov 8, 2006
- 343
- 0
- 0
Ok Mr. "According to my calculations, Avatar will be lucky to break even".
Conan was contracted for The Tonight Show for years and NBC literally thought Conan was THE future of late-night and had a ton of faith in him, hence the GD contract. Leno wanted to stay at NBC so they had to do something, a shitty ass show was the best they could do.
I really this works out for Conan because he is awesome.
NFS4
No Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 72,636
- 47
- 91
I couldn't stay up long enough last night to watch Conan, but just saw this on Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=a4d0jcjVFqOQ
The gloves are coming off...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=a4d0jcjVFqOQ
The gloves are coming off...
NFS4
No Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 72,636
- 47
- 91
Fritzo
Lifer
- Jan 3, 2001
- 41,920
- 2,161
- 126
"I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too.
LOL!!!!
Spicedaddy
Platinum Member
- Apr 18, 2002
- 2,305
- 77
- 91
"I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too.
LOL!!!!
haha, classic!
Leno's a jackass, and I'm glad all the other late night hosts are calling him out. He's acting like it's all NBC's fault and he can't do anything about it. Just step down instead of accepting to bump somebody else, that's what Conan is doing for Fallon.
Fritzo
Lifer
- Jan 3, 2001
- 41,920
- 2,161
- 126
haha, classic!
Leno's a jackass, and I'm glad all the other late night hosts are calling him out. He's acting like it's all NBC's fault and he can't do anything about it. Just step down instead of accepting to bump somebody else, that's what Conan is doing for Fallon.
I guess I just don't understand why they didn't just cancel and fire Jay? That's what they do to poor rated shows, right?
Conan's rating were lower than Jay's, but he was still #2---and that's pretty good, isn't it?
Spicedaddy
Platinum Member
- Apr 18, 2002
- 2,305
- 77
- 91
I really don't understand it either. Conan's ratings were alright if you consider that Leno went to do his same old thing at 10pm instead of leaving. (fragmenting the audience, taking away guests, poor lead-in for the 11pm slot, etc.)
NFS4
No Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 72,636
- 47
- 91
You summed it all up there.
People are ignorant to think it Conan's fault.
Who in the hell is going to sit and watch 2 talk shows in a row ??
The FACT is that both knew that Conan was suppose to take over Leno.
Leno was greedy and wanted to stay so NBC made a show for him.
Leno should have left.
13Gigatons
Diamond Member
- Apr 19, 2005
- 7,461
- 500
- 126
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,857
- 31,346
- 146
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,857
- 31,346
- 146
BrownShoes
Golden Member
- Dec 28, 2008
- 1,055
- 0
- 0
Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
Lessons of Leno: Why the Future Failed for NBC
By James Poniewozik
If Jay Leno were to have his NBC bosses on his show, he could ask them what he famously did Hugh Grant in 1995: "What the hell were you thinking?"
NBC made clear what the hell it was thinking in creating The Jay Leno Show. It was trying to adjust to the post–Big Media world. With cable, DVR and online media snagging viewers, programming a full night of expensive TV was a bygone luxury. Leno might get lower ratings than NBC's 10 p.m. dramas, but those were struggling anyway and cost much more.
It got one thing right: the ratings were lower. To be fair to NBC, so were the costs. Even getting no more viewers than Leno did in late night, the network was reportedly ahead in ad revenue. But that was no comfort to NBC's affiliates, the local stations that make up the network by agreeing to air NBC shows. Their nightly newscasts suffering, they found The Jay Leno Show even less amusing than TV critics did and threatened to revolt.
So as of Feb. 12, Leno at 10 will be a memory. With that, NBC showed itself to be in the same boat as the rest of Big Media — caught between an old business model that is no longer working and a new one that hasn't yet been invented.
It's easy to mock NBC, which fell to fourth place over a decade, put a retread of The Tonight Show in prime time, alienated TV-drama producers and publicly shafted Conan O'Brien, who said he would quit Tonight rather than move so that NBC could shoehorn Leno in at 11:35. As I wrote in a TIME cover last year, Leno's show was a paradox: a radical experiment with TV's most old-fashioned, middle-of-the-road star. It proved to be an unsustainable contradiction.
But if The Jay Leno Show was exactly the wrong solution for NBC's problems, those problems remain real, and they are not only NBC's. DVRs and online media are still killing ad money, and audiences are still shrinking. There may not be room for three big networks programming three hours a night anymore.
Problem is, NBC still has to operate in the old system. That system depends on affiliates, the infrastructure of broadcast TV since Uncle Miltie's day. (Right now, those affiliates have great, if temporary, leverage, because NBC needs them to play nice while it's being sold to cable operator Comcast.) And it depends on pleasing an audience used to ER and Law & Order at 10, not Jaywalking.
NBC's experiment was the most radical attempt to change the TV business model, but it wasn't the only one. Fox recently got Time Warner Cable to agree to pay to retransmit Fox's free over-the-air signal, suggesting that broadcasters could someday operate more like cable channels (with cable subscribers paying for it). Reality shows and newsmagazines are, like the Leno show, devices to fill prime time on the cheap — and they'll fill some of the vacuum left by Leno.
The catch is that each adjustment to the new, cheap world risks losing people who liked the old, expensive one. Broadcast TV once thrived by pitching a big tent. But now the various poles of that tent — Jay fans, Conan fans, etc. — don't particularly want to share the same campsite, and they no longer have to.
In this respect, NBC has a lot in common with print media. I recently talked with a neighbor annoyed about the number of typos she said she's been seeing in the New York Times. The editors are probably stretched thin, I said; the Times just went through a big round of layoffs. That's terrible, she agreed. Anyway, she said, she was going to drop her weekday subscription. Why should she pay all that money and get typos?
Of course, losing subscribers is not exactly going to help beef up the Times's copydesk. But as a consumer, she had a point: Why pay for a product that disappoints her? So what if the newspaper business model is challenging. That's not her problem. Just fix it!
That's the same bind that NBC, and media companies at large, are in. People aren't going to enjoy watching a lame prime-time talk show for the satisfaction of knowing they're helping the parent company save on payroll. People who expect something else — lavish scripted dramas or typo-free news from costly foreign bureaus — will get alienated and leave, only deepening the revenue spiral that led to the cuts in the first place.
Having been burned by the Leno experiment, NBC now says it's going "back to basics." If only it could. I hope the end of Leno at 10 will open room for great new shows on NBC, but the basics of TV aren't going to revert back to the flush 20th century days. Instead, NBC will focus not on inventing TV's next business plan but on trying to be one of the networks left standing when the old plan finally craps out. Simple tooth-and-claw survival: it's the oldest business model of all.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1953355,00.html
Lessons of Leno: Why the Future Failed for NBC
By James Poniewozik
If Jay Leno were to have his NBC bosses on his show, he could ask them what he famously did Hugh Grant in 1995: "What the hell were you thinking?"
NBC made clear what the hell it was thinking in creating The Jay Leno Show. It was trying to adjust to the post–Big Media world. With cable, DVR and online media snagging viewers, programming a full night of expensive TV was a bygone luxury. Leno might get lower ratings than NBC's 10 p.m. dramas, but those were struggling anyway and cost much more.
It got one thing right: the ratings were lower. To be fair to NBC, so were the costs. Even getting no more viewers than Leno did in late night, the network was reportedly ahead in ad revenue. But that was no comfort to NBC's affiliates, the local stations that make up the network by agreeing to air NBC shows. Their nightly newscasts suffering, they found The Jay Leno Show even less amusing than TV critics did and threatened to revolt.
So as of Feb. 12, Leno at 10 will be a memory. With that, NBC showed itself to be in the same boat as the rest of Big Media — caught between an old business model that is no longer working and a new one that hasn't yet been invented.
It's easy to mock NBC, which fell to fourth place over a decade, put a retread of The Tonight Show in prime time, alienated TV-drama producers and publicly shafted Conan O'Brien, who said he would quit Tonight rather than move so that NBC could shoehorn Leno in at 11:35. As I wrote in a TIME cover last year, Leno's show was a paradox: a radical experiment with TV's most old-fashioned, middle-of-the-road star. It proved to be an unsustainable contradiction.
But if The Jay Leno Show was exactly the wrong solution for NBC's problems, those problems remain real, and they are not only NBC's. DVRs and online media are still killing ad money, and audiences are still shrinking. There may not be room for three big networks programming three hours a night anymore.
Problem is, NBC still has to operate in the old system. That system depends on affiliates, the infrastructure of broadcast TV since Uncle Miltie's day. (Right now, those affiliates have great, if temporary, leverage, because NBC needs them to play nice while it's being sold to cable operator Comcast.) And it depends on pleasing an audience used to ER and Law & Order at 10, not Jaywalking.
NBC's experiment was the most radical attempt to change the TV business model, but it wasn't the only one. Fox recently got Time Warner Cable to agree to pay to retransmit Fox's free over-the-air signal, suggesting that broadcasters could someday operate more like cable channels (with cable subscribers paying for it). Reality shows and newsmagazines are, like the Leno show, devices to fill prime time on the cheap — and they'll fill some of the vacuum left by Leno.
The catch is that each adjustment to the new, cheap world risks losing people who liked the old, expensive one. Broadcast TV once thrived by pitching a big tent. But now the various poles of that tent — Jay fans, Conan fans, etc. — don't particularly want to share the same campsite, and they no longer have to.
In this respect, NBC has a lot in common with print media. I recently talked with a neighbor annoyed about the number of typos she said she's been seeing in the New York Times. The editors are probably stretched thin, I said; the Times just went through a big round of layoffs. That's terrible, she agreed. Anyway, she said, she was going to drop her weekday subscription. Why should she pay all that money and get typos?
Of course, losing subscribers is not exactly going to help beef up the Times's copydesk. But as a consumer, she had a point: Why pay for a product that disappoints her? So what if the newspaper business model is challenging. That's not her problem. Just fix it!
That's the same bind that NBC, and media companies at large, are in. People aren't going to enjoy watching a lame prime-time talk show for the satisfaction of knowing they're helping the parent company save on payroll. People who expect something else — lavish scripted dramas or typo-free news from costly foreign bureaus — will get alienated and leave, only deepening the revenue spiral that led to the cuts in the first place.
Having been burned by the Leno experiment, NBC now says it's going "back to basics." If only it could. I hope the end of Leno at 10 will open room for great new shows on NBC, but the basics of TV aren't going to revert back to the flush 20th century days. Instead, NBC will focus not on inventing TV's next business plan but on trying to be one of the networks left standing when the old plan finally craps out. Simple tooth-and-claw survival: it's the oldest business model of all.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1953355,00.html
flashbacck
Golden Member
- Aug 3, 2001
- 1,921
- 0
- 76
NBC made that deal with Conan because Leno had already said he wanted to quit in 2009. Later on, Leno changed his mind, but NBC couldn't back out of the deal with Conan, so they gave him this 10pm slot.
Epic Fail
Diamond Member
- May 10, 2005
- 6,252
- 2
- 0
Leno wasn't ready call it quit, the succession plan came about because NBC was afraid Conan would jump to another network.
QueBert
Lifer
- Jan 6, 2002
- 22,976
- 1,178
- 126
Uh, he had announced he was going to retire in 09 years ago. But he had a change of mind. But by the time he had decided he didn't want to hang it up, NBC has promised Conan the 11:35 spot. Leno talked about his retirement for ages, it wasn't until very close to the end that he wanted to stay. At that point NBC's hands were tied, if they had gave 11:35 back to Leno Conan might have left, as it turns out that would have been the better thing to do. Now they're going to lose both Leno & Conan. I can't wait until I can watch The Tonight Show with host Carson Daily.
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