How many colossal, crucial mistakes can one network make before its executives (in NBC's case, chiefly Jeff Zucker) pay the price for their own hubris and mismanagement? My guess: With Comcast coming in to merge with NBC-Universal, and with this latest rumored Jay Leno move, not many more...
The rumor floating around, and circulated by such respected and connected reporters as Bill Carter of The New York Times, is that when Jay Leno returns after NBC's pre-emptive coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics, it won't be in his hour-long, five-nights-a-week prime-time slot. It'll be in a 30-minute weeknight show at 11:30 p.m. ET, shoving back Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show to midnight, Jimmy Fallon to 1 a.m., and Carson Daly to -- well, almost to the lead-in spot for the Today show.
The whole thing is a mess, and there are several significant ramifications -- some theoretical, others undeniable. But whatever happens, should this latest round of late-night domino-shuffling come to pass, NBC has no one to blame but itself. And the blame, long overdue, soon should come home to roost.
The first inconceivably dumb move by NBC was to announce, years in advance, that Jay Leno would step down from the Tonight Show and be succeeded by Conan O'Brien. Leno had a comfortable lead in the late-night wars, and no real desire to quit -- Johnny Carson, Leno's immediate Tonight Show predecessor, had lasted 30 years on the job.
NBC was after an orderly transition, something smoother than when Leno, rather than David Letterman, ended up inheriting Carson's throne. And had NBC stuck to its original intention, and just let O'Brien take over, the only risk -- a substantial one, even then -- would be whether O'Brien's humor would draw and hold enough viewers in the earlier, somewhat tamer 11:35 hour.
But NBC feared Leno's defection to another network, so they offered him a prime-time hour show, five nights a week. With that one short-sighted, high-risk move, NBC not only shot itself in the foot, but in the groin, and maybe even the head.
It's not hindsight to say that this was a horrible idea. Read what almost any TV critic wrote before The Jay Leno Show premiered, and you'll hear the same warnings: This move is stealing precious hours of prime time that should be devoted to 10 p.m. ET scripted dramas. It's weakening the momentum, and arguably the guest-roster availability, for The Tonight Show. And if it doesn't do well, the NBC affiliates, stuck with a weaker lead-in to their key late newscasts, will revolt.
All of which happened. NBC cancelled some quality dramas (Life), let others slip to competitors (Medium), and shared its best drama with a satellite network (DirecTV's first-look deal with Friday Night Lights). Meanwhile, by the end of the first week of The Jay Leno Show, it was obvious this was a dud of a show -- a dodo that wouldn't fly. The ratings kept slipping, and so did O'Brien's ratings in late night.
Before too long, CBS's Late Show with David Letterman had claimed a substantial lead over The Tonight Show, the reversal of many years of NBC supremacy. O'Brien claimed a younger demographic, but far fewer viewers. And as Leno kept plummeting, and after such a brutal November ratings sweep period, his days were numbered. The Olympics would save February for NBC, but there's no way Leno would remain in prime time through May, the next crucial ratings measurement period for local affiliates.
But rather than admit to its mistakes and let Leno go where he will, NBC again is more concerned about letting him go to a competitor than asking what costs will be associated with keeping him. Yes, a half-hour Leno show at 11:35 probably will outdraw O'Brien -- but maybe not by much, because the viewers who have defected to Letterman, by now, probably are comfortable enough to stay put.
But the real sin in this latest move is that NBC, by treating O'Brien's program as an also-ran, has urinated all over the grand six-decade history of the Tonight Show.
Steve Allen created it from nothing in the Fifties, building a freewheeling atmosphere of comedy, music and conversation. Jack Paar brought it into the Sixties with his own intelligence and wit. Johnny Carson perfected it, and ruled for 30 years. Then Jay Leno took it over, weakening the content but eventually maintaining the show's late-night dominance. And then, hampered by a Leno lead-in, came Conan, whose Tonight Show is that program, at this point, almost in name only.
But still, it's the Tonight Show at 11:30, where it's been since the Eisenhower administration. Until this year, if NBC really is foolish and ignorant enough to move it to midnight, shattering a TV tradition older than any of the executives making this bone-headed decision.
NBC is strangling The Tonight Show, and burying its own history and heritage. What could be worse?
I'll tell you, because this may be the next major misstep. NBC, rather than fill its 10 p.m. hour with quality programming, might continue its cost-cutting, guano-embracing methods by filling that hour with tacky reality series, ones it hopes will improve on the Leno numbers without costing much more.
And if NBC goes that route -- if Comcast buys into Zucker's misguided thinking about caring more about margins than programming -- it doesn't even deserve to be thought of as a network any more.
And Leno, if he likes, can enjoy his comfy new deck chair... on the NBC Titanic.