Thanks for continuing to send along the numbers. The uptick from 30 Rock, which had this odd passive-aggressive transition with Leno that night, is notable, but not that big. It might disappear a few weeks into the 30 Rock season.
As I'm not the biggest fan of most of the 10 pm fare on other networks, I still occasionally check in with Jay. I think with the Discovery shows starting new seasons that may decrease. My observations: My irregular sampling of the comedy would support the TV By The Numbers assertion that they are a bigger part of the show than when he started. The comedy bits continue to stink, and the show's gone on long enough that some of the comedians are repeating their appearances. In some instances, it's really sad, because you see people who can do much better (namely Brian Unger and D.L. Hughley) just bombing. The JMZ takeoff on TMZ struggles to reach parody. The best segment I've seen lately was Arsenio Hall doing person-on-the-street stuff in Compton. Unlike the other segments that have a similar aspect of interacting with the public, both Hall and the people he talked with seemed pretty comfortable with the bit. Every other example I've seen is a whole lot of awkward. Everyone but Hall needs to take lessons from Conan and Andy. I don't know if it makes that much of a difference with the audience, but I would be interested to know if there's more or less response to the bits that don't use Jay, compared to those bits that do use Jay. The latter group is mostly the kind of stuff (Headlines, Jaywalking) that he carried over from his Tonight tenure. FWIW, Jay's acting in the comedy bits remind me of his stellar work with Pat Morita </sarcasm>. Ten @ Ten remains a big pile of suck. He's a bit better with the satellite lag, but not much. The format is also too rigid. There's no real opportunity to follow up should the guest have anything of value to say. For instance, the Health and Human Services Secretary was on this segment last week, and Jay barely addressed flu, much less H1N1. I like PGage's idea about working in guests from that night's NBC lineup (maybe from the next night's lineup could work too). But there's another really underused aspect of Jay that's been disappointing - his gearhead nature. Only a couple of Jay's cars have shown up on the show, which is a lot less than I expected. The Green Car Challenge is okay, but we barely know anything about the car, and there has been only one segment where two people raced. I think that's a more compelling option than one person trying to beat the clock. I have to think there's a good bit in looking at old car ads, owners manuals, etc. for comedy. Finally, if the three presenters can be funny about cars in Britain, why doesn't Jay even try? Asking everyone who races if they've had sex in a car is just boring. ________________________________ From: PGage <[email protected]> A commentator on TV By The Numbers reported that over the last two weeks Leno has devoted less time to celebrity interviews and more time to what the commentator called third rate farmed out comedians, (and what I heard Leno refer to over the summer as his Daily Show like correspondents). I have to admit to not watching Leno since the show after the Dave-story broke - I wonder if anyone can confirm this report? If it is true, NBC should be learning something from this too, since Leno's ratings have dropped over the last two weeks as well. >From the shows I watched during the first 3 weeks it was clear to me that the only parts of the show that were even remotely watchable were the interviews with interesting celebrities. I should think this would be at least mildly disappointing (and perhaps more devastating than that) to NBC. The way both Leno and the NBC people have talked up this show over the summer, they see it as a comedy show, not a talk show, and they see themselves as delivering hilarious comedy bites. I am sure that Leno thought that eventually viewers would tune in to see these comedy pieces on their own, and that the celebrity interviews would become secondary - and perhaps even fade away on some or most nights. I think that is unlikely to happen. Leno needs high powered celebrities to justify the program, and that can not be good news to NBC, which must have been thinking that after a few weeks of feeding big names to Leno to launch the show, it could go back to feeding them to Conan and help him in his battle with Dave. This is what I would consider for Leno - start scheduling stars from the most popular of the 8:00 and 9:00 shows on at 10:00 the same night and have them talk a little about that particular episode, maybe bringing outtakes or unseen episodes, so it would function like those DVD "extras". If it is Dateline or a news program, bring on one of the correspondents and talk about one of the key stories. This avoids burning off too many A list celebs that Conan needs, and would help carry over viewers from that earlier show. At this point, Leno is not there to pimp the other NBC programs, like he did on the Tonight Show, he needs to parasite off of whatever viewers those other shows have himself. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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