On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > Here's my thinking: NBC signed Leno to a two year contract. After two years: > > Conan has been hosting the Tonight Show for two years and he's hit his > stride, or at least he has a core audience locked up and a Fox or ABC > Leno show would not be a mortal threat. > > The economy will either be in a rebound or stuck in a funk. If it's > rebounding, advertising money will come back and in the spring of 2011 > NBC will, through Universal, start a pilot process to find five > scripted series to run at 10 PM. Leno has to play out the season and > hope somebody wants him for 11:30, which isn't guaranteed. > > If the economy is stuck, NBC has banked the money they haven't spent > on scripted series and they either re-sign Leno or they replace him > with something equally cheap. The competing networks might well be in > cutback mode also and NBC would be forward-thinking rather than simply > cheap. > > If GE sells NBC, there will be new execs in charge, and their thinking > would be different than the current crew, which makes my supposition > obsolete. In any case, NBC may see the Leno Show as a situational > necessity rather than a problem no matter what its weaknesses.
This sounds about right - except for the possibility that Leno's poor lead-in to late night prevents Conan from really establishing even a strong niche, making him vulnerable to any return from Leno to 11:35 on another network. Also, I still have a suspicion (based on nothing of substance) that one or the other party has some kind of opt-out clause prior to the end of 2 years. My main basis for this suspicion is the comments from several affiliates to the effect that they will wait until (end of November sweeps, after Christmas, or sometime in January, depending on the report) to make any final judgments about the JLS. I suppose that could just mean that some affiliates will consider either not clearing the JLS (I am not sure what the rules are on that) or not affiliating with NBC the next time they have a choice; but it also could be that they know there is some way for them to pressure NBC to opt out of its agreement with Leno (or perhaps, just eating the contract and not airing the show). But, even if you are right that for NBC this is a situational necessity, they still have to be defining it as a problem that the ratings are oscillating so closely to the break-even point. I think NBC was betting that by Thanksgiving they would be putting out a Press Release saying that the JLS's ratings of 1.7, even though lower than last year's NBC 10:00 programs, were still significantly above their in-house projections, and that they were laughing at Leno's comedy bits all the way to the bank. That is a press release they can not put out, and if they did something like it now, it would have to be "we are pleased that most weeks we are making a profit from the JLS and are confident we will have even more profitable weeks in the future". -- 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. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
