On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:51 PM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > > If there is one fact that sealed the doom of > > that show, it was probably that - he never did "catch them in the turns" > - > > never did make up significant ground against the CBS reruns like he > > repeatedly claimed he would. I wish Oprah (who claimed to know so much > about > > how television works) would have asked him about that. > > To be fair, Leno made no excuses for his prime time performance in > that interview. He'd have just said "We didn't do as well as we > hoped." and moved on. >
Right. I didn't mean that I wished Oprah had nailed him on this, like a cross-examining prosecutor going after a lying wittness. I meant that I wish she had asked him to talk more about why he thinks he was not able to do better against reruns, when he had been so confident that he would, and when the success of the entire Leno Experiment depended so critically on it. My guess is he would have said (if he was in the mood to reflect) that he and NBC underestimated the role of habit and comfort in primetime viewing. There are a large fraction of American television viewers who would rather watch reruns of familiar programs than sample a new program that is not part of their routine. I don't think it was so much that millions of people said "I would rather watch a rerun than Leno - he sucks", but simply "I watch CSI Miami on Monday nights at 10:00, whether it is a rerun or not". And if Leno had said this, I think he would have been correct. There is one other factor which he probably would not have added, but which is critical: Despite what the NBC PR line was all fall and winter, they really needed Leno's numbers against first run programs to be higher; given that they were just barely above the minimum, it put more of a premium on Leno improving dramatically against reruns - something he was never able to do. He could have weathered that storm if his baseline performance was closer to what they thought it would be. -- 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
