On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:35 PM, Greg Diener <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm wondering with Ebersol and Zucker out of power at the Peacock and > Ludwin gone from his position is there anyone left at NBC for Big Jaw > to kiss ass to anymore?
I don't think Ebersol ever had any direct authority over Leno and the only role he played was when he bashed Conan during that crisis. Ludwin had a role in pushing Leno to ten o'clock and the reports are Leno stopped talking to Ludwin after he returned to late night. So in those two cases Jay was not kissing ass. Since Leno was established as #1 when Zucker took over at NBC it's likely Jay had enough leverage not to have to kiss Zucker's ass either. As much as TV columnists like to speculate about what's happening/what's going to happen in late night, we don't get enough relevant information in order to see what TV execs see. What we especially don't see is the revenues the talk shows bring in and how it compares year-to-year. The one metric we have is ratings but the horse race aspect which gets publicized is only one facet. What we seem to know about Leno and Letterman is that they are both institutions, meaning that the network will suffer some damage if they force the host out. Neither wants to do anything new or especially expensive any more so each network knows what the budget for each show will be and they will live with it. What we know from ratings is each show skews old and the numbers are slipping year-to-year. There is no evidence that a new host will reverse the slide, which might be the long term lesson of Conan's Tonight Show tenure. As this relates to Leno, all he wants to do is his late night show and all NBC wants is for him to continue to do the same show and draw the same audience. So he does not have to kiss network ass because NBC isn't going to fire him or make him do anything new or different. -- 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
