In 1992, as NBC was deciding whether to hand The Tonight Show" off to Jay Leno or David Letterman, Leno told The New York Times, "I am disappointed. I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell the car to his brother-in-law."
Followers of the NBC Late Night Kerfuffle of 2010 may recognize the sentiment.
Leno won that fight with Letterman, and from 1992 to 2009 he hosted "The Tonight Show," NBC's venerated late-night institution. But when it came time to step down, Leno wasn't keen on retirement. In a bold move to keep Middle America's favorite funnyman from other networks, NBC offered him a daily show at 10 p.m. - "The Jay Leno Show."
The 10 p.m. decision rocked the television industry. It reduced NBC's hours of weekly primetime by five and put Leno in direct competition with scripted shows on other networks. It was an unprecedented move for a network that once filled the 10 p.m. slot with shows like "E.R." (1994-2009) and "Law ' Order."
It also saved the struggling network boatloads of money; one episode of an hour-long primetime drama costs $2 million, which pays for a week's worth of "Leno." Because NBC was saving money, it didn't have to earn high ratings to turn a profit.
However, local NBC affiliates rely on the network's lead-in ratings for their local 11 p.m. news broadcasts. Confidence in "Leno" was so low that a handful of affiliates, including Boston's WHDH, threatened not to air the show.As decided in a contract negotiation in 2004, Conan O'Brien, who had followed Leno with "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" for 11 years, was awarded "The Tonight Show." Under Leno's helm, "Tonight" consistently beat out Letterman's "Late Show" in the ratings, but the switch from Leno's friendly humor to O'Brien's offbeat tone caused ratings to falter. Around the same time, Letterman used his show to address an extortion controversy, which drew more eyes than usual.
In his seven months fronting "Tonight," O'Brien was never able to regain the ratings lost in the host transition. Meanwhile, "Leno" performed lower than expected and was beaten in ratings by "CSI" reruns and FX's "Sons of Anarchy." NBC, already something of a laughing stock since it fell from its longtime first place position to fourth in recent years, earned no respect this past fall.
And so, in early January the announcement came that Leno would be moving out of primetime. "Dateline" and "Law ' Order: SVU" reruns will fill the 10 p.m. time slot for now, and the network has ordered 18 new pilots for the fall season. For late night, NBC proposed a schedule that put Leno back at 11:35 p.m. with a half-hour version of "The Jay Leno Show," followed by O'Brien's "Tonight" at 12:05 a.m. and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" at 1:05 a.m.
On Jan. 12, O'Brien released a public missive announcing his feelings on the proposal. "I sincerely believe that delaying 'The Tonight Show' into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting," he wrote. "'The Tonight Show' at 12:05 simply isn't 'The Tonight Show.'"
O'Brien's letter, more so even than NBC's initial announcement, inspired a flurry of comments, from TV critics and pop culture bloggers to the other late night hosts. Outspoken entertainers joined "Team Conan" in an overwhelming majority, echoing O'Brien's sentiments that NBC did not do enough to nurture his show or give it time to develop, evolve and gain an audience.
Fundamentally, though, late night television is all about viewers' habits. NBC has little left to lose; they know that Leno was once number one at 11:35 p.m., so they're eager to put him back. In the short term, Leno is a safe choice. He famously attracts an older, more "Midwestern" audience made up of people who tend to be more faithful viewers.
Though O'Brien's audience is younger, hipper and more coastal, it's also not getting any bigger. More and more, those hip kids are watching late night highlights on YouTube.com or Hulu.com, rather than on their televisions.
On the other hand, Leno's audience is just getting older, and so is Leno. And as Time's TV critic James Poniewozik pointed out, "Some Jay fans - ¦ gravitated over to Dave last summer, and Jay cannot count on them back."
NBC's late night situation will continue to be in flux, even as it recovers from the massive upheaval of its primetime schedule. O'Brien's plans are as yet unknown, though there is some unverified speculation that he will attempt to resurrect his show as early as September on Fox, opposite Leno's "Tonight."
Look for Leno to return to "The Tonight Show" in late February, following the Winter Olympics.
