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NBC Affiliates Begin to Question Leno Strategy

Dec 21, 2009  •  Post A Comment

NBC affiliates are beginning to question Jay Leno’s 10 p.m. show, B&C reports.

Metered market results from the November sweeps have some stations worried about dropping ratings for their late local news. Post-Newsweek Stations President and CEO Alan Frank told B&C: “I think the experiment hasn’t worked,” adding that “The handwriting is on the wall—the only question is what [NBC] is going to do about it.”

NBC said in a statement that the show is “performing exactly as we expected it to on the network.”

–Elizabeth Jensen

8 Comments

  1. Ya think?

  2. Translation is “We don’t care about the affiliates. We’re making money on the hour at the network level with all the goofy product integrations and affiliates can stick it.” We don’t need no stinking ratings gringo..

  3. Return Jay to late night, call the agents for the best writers, directors and actors and tell them NBC is back in the prime time drama business. Why not let the Peacock strut?

  4. Get rid of Leno. He doesn’t even want to be there. He just wants the check. Lame joke repeating clock watcher.

  5. Batdog, I would not necessarily say that Jay is “watching the clock and does not want to be there,” but rather was screwed by the whole deal.
    NBC seems to have caved in to Conan’s people worrying that Jay would get the best guests, more meida coverage, etc. and in doing so, tied his hands and now the show is weak in line ups and heavy in remote bits with c type celebrities.
    If I were Leno, I would tell the network to go and “f” themselves and do the show the way that he did when he changed the “Tonight” show.
    In this day and age, the affiliates ought to get a grip and use some of their own promotional muscle and stop whining about the network that does not seem to care. When things get bad, go to work. Are they (affiliates) going to let the network predict and assist in their demise, or go to work and think outside of the promotional box?
    Lead ins provide more viewers (possibly), strong content keeps the eyeballs watching….I’m just sayin…..

  6. In my day, when I was VP of NBC late night and the network prime time schedule was even deeper in the cellar than it is now, there was talk of moving Tonight with Johnny Carson to prime time to get the ratings up and move David Letterman to 11:30. In the nanosecond that it was considered, we agreed that such a move would be a sign of the apocalypse. I guess we were right. My advice, “bite both bullets and buy Conan off, move Jay back to 11:30 and keep Fallon where he is at least till he learns how to do a monologue. These gutsy moves will be great for the network and Jay. The icing for NBC, Dave will be negatively impacted.

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