NBC’s failed Jay Leno experiment appears to be over.
In a widely rumored but as-yet-unconfirmed reversal, Leno’s show is expected to be removed from the last hour of primetime and condensed to a half-hour that will air locally at 10:35 p.m.
The ratings were dismal for the primetime hour, and the damage to NBC stations’ late news ratings infuriated affiliates nationally.
Except in Denver. KUSA actually experienced improved ratings during the Leno debacle.
“The (negative) Leno effect wasn’t as strong in Denver as in other markets,” according to Ilene Nathanson of advertising agency Inline Media, who buys TV time nationally.
Is Denver humor-impaired? No. Did we find “10 at 10” to be hilarious at 9? No. Chalk it up to the vagaries of time zones (the late-night king airing at 9 p.m.!), and a dominant station in a town with entrenched TV habits.
The change could take effect after NBC’s Olympics telecasts, Feb. 28. Under this scenario, Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” would move to 11:05 p.m., followed by Jimmy Fallon at 12:05 a.m. Meanwhile, rumors persist that O’Brien is poised to jump to another network. Maybe Fox.
“Night-to-night, Denver had more positive rating results” from Leno, Nathanson said. “Still, it wasn’t anything anyone was happy about.”
In November, the Denver market posted the highest “Leno Show” ratings of 24 markets using local people meters. Not that the highest was very high.
KUSA general manager Mark Cornetta declined to discuss the situation while it remains unofficial.
He has said, however, that KUSA has consistently “weathered the storm better than most.”
Where some station managers have railed against the Leno numbers and expressed tremendous relief at the proposed change, Cornetta has characterized the situation as “an interesting experiment that didn’t pan out.”
At stations across the country, late news lead-in ratings for NBC affiliates are half of what they were a year ago — a disaster, because stations depend on late news advertising for as much as a third of their total revenues.
At KUSA, the 10 p.m. news ratings are flat or slightly improved since Leno became the lead-in.
Nationally, competitors have benefited from NBC’s vulnerability. CBS affiliates were boosted by strong shows like “The Mentalist” and “The Good Wife,” which fed into late newscasts with positive results. In Denver, KCNC-Channel 4 used the strength of CBS and weakness of NBC to post its first total-audience win in the late local news for a week in December.
For September through December, Leno averaged 5.34 million viewers nationally, representing a 29 percent drop from last season when NBC was running dramas like “Law & Order” and “ER” in that hour.
By contrast, Leno actually boosted KUSA in Denver during those months. According to Nielsen figures, Leno averaged 113,000 viewers at 9 p.m. on Channel 9 for the same period, among adults 18 and older, up slightly from 98,000 viewers at 9 p.m. for dramas in 2008.
The KUSA weeknight late news also showed an uptick since Leno began, averaging 181,000 adult viewers for September through December compared with 167,000 for 2008.
From a critical standpoint, “The Jay Leno Show” was a misfire, a diluted version of “The Tonight Show” that never satisfied. It was a cynical experiment by NBC to cut production costs.
Going forward, KUSA’s Cornetta conceded that using the Olympics to launch new programming makes good business sense.
For NBC, the change is an embarrassing retreat from what had been promised as a long-term strategy. Sadly, it’s just the latest embarrassment for the once proud Peacock.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
Conan not a happy camper
A day after NBC executives said they were contemplating a plan to move Jay Leno back to 11:35 p.m., elbowing Conan O’Brien back a half-hour to 12:05 a.m., representatives of O’Brien are privately saying that he has not accepted NBC’s plan and that he is likely not to agree to it in the near future.
“The Jay Leno Show” began airing weeknights on KUSA-Channel 9 in September, a creative disappointment from the start. On Friday the Fox network began sending signals that it might have a home for O’Brien, should he decide he would rather opt out of his lucrative contract at NBC for a shot at a show that does not relegate him behind Leno.
“While Conan would be a great fit for Fox, he’s still under contract with NBC, so we’ll just see how all of this plays out,” said a Fox employee on condition of anonymity.” The New York Times
