With nationwide affiliate outcries, NBC is calling it quits on its experimental late night broadcast.
The tentative plan in the works is to restore Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 each weeknight for a half-hour, pushing a full hour of Conan O’Brien to start at 12:05 a.m.
The current late-night landscape began taking shape back in 2004 on the 50th anniversary of the The Late Show, when NBC announced Conan O’Brien would be taking over the program in 2009.
The early announcement came with a hope the arrangement would avoid losing talent to a rival network, like NBC did with David Letterman back in 1992.
However, over five months before O’Brien was set to succeed The Tonight Show’s throne, NBC made an industry-shaking announcement. Jay Leno would still have a show — but it would be five times a week at 10 p.m.
The plan was to capture Leno’s audience at that earlier time, while capitalizing on the low production costs of a talk show as compared to the traditionally slated 10 p.m. dramas.
While the show debuted to fair ratings back on September 14, 2009, it now averages about five million viewers a night. Even though these ratings remain above the numbers promised to advertisers, NBC station managers blame the show for the ratings falloff in their news casts.
In order to appease affiliates nation wide, the network is working on a retooling, set to hit NBC late night after the Olympics.
NBC executives held extensive discussions with both Mr. Leno and Mr. O’Brien on Thursday about the future of the network’s late-night lineup. However, there is currently no final announcement of the plan scheduled due to unresolved contractual details.
No NBC executive would speak on the record about the late-night plan, but in response to reports on several websites NBC issued several statements yesterday. “Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates.”
Leno addressed NBC’s predicament at that night’s taping. “As you may have heard, there is a rumor floating around that we were canceled,” he told his audience. “I heard it coming in this morning on the radio. So far no one has said anything to me. But if we did get canceled, it will give us time to do some traveling. I understand that Fox is beautiful this time of year.”
