Wow, I’ve never heard that. After the bad blood Letterman felt from having been given the axe, I thought he was pretty quick to look for another deal.
Do you have a cite for that?
The story of Letterman being offered the job after Leno was hired was in the book “The Late Shift” which later ended up as a TV movie on HBO. What is even stranger is that NBC thought they kept this secret from Leno but he knew all about it. The book is a very good read.
http://www.amazon.com/Late-Shift-Letterman-Network-Battle/dp/0786889071
It wasn’t so much that they couldn’t strike a deal, but that Letterman turned NBC down after talking with Johnny Carson. Carson recommended he not take the show. At that point it was Jay Leno’s Tonight show Letterman would be taking over, not Carson’s Tonight show.
Question: If this is on 5 days at 10pm, are the original * Law & Order* & *SVU *moving to 9pm?
I read the book a while back and I don’t recall the part about Letterman talking to Carson, it may have been in there.
What I do recall is that NBC would not put the offer to Letterman on paper until Letterman agreed. I guess they did not want a paper trail if it turned out Letterman said no , which of course he did in the end. With no offer on paper they could deny they ever talked to Letterman.
I was really disappointed how much it was just Leno’s Tonight Show. This was really an opportunity (I guess it still is) to change the form. I’ve come to hate how ritualized the monologue is. Tell a joke. Everyone laughs (and claps! *Every *joke!). Wait for it to die down. Change topics and tell another (usually obvious) joke.
I seem to be in the minority here as a big Leno fan. I always loved the Tonight Show with Jay. Well, the monologue and Headlines, anyway.
Still, I agree that last night’s premier of the Jay Leno Show was a big disappointment. That was not Jay at his best. The jokes were mediocre and the guests were remarkably unfunny. I’ll give him a week or two to get back into his groove,
Yes, SVU is moving to Wednesdays at 9 PM while L&O Original Recipe will be moving to Fridays at 8 PM.
I plan to never watch this show - protesting the loss of 5 hours of scripted programming. There’s not that much great TV on anyway, and it will only be tougher with five fewer slots per week (especially in the 10:00 “more adult” time slot). I think NBC is cheap and insane.
When you add in cable networks 5 hours is a very small percent of the total time in prime time.
I admit I am biased though because I think about 95% of scripted shows are not very good. The only scripted shows I watch are on cable since I really like the freedom they have without censors and I like no commercial interruptions. And I watch L&O now and then.
Not to mention the fact that since networks stopped showing reruns of most shows on a regular basis, they’ve filled that time with new shows. So essentially, twice as many shows are coming out of the networks as before.
Did you protest when reality shows took over 20 hours of scripted programming?
I saw Leno and it was his same show. Since I never stay up until 11, I’ll still be watching it online the next day, same as I did in the fall. Listening to the monologue and the comedy like Headlines and skipping the guests and bands I don’t recognize.
Eh. I kinda see this show as a “Daily Show” type format, but stretched to an hour. At least that was my hope. but it really was more of the same.
But I read in Broadcasting and Cable it’s around 10% the cost of the hour long shows on CBS and ABC. So that is dirt cheap. You don’t have to pull in the ratings to offset that cost, and you could easily wind up ahead.
As for the pull, that is a myth. Across the board very few CBS stations that run news at 10pm (11pm eastern) hold on to their CBS numbers. In the top 20 markets the CBS local news do not hold on to their numbers. The best example is CBS in Chicago where it comes off top rated CBS shows and winds up in 6th or 7th place behind, the local NBC, ABC, FOX, two Spanish channels and WGN’s reruns of “Family Guy.”
That used to be true but it really isn’t anymore. Only a handful of shows like Oprah seem to be able to pull their numbers along anymore.
I gave it a watch (7PM off of my DVR). Yep, just the tonight show at a different time slot, so basically the same thing for me. I typically only record a show if there’s a guest I want to see (the last time I watched Conan was when Bill Maher was on), so I doubt I’ll be seeing this much.
Even though I’m not into Leno, I actually think it’s a GOOD thing that NBC is doing this. It means that NBC has to think twice about what they air in the other 2 hours, so there will be less crap produced. Lets take a look at the fall schedule (since I DVR 100% of what I watch, I’m not even sure when most shows are even on anymore):
Monday: jesus, ABC…2 hours of Dancing With the Stars? Followed by a show that shouldn’t have been renewed. CBS has their 2 hour comedy block (2.5 Men sucks and the new Jenna Elfman show will be cancelled and replaced with something good soon) and CSI: Caruso. FOX has House MD & Lie To Me - two shows where if you’ve seen one ep, you’ve seen them all. Heroes may be considered overrated, but it’s better and more original than than network shows. I can’t speak for Trauma, but it sounds like a mix of ER & Third Watch, two shows I never got into but I know were insanely popular. Advantage = NBC
Tuesday: WTF, FOX, now YOU have a 2 hour dance show? And CBS has 2 hours of NCIS (I don’t watch it so I can’t really comment on its quality), followed by a 1 premise show that will get cancelled once the writers run out of ideas in November. NBC itself has a 2 hour block of the Biggest Loser, which I don’t watch, but as far as reality shows go, at least this one is trying to do some GOOD for the world. Oh, and as if there wasn’t enough dance crap on this week, ABC needs another HOUR to analyse their 2 hours the previous night. Advantage: NBC
Wednesday: CBS has a crappy comedy followed by another crappy comedy, followed by a show that used to be interesting but I pretty much stopped watching after Mandy left it (although the point made in Mandy’s thread about a homicide unit being run by Fat Tony might make me have to check it out again), and then CSI: Toronto. FOX has yet ANOTHER dance analysis show, followed by a ripoff of High School Musical. ABC has a 2 hour comedy block of new shows, which might actually have some potential (although who is actually gonna give a show called Cougar Town a chance?), followed by Eastwick…which just sounds like it should be on the CW. NBC has a Grey’s Anatomy ripoff followed by The Alex Cabot show. Advantage: ABC (assuming their comedy block actually works, otherwise advantage nobody)
Thursday: Flash Forward could be interesting, and unfortunately Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice is still going to be watched by every woman on earth, so ABC is gonna have a good night here. Except that CBS has CSI: Original Flavor and The Mentalist, which ALSO get huge ratings despite being pretty generic & unrealistic cop shows…oh and Survivor, which seems to have a pretty big following still. FOX has Bones & Fringe…Fringe is great (cmon, who doesn’t love a fictionalized Tim Leary) but Bones is one show I never understood the point of. NBC has their own 2 hour comedy block, which unfortunately includes Parks & Rec but the rest is golden. Advantage: everyone, since for some reason all of the networks always try to make Thursday their ratings night.
Friday: Once you get pushed to Friday, it means the networks don’t give a fuck anymore and are just fulfilling their end of the contract. The good news is that Ugly Betty is close to death, but the bad news is that Southland (which was the best of the renewed shows from last season) is too. I still need to get around to watching Dollhouse before I judge it, but the only other thing even worth watching that night is Numbers (which I often wonder how it has any fans who aren’t dopers). I have a feeling this night is going to have the best Leno ratings by far.
Anyway, you see how much crap and filler the other networks have? 6 hours (yes, SIX) a week of dance shows! 3 CSI’s, 2 NCIS’s and 2 L&Os…plus Lie to Me & The Mentalist (and probably Criminal Minds and The Forgotten) which are pretty much the same thing too, so 11 HOURS OF WEEK of formulaic cop/lawyer shows, only 2 of which belong to NBC. And, 6 hours of medical shows (7 with Sunday’s Three Rivers)! NBC has by far the best streak of non-crap this season, if you take Jay Leno (and Parks & Rec) out of the equation. Would you really rather have more Kath & Kim or American Gladiators or Knight Rider/Bionic Woman remakes stinking up prime time? Having 5 less slots to fill really isn’t such a bad thing…
Also, did Jay get mentoring from Barbara Walters this summer? Everyone may think Kayne West was a dick at the VMA’s, but inviting him to speak on his show and then asking him questions about his dead mother just to get him to cry was an even bigger dick move by Jay.
Wow, tonight’s episode is painful. This show reminds me of an *Onion *Review of Matchbox Twenty: This is bigger and blander than anything [they’ve] ever done!
Meanwhile (true story), on the History Channel, there’s a good documentary on the Marianas Trench - about visits to the bottom of it, how many times that’s happened, and when they happened, and for how long.
I watched a little bit of tonight’s show. Can’t say I was disappointed because after reading this thread, I wasn’t expecting much.
The fake ad for the Alzheimer’s drug was particularly lame. How lame was it? Hell, even I saw the punchline coming. The comedian who did the airline bit (and how old hat are airline jokes!) probably offended a few million cancer patients with his “joke” about people wearing masks on planes. The photos accompanying the jokes only made it worse.
I like Jay. He’s definitely one of the good guys, but I think this experiment will fail, and he’ll be blamed. I can’t think of anyone who could entertain people five hours a week.