- Good News! Effective February 1, The Jay Leno Show permanently leaves the 10 EST time slot, first for Olympics coverage. Post-Olympics plans remain unclear, but apparently involve original programming in the slot. (I wouldn't be shocked to see some USA programs--In Plain Sight or Royal Pains, perhaps?--make a jump to the sister network.)
- Bad News! Post-Olympics, Jay will return to the 11:30 EST timeslot. Left unclear for the moment is whether this is a return of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno with Conan getting an unceremonious axe, or a new half-hour Jay Leno Show to serve as a leadin to The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien.
ETA--OK, the NYT now has the plan as Leno--11:35, Conan--12:05, Fallon--1:05. Three questions from that:
1. What are the shows called? Does Leno get back the "Tonight" name? If so, what do the other shows go to?
2. Does Leno even have guests, or does he just run with 30 minutes of "comedy?" He can fill a 30 minute slot with intro, monologue, and one of his staple bits (Jaywalking, Headlines, etc.), and then a nice toss to Conan.
3. This could actually benefit Conan--no longer is he head-to-head with Colbert, and I can see folks flipping from Colbert to Conan, or flipping from Letterman in his second half hour to Conan.
Well, that's all good news for me because I can't stay up late enough to watch any of the 11:30 shows, so I'll just be happy to have the 10:00 hour filled with something I might potentially want to see, instead of something I avoid like the plague. Yay!
ReplyDeleteWow, you can trainwreck that badly (I - um - I have a friend who occasionally watches it in morbid fascination because I have - I mean, he has - a fascination for live-ish TV trainwrecks, and oh man is it a trainwreck 98% of the time) and still get 11:30 back. I guess that's Hollywood, but it sucks.
ReplyDeleteLeno SUCKS. Pure & simple. He's on the Conveyor Belt of TERRIBLE.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a big ol' Why The Face moment.
ReplyDeleteYou probably mean "reluctant," not "reticent." The words are not synonyms, although the mistake is getting dangerously common. Before anybody starts saying "but dictionaries list it as a third alternative definition," they're only doing that as an aid to understanding a common mistake. It's just wrong -- the root comes from the latin "to keep silent." It has nothing to do with volition.
ReplyDeleteThey announced this on a Thursday so that Howard Stern couldn't add to the noise until next week, I'm just sure of it.
ReplyDeleteI grovel before Isaac's superior grammatical knowledge.
ReplyDeleteHow many cable shows have ever migrated to networks? My recollection is that the number, other than one promo run, is none. Cable affiliates are affiliated companies, but they are still formally separate companies, with their own budgets, their own development programs, their own needs for negotiations with both advertisers and cable/satellite affiliates, and their own intensely competitive and territorial executives. My guess is that any dead air gets filled with a combination of reality, rerun, burn-off, and newsmagazine. The issue for NBC isn't just the immediate hours to fill, though -- it's the lack of any 10:00 programming in the development pipeline.
ReplyDeleteFuck Jay. Fuck Jay Leno. Tour. Do Top Gear. Buy an island. Let this go.
ReplyDeleteFrom an interview with Andy Richter at TV Squad:
There are also all of these stories that come up about how he (Jay Leno) said he'd take back the Tonight Show if they asked him to.
That was weird. That was a weird answer. Because nobody actually asked him if it was offered, the question was just sort of like, would you like to be back on? And he was the one who went on to say, "If they asked me, would I take it?" That's certainly not the classy answer to that question. The classy answer is, "Oh, well that's a silly question to ask because somebody already has that job." That's what you say. If you're classy.
That is a big question--what does NBC-Universal have in the can to fill these 5 hours? Reruns of cable series like Damages, Royal Pains, Burn Notice? I suppose we'd have to look at who owns the rights to each of those. Also, how much editing would be needed to make the FCC-friendly?
ReplyDeleteBummed for Conan, but glad it looks like Jimmy Fallon is unaffected. His show has really grown on me...
ReplyDeleteABC had some luck with reruns of "Monk" a few years ago. My idea is that it wouldn't be repeats, but first run--even on cable "White Collar" was beating Leno in viewers, and in the Leno slot? NBC owns USA, so pretty much all the original programming is at least theoretically portable, and the USA stuff is completely network-safe already.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Queer Eye run on NBC one summer also?
ReplyDeleteIf they fill this currently awful slot with more reality dreck while Better Off Ted is left to die at ABC, I am officially quitting network television. Except for Lost and the Thursday night lineup. And House. Oh, and HIMYM. And FNL. And The Big Bang Theory, which has finally grown on me. Oh, and Modern Family.
ReplyDeleteDamnit.
But think of it as if you were head of USA. You've spent millions of dollars developing and producing shows to build a buzz around your network, and you've just gotten to the point where people understand USA as a brand connoting a particular kind of drama. And then somebody who is not your boss, but instead is the boss of a sister company, NBC, says "give me the show." First of all, you probably can't just give NBC the show. The move from USA to NBC may trigger a ton of contractual obligations you have to the creative talent and any outside production companies (e.g. royalty and residual clauses), and possibly an obligation to negotiate with NBC in good faith for the transfer of the show (remember the years of litigation the nets had when they started syndicating their own shows to affiliates). That last point, if applicable, would be a deal-breaker, because the arms-length negotiation might require letting other entities -- Fox, ABC -- bid for the shows as well. But even if you don't have that obligation, and even if you could do what you're theorizing is an intra-company transfer, think about what the transfer would do to USA. Because USA develops relatively few shows and reruns the hell out of them, each show represents a substantial portion of USA's value. If NBC takes USA's top two shows, don't the cable and satellite partners cry bloody murder? If DTV or a cable company (leaving aside the question of Comcast's motives in this hypothetical deal) agreed to pay 23 cents per subscriber to carry USA, wouldn't it justifiably complain about the loss of those two shows, upon which it based its licensing agreement (which may even have clauses about the protection of network properties)? And wouldn't NBC lose that money on the next renegotiation, meaning that NBC would only be robbing Peter to pay Paul? Meanwhile, now you have a set of USA network executives who will do everything they can to sabotage NBC. They bore the cost of developing and grooming those shows, and all they have to show for it is multiple hours of empty schedule (remember, they rerun the shows repeatedly) and a bunch of red ink for which they are accountable to NBC-Uni. And from NBC-Uni's overall perspective, it's looking at a very large short-term problem (the Leno-created hole), but the solution you propose would completely wreck a long-term strategic initiative (the creation of a go-to basic cable network brand) that is extremely and increasingly important to the overall corporation's future.
ReplyDeleteThe thing you have to remember is that NBC and USA aren't part of the same company like HR and Legal would be part of the same company. They are completely separate assets and completely separate fiefdoms. Maybe with a catastrophe like this, top brass could force one sub to give up its assets to another, but I don't think the programming is portable the way you are using that term.
Why Jimmy Fallon is sometimes awesome.
ReplyDeletehttp://popwatch.ew.com/2010/01/07/the-muppets-jimmy-fallon/
Also, "hesitant" would work.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of that, but because it's a temporary hole, couldn't it be used to promote a brand show? I think that was the idea behind the Queer Eye stunt. If I remember correctly, the shows were compressed to half an hour an there was ample pimping of Bravo and the upcoming season along the way. It does seem like a weird fit for the 10 pm hour though, and five days is a LOT of time to fill.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, I am perfectly willing to believe anything if it allows me to hope that Jay Leno will be gone.
I always substitute "hesitant" in my mind when people say "reticent." It's probably the number one "I do not think that word means what you think it means." But I'm sure I misuse plently of words that are other people's pet peeves. Hey, this reminds me, aren't we due for another round of Humiliation?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that the titling of O'Brien's show -- as well as its timing -- will be based upon whatever it takes to avoid the penalty clauses in his contract.
ReplyDeleteWow, Isaac, that's a great post, and I think absolutely right (though I'm not sure about the arms-length-negotiation issue requiring open bidding).
ReplyDeleteI would expect that the issues with the cable operators and DTV (as well as potential ancillary delivery systems that pay for USA's linear services) would be the main problem, as the potential increased costs to talent, writers, directors, production studios may be financially outweighed (ignoring the hit to USA that you spelled out) by the increase in ad revenues on NBC (as I'd guess they're still pulling in higher cost-per-minute rates than USA). There may be a certain small number of hours of original USA programming that they could run on NBC without violation, but I'd be surprised if it would be enough to fill much of the hole for all of the post-Olympics TV season. Further, I'd bet that this will increase the other operators preexisting concerns about Comcast taking over NBC Universal's cable properties, and this sort of move may even raise some flags in the regulatory approval of the Comcast/NBCU deal.
Then again, NBC isn't exactly famous for taking the long view with respect to these things.
This schedule seems ... ok. I was especially bothered by this earlier today since I had just sat in Conan's audience two days ago, and imagining all those people -- especially ones who relocated, and sold and bought houses in this market-- being let go because of Jay Leno's overweening ego.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes Leno so appealing to millions of people to watch him every night? I just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for Jimmy Fallon. His show has been a huge success, both quality-wise and ratings-wise. And he still gets demoted.
ReplyDelete<span style="color: #3a3a3a; line-height: 16px;">Norm MacDonald was on one of the last episodes of Conan at 12:30 and he summed it all up pretty well - his comments re: Jay start approximately 58 seconds in: http://videogum.com/archives/late-night/norm-macdonald-on-conan_052001.html </span>
ReplyDelete<span style="color: #3a3a3a; line-height: 16px;">
What are the odds Jay lingers long enough for Letterman to retire and Conan to jump to CBS? Or perhaps just over to ABC?
This is just kind of a jackass thing for Jay/NBC to do. Dude just isn't funny, but he had Hugh Jackman on the other night (and he wasn't really plugging anything) so he's landing some solid guests. I suppose that's part of it.
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I feel bad for Conan, but he's a survivor.
ReplyDeleteThat Fallon Muppets video is awesome.
Test.
ReplyDeleteMy question is, how does this affect Kimmel?
ReplyDeleteThat was me. I need to reteach all of my computers and such to give y'all my name.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that when ABC kills Better Off Ted, NBC should pick it up.
ReplyDeleteWe came up with the description of "reticent New Englander/Yankee" to describe how my husband often doesn't comment on things. I think that's the proper use of reticent - not naturally inclined to jump out there with comments, whatever the topic.
ReplyDeleteIf I were Conan, I would rename my show "Just Give Me My Forty Million Dollar Buy-out, You Morons!".
ReplyDelete<span style="font-family: Arial; ">reticent -- let's see if the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage has anything on this. Yes it does. About 1/2 of a page, so here are the highlights...</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">Reticent has recently developed a new sense, and usage watchers are not keeping quiet about it. In its older, better established uses, reticent can mean "inclined to be silent."</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">In its disputed sense, reticent is synonymous with reluctant or hesitant.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">This sense may have developed in the following way. With reticent in its "inclined to be silent" sense, a person may be said to be "reticent about" a particular subject. With a slight extension of meaning, a person may be said to be "reticent about discussing" a particular subject, in which case reticent is being used essentially as a synonym of hesitant, but still in a context that realtes specifically to speech. The next step would be the use of reticent with an infinitive, still relating to speech...</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">[skipping past lots of examples]</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">However this new sense devloped , there is no denying that it is now well established in the language, and chances are that it will grow more common in years to come. There is also no denying, however, that many peoplem including several usage commentators, regard it as an error. If you use it, do not be surprised to find yourself being corrected.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; ">There are no entries for hesitant or reluctant.</span>
ReplyDeleteBill -- dictionaries are descriptive, not normative. If enough people make the same mistake, a dictionary's function is to explicate what they really mean, even if it's a mistake. As we've discussed here, people often use "fulsome" to mean "abundant," and whether or not that mistake is in the dictionaries yet, I suspect it soon will be, because that's just the dictionary business. Someday people may defend the use of "meretricious" as a synonym for "meritorious" or the decision to use the phrase "Imma let Defendant finish, but ..." in a legal brief by pointing to the objective notes in M-W, but those notes are really just a call to arms. Those of us who are not in the dictionary business have a moral duty to draw lines of defense against such incorrect usages and to defend the specificity of proper use. Reticent is a perfectly good word, wonderfully evocative of something not captured by any near-synonyms, and I abhor the effort to graft to it the coarser, more conflicted meaning.
ReplyDelete1. I agree with your dictionary description
ReplyDelete2. I thought the entry was mostly in agreement with your earlier correction of reticent. Using reticent when you mean reluctant is an error.
3. The "Dictionary of English Usage" isn't a regular definition. It tracks how language is used and how that usage changes over time. Wonderful reading, it rarely makes an absolute judgement of right or wrong, preferring to note what language experts say about correctness. While it is good to fight against incorrect usages, castles in the sand though they may be, it also good to ensure that one (generic usage, not referring to Isaac) does not claim personal preference as correct grammar. That path leads to prescripivist poppycock and zombie rules.
3.