The end of my Leno torture

I could never be a TV critic. There's a lot of great stuff on TV, but it's wildly outnumbered by total crap.

I made it through about an hour and a half of that crap this week, then I had to call my Leno experiment to an end. (Humanitarian reasons--for myself.) I really  wanted to see if Jay could find a way to be funny--or bring in funny people in the taped segments. I did actually laugh a few times--mostly when Jerry Seinfeld was speaking--but the wince-to-laugh ratio was extraordinary.

It was also surprisingly unoriginal. I thought the idea was to "re-invent" . . . something. It was the same lame Jay, doing the same dull stuff, and pre-taped "comedy" skit segments were even worse than Jay's jokes.

I'm in the camp that NBC is going to dig itself into a much deeper hole with this idiotic idea. It will be awhile before we know. The curiosity factor drew nearly 18 million viewers the first night. About 1/3 of them deserted Tuesday. That number will continue downward, especially when the other networks start airing new shows in a few days. How far, is the big question. Way lower than NBC can or will bear, I'll wager.

Time Magazine had a really intelligent analysis of the whole situation in its cover story by James Poniewozik last week, despite the idiotic headline: "Jay Leno is the future of TV. Seriously." Poniewozik is way smarter than that, and said nothing of the sort. His best line:

"NBC is trying to adapt to a media future in which audiences choose from a thousand flavors by signing up with America's most successful purveyor of vanilla."

Here's the bottom line: a whole week of the show is cheaper for NBC to produce than one hour of the dramas normally in that place. So the show can turn a profit with much less income.
That's what they say, but everyone who knows the TV business understands it's a lot more complicated than that. Individual shows do not operate in a vacuum, especially when they are on five days a week. Poniewozik again:

"Business models aside, somebody still actually has to watch Leno. NBC has set the bar low enough for a sleeping man to clear. If Leno can just get the ratings he did in late night, some 5 million viewers (paltry by 10 p.m. standards), his show will be more profitable than what it replaced in that time slot, reps say. But having a lower-rated lead-in for the 11 p.m. newscasts would infuriate affiliates. . . . And a weaker lead-in would be a further blow to O'Brien, whose Tonight Show has struggled . . . "

And he's just scratching the surface. When a network's primetime lineup falters--particularly the close-out show--it pulls down ratings for Today, the soaps, the nightly news, and the next night's shows. (The further away, the less the impact.)

Poniewozik also points out something I hadn't thought of: "If a failed Leno Show could undermine Tonight, so could a successful one." How many viewers are going to want a second hour of gabfest a night? (Conan and Letterman are both followed by second hours of talk, but the ratings fall drastically for the second shows.)

The biggest mess will come in a few weeks or months, when NBC likely pulls the plug, and nearly 1/3 of its primetime schedule is empty. ABC had a hell of a time rebuilding after its Millionaire suddenly tanked, but at least it got a year of boffo ratings out of it first.

NBC says this is the future for all the networks. I doubt it. They are in a bind, and they do have to try new things--maybe even a show with this kind of format. But they will have to make it a funny one. That's the thing about television and every other art form: You can write new rules any time you want, but if you want the audience to go with you, you better give them something good.

Change is definitely coming to network TV, but this crap is not it.
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Thurs update:

Ratings were up a bit Wed (to 13.1 million), due to a huge lead-in from the finale of America's Got Talent. That was a one-time thing.

Also, Jon and Stephen are back! Those guys have talent. And Stephen was totally on fire.

I also thing Craig Ferguson does a really funny chat show. Why didn't they hire him?