Jay Leno has a bad night against weak competition
Monday night's "Jay Leno Show" on NBC matched its series low in the 18-49 demographic and hit its second-smallest audience ever, attracting just 4.62 million viewers
This is noteworthy because last night CBS was in reruns at 10 p.m. against Leno and ESPN had a particularly weak (and dull) Monday Night Football game in the Eagles-Redskins matchup. In other words, Leno wasn't exactly going up against top-notch competition. Part of NBC's pitch in making the Leno move was that he would perform well against reruns. Of course, if your big guest is Dr. Phil, a big audience might be hard to come by.
To be fair, it's not as if we are in rerun season yet and audiences are looking for alternatives. Networks don't exactly publicize when a show is in repeats, and in fact even TV listings rarely say anymore whether a show is a rerun or not. December, when most shows are in repeats, will be more revealing regarding the Leno move.
For those wondering when Leno had his smallest audience ever, that was on Oct. 5, when he drew 4.45 million viewers going against the Packers-Vikings game on ESPN.
-- Joe Flint
Terrible planning. The show finally gets its chance against reruns, and someone schedules Dr. Phil as the guest?
Posted by: Brett | October 28, 2009 at 07:44 AM
I'm soooooooooo glad your back.
Posted by: diane scheitlin | October 28, 2009 at 08:42 AM
Leno goes after easy targets. Exploitung idiots (Jaywalking).
He would be better served going after the real problems in this country but I don't think he is capable of anything more than what he does.
Posted by: Tom Walker | October 28, 2009 at 09:52 AM
I've been a huge fan of Jay Leno for ages and am perplexed about the negative reactions to his 10 pm show. That doesn't mean I like everything - in fact, I was rather upset about his joke (?!) last night comparing the looks of the wife of the disgraced ESPN guy and the looks of his 22-year-old girlfriend. Times have changed from the years we grew up (I'm about Jay's age) and I thought it was creepy to compare the two women and ask why would the guy have an affair on his beautiful wife for a young woman who is not. I'm sure the situation is a lot more complicated. Who is doing the writing for this show?
I agree that Dr. Phil was an unfortunate guest on an important night.
Posted by: Connie | October 28, 2009 at 01:39 PM