Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien shift has late-night TV rivals scrambling

Late-night TV is in the greatest state of flux the industry has seen in years. 

NBC, the late-night TV leader, announced last year that Jay Leno — after handing "The Tonight Show" to Conan O'Brien — will take over the 10 p.m. slot on weeknights starting this fall. These moves have evidently prompted ABC to mull promoting Jimmy Kimmel to 11:35 p.m., which would apparently kill off "Nightline." And CBS is reportedly talking with David Letterman about renewing his current contract, set to expire next year. The moves would thus make all three networks compete head-to-head with talk shows that would draw on the same pool of celebrity guests.

Once a programming backwater, late night looks a lot sexier to programmers these days. Talk shows are relatively inexpensive to make (once you get past the salary of the host, which in Letterman's case runs around $30 million annually), and producers can easily churn out 200 episodes a year. Simply put, these shows deliver a high rate of return on a very low investment. Who cares if they don't repeat well? The TV business, like most industries these days, is in sheer survival mode.

From that standpoint, the Letterman move makes perfect sense. Clearly the host is at least a decade past his prime, but even at age 61 he's still the best practitioner of the form, as his tiff with Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign demonstrated. (Favorite recent moment: Guest Meryl Streep, hacking and sniffling from a bad respiratory infection, explained to Letterman that she trooped to his studio anyway because, she said with a smile, "I was afraid to cancel.")

As for ABC, well, It's been obvious that executives there have had an epic love/hate relationship with the "Nightline" franchise for many years. But the news of their latest deliberations was still a bit surprising. As Time's James Poniewozik has pointed out, "Nightline" and Kimmel both do pretty well where they are, so why move one, kill the other and risk upsetting that exquisite balance? In fact, this season "Nightline" has pulled even in the ratings with CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman," averaging 3.9 million total viewers apiece (compared with 5 million for "The Tonight Show"), according to Nielsen Media Research.

But ABC is having trouble letting go of the dream, first hatched earlier in this decade by the now-departed programming chief Lloyd Braun, that Kimmel was destined to be late-night's chairman of the board. The problem is, there is little evidence that is ever going to happen. At 12:05 a.m., Kimmel has averaged 1.8 million total viewers this season — a respectable total, given the hour, but one that Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" often exceeds.

For ABC — and any other also-ran that dreams of late-night conquest, including Fox — the real problem isn't O'Brien or Letterman, but rather Stewart, Stephen Colbert and any number of other as-yet-unheralded late-night contenders that other basic-cable networks will inevitably trot out in the years hence. Leno's audience skews fairly old, and his move into prime time will probably take more than a few of the over-50s with him. That will leave an audience that's disproportionately young and male. This crowd tends to favor the new and the off-the-wall. They made Colbert a hit. Ditto Adult Swim.

So in a time of great uncertainty for late-night TV in general, the one thing that can be confidently predicted is that the genre's next great shift will likely come from someone other than the big players currently playing musical chairs.

— Scott Collins

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel speaks at an announcement of American Music Award nominees at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Oct. 9, 2007 (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Comments

[David Starkey]

OK, I have an interesting suggestion that would be better for EVERYONE [except comedy central].
Pull Jon Stewart's Daily Show off CC and put it on ABC.
1. It is already tailored to fit in the news category, even though it's satire. [this will help wean the audience for the coming evolution of the show]
2. Stewary HAD a talk show and did it well. [The Daily Show could easily be expanded to 5 nights if the interview segments were slightly longer, you could even start calling it the Nightly Show.]
3. Evolve the show toward a more talkshow/less news format by expanding to an hour in the second season and having 2 interview segments & a musical guest, or 3 interviews.
4. Do this and you will: maximize retention of the core Nightline audience initially, get the Daily Show audience to migrate to ABC, pay Jon Stewart more money, give him a bigger platform, plus play to his strengths AND ease the more mainstream celebrity crowd toward the show by having it on a major network. No charge for the advice, I JUST WANT TO SEE IT! And I bet a lot of others do too.

[David Starkey]

My solution to the ABC late night situation

OK, I have an interesting suggestion that would be better for EVERYONE [except comedy central].
Pull Jon Stewart's Daily Show off CC and put it on ABC.
1. It is already tailored to fit in the news category, even though it's satire. [this will help wean the audience for the coming evolution of the show]
2. Stewart HAD a talk show and did it well. [The Daily Show could easily be expanded to 5 nights if the interview segments were slightly longer, you could even start calling it the Nightly Show.]
3. Evolve the show toward a more talk show/less news format by expanding to an hour in the second season and having 2 interview segments & a musical guest, or 3 interviews.
4. Do this and you will: maximize retention of the core Nightline audience initially, get the Daily Show audience to migrate to ABC, pay Jon Stewart more money, give him a bigger platform, plus play to his strengths AND ease the more mainstream celebrity crowd toward the show by having it on a major network. No charge for the advice, I JUST WANT TO SEE IT! And I bet a lot of others do too.

[Lars]

Why are you forgetting (ignoring?) Craig Ferguson. He´s by far the funniest of them all, with Kimmel a good second, Colbert and then John Stewart (who is so main stream ready that the major networks really should consider him). But Ferguson? He´s been on the forefront of comedy the last few year.

[David C.]

To David Starkey...
There is no WAY that Viacom (who owns Comedy Central, among many other stations) would let something like that happen, especially when it would also directly hurt its sister company of CBS corp. I am sure Disney would be open to have Stewart, but that would hurt two large late-night demographics that American Amusements handles quite well right now.

[Rhonda Carritt]

Does anyone else think NBC is making a mistake with Conan O'Brien? He doesn't hold a candle to Johnny Carsohn or Jay Leno. He will never hold the audience as he just acts too silly and stupid over the dumbest things most of the time. Jimmy Kimmel, Carson Daly or Craig Ferguson are all head and shoulders above Conan. Time will tell and the tale will be the poor Tonight Show!

[Katie]

I used to watch Conan but he lost my viewership when he couldn't do anything when the writers strike was going on last yr. Jay earned my respect when he still made jokes for himself during that time. Personally NBC should just say their done because they have nothing going for them. Wost network in every aspect. Really don't like how they cheated Jay, was really hope he'd do what they did with scrubs and come to ABC. I really don't think Conan and Jimmy can do good. I agree with whoever above said Conan is not mature enough for Jay's time slot.