According to my weekly Time mag, Jay Leno is the future of tv

[Himu]

I might as well kill myself right now to save myself the pain.

[The Fake Shemp]

Conan is done for!

[Himu]

Haven't watched Conan ever since getting back on the East Coast.

I'm too tired to watch it by the time it comes on.

Especially with the NFL back in action now.

[Tauntaun]

Haven't watched Conan ever since getting back on the East Coast.

I'm too tired to watch it by the time it comes on.

Especially with the NFL back in action now.

Fo sho, plus I don't have TV anymore so I just watch him on nbc.com.   

[Mr. Gundam]

Looks like we're going back to the 60's-70's and the heyday of the variety show.... or current day Japanese TV.

 

[drew]

late night shows suck period, conan is obviously uptight and gets uncomfortable whenever anybody says anything remotley unkosher, and jay leno is just corny

[Great Rumbler]

According to Obama, George Lopez is the future of TV.

So there.

[Himu]

Haven't watched Conan ever since getting back on the East Coast.

I'm too tired to watch it by the time it comes on.

Especially with the NFL back in action now.

Fo sho, plus I don't have TV anymore so I just watch him on nbc.com.   

I always forget about that. I should go to nbc.com more often.

[etiolate]

right now, craig ferguson kicks ass

Having to celebrity schmooze on the tonight show doesn't work well with Conan. And his audience doesn't want a parade of boring, unfunny celebrities.

[Junpei the Tracer!]

Leno is funnier than Conan. Can't till Monday.

[Human Snorenado]

Leno is funnier than Conan. Can't till Monday.

There you go Willco, Junpei is your company.  Have fun with that.

[Diunx]

Whatever, Curb is coming back in a couple of weeks, after that show is done tv can go fuck itself, I has internet.

[Flannel Boy]

Leno is funnier than Conan. Can't till Monday.

There you go Willco, Junpei is your company.  Have fun with that.

He went from copying bad art to copying bad opinions.

[OptimoPeach]

late night shows suck period

Yes

[Human Snorenado]

Letterman is still awesome.  Conan is a little less awesome now that he's out west and has to tone it down a little bit for the earlier time slot.  Craig Ferguson is still pretty funny; Kimmel is a douche; and Jimmy Fallon couldn't be funny if his life depended on it.

So nah, late night shows don't suck.  But Leno is pretty unfunny for the most part and from what I've heard about his new format coupled with the earlier time slot, there's a high likelihood that he will be even LESS funny.

[Himu]

I heard Fallon's doing better these days but I don't watch

[The Fake Shemp]

He occasionally strikes gold with some of the pre-recorded bits, or when he gets a guest to do non-talk show stuff (like Mark Paul Gosselaar reprising Zach), but his interviewing skills are pretty awful and his monologue sucks.

His biggest problem is that he interviews guests like he's still a real actor - like he's one of them.

[Himu]

The Zach interview was amazing, but it was mostly ZACK ATTACK who made it such.

[The Fake Shemp]

... except that entire bit was written by Fallon's head writer.

[Himu]

I meant in regards to delivery. I forgot Fallon was even interviewing him.

[clothedmacuser]

Dammit, I can't find a specific NYT article interviewing Leno.  It was from last month and had some choice quotes.  Something from some granny saying she liked how he wasn't "edgy." 

[ManaByte]

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/09/jay-leno-show-premiere-ratings.html

UPDATED: NBC's "The Jay Leno Show" is off to a very strong start.

The debut of NBC's high-wire-act 10 p.m. comedy show was seen by 17.7 million viewers and pulled a 5.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating.

That's 34% stronger in the adult demo than the final national household rating for Conan O'Brien's "Tonight Show" debut last June (9.2 million viewers and a 3.8 adults 18-49 rating) and 50% higher than Leno's final "Tonight Show" last May (11.9 million viewers and a 3.4 rating).

Leno's first night featured an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and a rather fortuitously timed appearance by Kanye West (video clips). Critics were somewhat unimpressed by the debut (reviews here), nearly unanimously commenting how similar Leno's new show is to his tenure while hosting "The Tonight Show." Naturally, the format of "The Jay Leno Show" will be tweaked continuously in the coming weeks.

Plenty of media stories have recently opined that Leno's premiere ratings do not matter because the show's fate will be determined in months rather than weeks. This is also what NBC has been repeating to reporters in every conversation. But saying "the premiere doesn't matter" is like saying the first primary in a presidential race doesn't matter just because it doesn't choose the president.

Leno's premiere matters -- though it matters far more for one outcome than it did for the other.

Leno opening strong doesn't mean much because the industry knows it doesn't signal where the show will settle and that there will be significant drops in the coming days.

But if Leno had performed poorly Monday night -- below what NBC expected -- despite a huge build up and millions of marketing dollars ... that would have been meaningful because it would have signaled that NBC overestimated the appeal of shifting Leno to 10 p.m. A crash out of the gate could also have put a stigma around the show that could have impacted critics, public perception, booking guests and advertising.

Asked if NBC is using the new Leno show as a first step to get out of prime time programming, Zucker said: "We're not shutting down primetime hour-by-hour," signaling his team is focusing on profitability rather than revenue though. "We don't need to have the biggest sales, but the best business model," he said.

UPDATE -- NBC reaction to Leno ratings from THR's George Szalai:

New York -- NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker lauded the Monday night debut of Jay Leno's 10pm talk show here Tuesday, but said the show's success will be judged on a long-term basis.

Speaking at the annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Zucker said "obviously Jay got off to a very nice start last night" with "an incredibly strong audience."

"It was great to have him back," Zucker said, and he was "very pleased" with the audience, but cautioned that "there's a very long way to go from here. We'll judge this on 52 weeks, not one night."

Asked about his expectations, he said: "The fact that it opened so well is a great sign, but it's only one night."

Advertisers' response has "actually been quite good," Zucker also told the conference. "The thing that sells the best on television is comedy," even though he acknowledged that the Leno show has not commended the same rates as a successful one-hour drama would.

Zucker was also asked about Jerry Seinfeld's joke as Leno's first guest Monday night that maybe he should get a 9pm show on NBC. "If he'd like to begin negotiations today, we would certainly be open to it," the CEO quipped, but signaled he clearly saw the Seinfeld comment as a joke and wouldn't expect anything to happen.

[Trent Dole]

Leno is funnier than Conan. Can't till Monday.

[youtube=560,345]hbUlvlHF9Ys[/youtube]

[Human Snorenado]

Leno has Fatty McFattypants Socialist Film Director Michael Fatty McFattikins Moore on tonight.

Fat.

[Oblivion]

17 million? Good god...isn't that more than what American Idol does usually?

[Mr. Gundam]

So now that Leno is back, can Conan please go back to being Conan?

[Himu]

With just a 1.5 rating, "The Jay Leno Show" could make $300 million a year for NBC -- and probably spark other networks to follow suit.

That was the judgment of WME head of nonscripted John Ferriter, speaking Tuesday on a Producers Caucus panel at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Other panelists, including USA Networks' Jeff Wachtel and Lionsgate's Kevin Beggs, concurred that NBC's move was gutsy and that in any case the Peacock almost certainly would continue to declare victory -- often and loudly -- with regard to replacing five scripted hours a week with "Leno."

As for what the intrusion of a talk show into network primetime means for television during the next two years, most opined that the proportions of scripted and nonscripted likely won't shift dramatically overall. But they noted that cablers are likely to play a bigger role with dramas and comedies and that broadcasters would have further reduced their reliance on scripted, especially high-end, dramas.

In other remarks, HBO's Michael Lombardo said the biggest challenge is always to get the best talent and give them free rein to do their thing.

"It doesn't matter how old or young the writer is or how many credits he has," Lombardo said. "The question is, does he bring a fresh voice to interesting material?" HBO's president of programming also said that his company had been "stymied" in the wake of the success of "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" but now has its creative mojo back in gear.

During the discussion about the new season and changing business models, drama creator-producers Kevin Williamson ("The Vampire Diaries") and Matt Nix ("Burn Notice") amusingly described their methods and the hourly pressures they face to get their shows in the can. Neither, interestingly, is averse to notes from executives or product-placement possibilities; both get that cost-containment is part of the process.

Asked about their involvement in their respective Web expansions and iterations, both had the same response. Said Nix: "We're really not involved. However integral to the series such things are described at Comic-Con, essentially the Web thing just gets farmed out to a talented staff writer who wants to step up."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ic1a340c9e2d852e5c71c767e50baa19c

good god.

Leno just HAD to have another show and now it's trying to fuck over actually good entertainment?

The time mag was right?