'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
Comedienne's Second TV Show Canceled This Year
Don't celebrate Leno's low ratings just yet
by Joel Keller, posted Oct 7th 2009 11:22AM
The funniest thing about the season so far is that, after all the attention NBC's move to put Jay Leno at 10 PM generated through the spring and summer, The Jay Leno Show itself has been getting very little in the way of audience or viral buzz.The former was to be expected; no one thought Leno was going to beat out CSI. But the latter is a shock. Conan hits his head and the clip is all over the Internet; Dave talks about being blackmailed and CBS can't pull down the YouTube clips fast enough. But since Kanye West's teary apology to Taylor Swift on Leno's first show, nothing that's happened at ten has been funny enough or newsworthy enough to make a dent in the pop culture consciousness.
But those among you who are rooting for this experiment to fail, it's not time to break out the Champagne just yet. Although Leno's ratings are low and continue to sink, NBC isn't pulling the plug anytime soon. And the reason why is the most intriguing part of this whole experiment.
Remember that the folks at NBC have been saying all along that Leno doesn't need to get prime-time-level ratings for the show to make a profit. In addition, as the network mentioned in the USA Today article linked above, they're going to look at the year-round picture, especially when a new Leno show is up against reruns of everything else (I'd imagine the first test of that will come around Thanksgiving, and definitely during the late-December lull).
It doesn't seem to matter to the Peacock folks that Leno's show does any of the traditional numbers, nor does it seem to matter to them that the show doesn't have the "long tail" that reruns or DVD sales or syndication sales would bring. It just cares about how much money the show makes right now. And that's something that the people who are closely watching the show's ratings are going to have problems wrapping their minds around, because they're used to the equation that low ratings equal sure cancellation.
The more worrisome thing that NBC should be looking at is how Leno's ratings are dragging down the rest of the network. As the article points out, Conan's ratings have slipped since Leno's debut, affiliate's news ratings are down, and some of the former 10 PM shows like L&O: SVU are getting hammered at 9 PM. If anyone wants to see this grand plan fail, you should be looking at those numbers instead of Leno's.
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