Paul Reiser Appears on 'The Tonight Show' to Promote His Canceled Show (VIDEO)

Booking in advance is kind of the standard for late night talk shows as it can get competitive trying to get the stars when they're promoting their newest projects. On 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' (Weeknights, 11:35PM ET on NBC), they learned that it can be difficult to book faster than the itchy trigger finger of a network executive.

Thus, Paul Reiser was booked for Monday night to promote his new NBC sitcom, 'The Paul Reiser Show.' The problem? NBC canceled the show this past Friday. To Reiser's credit, he showed up anyway.

"It turns out they said we enjoy missing you more than actually having you," he said. "When you're the last place network, you don't want to jeopardize that. You've found your niche. Stay there. So I get it."

Reiser was a good sport about the whole thing, for the most part, though he did get his digs in, implying it might have been a bad decision to not give his show time to find an audience. Starting with the lowest ratings ever for an in-season comedy premiere at the network, however, doesn't look good. It did even worse than 'Perfect Couples,' the show it was replacing.

The second episode lost a million viewers from the premiere, so it was even going in the wrong direction, largely due to terrible reviews and reaction. At that point NBC didn't really have much choice.

Repeats of 'The Office' are likely to get more than the 2.377 million viewers the last 'Reiser' saw, though fans of 'Perfect Couples' might instead suggest bringing that back to finish its run.

Watch the full interview here: