NBC Expected to Give 10 P.M. Show to Leno

By BILL CARTER

Published: December 8, 2008

NBC will keep Jay Leno five nights a week, but in prime time, competing not with David Letterman, but with shows like “CSI: Miami.”

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Paul Drinkwater/NBC, via Associated Press

Tonight show host Jay Leno gave his monologue in January.

The network will announce Tuesday that Mr. Leno’s new show will appear at 10 o’clock each weeknight in a format similar to “The Tonight Show,” which he has hosted since 1993.

Five years ago NBC announced that it would hand the job of host of that franchise show to Conan O’Brien in May 2009. Since then the network has maneuvered to try to keep Mr. Leno, who continues to be the late-night ratings leader, fearing that he could leave and start a new late-night show on a competitor’s network. “The Tonight Show” is seen at 11:35 weeknights.

Mr. Leno, 58, was known to have suitors, including ABC, the Fox network and the Sony television studio. But he was apparently persuaded to stay at NBC after aggressive personal wooing by Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric.

Retaining Mr. Leno will undoubtedly be seen as a coup for Mr. Zucker, who has faced some serious questions about the wisdom of guaranteeing “The Tonight Show” to Mr. O’Brien and possibly losing Mr. Leno to another network.

Details of Mr. Leno’s agreement and the new show were provided by NBC executives who were briefed on the matter and who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the project until the network made its announcement.

The new show, which will begin next fall, is expected to be set in Mr. Leno’s longtime studio in Burbank, Calif. Mr. Leno is expected to retain many of the most popular elements of his “Tonight Show,” including his monologue and bits like “Headlines” and “Jay Walking.” One “Tonight Show” staff member said the new program would not be a variety show.

Mr. O’Brien, currently the host of NBC’s “Late Night,” will move “The Tonight Show” to a new studio on the NBC Universal lot in Universal City, Calif., in May. Mr. Leno, who is known to want to work as much as possible, would then miss only three months on the air, and would use that time to prepare his new show.

An executive involved in the discussions with Mr. Leno said that Mr. Leno finally came around to the idea that the television business had changed and a show like his could be a success in prime time.

Running the same show in prime time five nights a week would be a novelty for a broadcast network. Such so-called stripped shows have been a staple of daytime broadcasting.

The offer of a weeknight prime-time show is one that Mr. Zucker has favored for some time. In 2002, when David Letterman, Mr. Leno’s competitor at CBS, was contemplating whether to renew his contract, Mr. Zucker offered him a show at 8 o’clock weeknights. He turned it down.

Executives involved in the decision said Monday that because ratings have decreased and costs are becoming more critical, NBC could reap an enormous financial benefit from this move.

Though Mr. Leno will command an enormous salary, probably more than $30 million a year, the cost of his show will be a fraction of what a network pays for dramas at 10 p.m. Those average about $3 million an episode. That adds up to $15 million a week to fill the 10 p.m. hour. Mr. Leno’s show is expected to cost less than $2 million a week.

In addition, NBC will get more weeks of original programming. Network dramas typically make 22 to 24 episodes a year. Under this deal, the executives involved in the discussions said, Mr. Leno will perform 46 weeks a year.

That cost differential will probably be enough for NBC to absorb any fall in ratings from its current slate of dramas. Mr. Leno has averaged 4.8 million viewers for his show this year, with a rating of 1.3, or 1.7 million people, in the category of viewers ages 18 to 49, which most advertisers favor.

Few shows now at 10 p.m. could be considered hits. They include “CSI: Miami,” and “CSI: New York” on CBS and “Law & Order SVU” and “E.R.” on NBC. “E.R.” is about the leave the air. “SVU” will probably move to 9 p.m. next fall.

There have been no new hits at 10 p.m. on any network in almost four years; ratings for shows in that time slot continue to fall.

That does not mean that either the network or Mr. Leno has no risk in the move. Mr. Leno’s shows tend to fare best in their first half hour; if they were to decline too much in the second half hour, NBC’s affiliated stations would see their news shows adversely affected. And there may be some question about whether Mr. Leno’s show at 10 might diminish the stature of Mr. O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” at 11:35.

But Peter Lassally, the longtime late-night producer of shows starring Johnny Carson, Mr. Letterman and now Craig Ferguson, said that NBC came to Mr. Carson in the late 1980s with a similar idea, but that Mr. Carson turned it down.

“It’s all different now,” Mr. Lassally said. “The economic factors have changed so much it makes complete sense for NBC to try this.”

On Monday Mr. Zucker suggested at a news conference in New York that in the future networks might have to cut back the hours of prime-time programming. The program with Mr. Leno would effectively cut the number of hours NBC needed to fill each week from 22 to 17.

Mr. Leno had no comment. NBC executives also declined to comment. The network is expected to announce the deal with Mr. Leno in Los Angeles on Tuesday.