Surely You’re Joking, Mr Unfunnyman!

Unfunnyman Jay Leno is moving to 10PM (9PM Central) next year as NBC tries to shake things up and improve their ratings for the timeslot.

The real story here is that NBC gets about four different things: first, as ad revenues fall, they get a cheap-to-produce air-filler. Second, and perhaps more importantly, they buy time. By locking up Leno, they prevent him from directly competing with Conan O’Brien out of the gate, and all but ensure that a quick Leno flameout marks the jumbo-jawed one as damaged goods for long enough to let O’Brien settle into the new time slot. Third, they get to keep Leno around as an insurance policy if O’Brien’s humor doesn’t capture an audience. Finally, Leno’s shtick has a short shelf-life, especially five nights a week in prime time; by forcing it to play itself out in a single-season overload, they can make it even more difficult for Leno to go elsewhere, as other networks won’t want to take on a broken format and a big salary whose career has no third act.

I don’t see much upside for Leno short of the money and the option of riding in to save the network should Conan fail miserably.