JAY LENO - ARE LENO'S DAYS NUMBERED?

ARE LENO'S DAYS NUMBERED?

In what appeared to be a direct acknowledgment that NBC's Jay Leno strategy has not succeeded, NBC Universal Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin said Thursday that "while we think we need to produce economically, the goal is not to manage for margins. ... It is to put the best possible programs we can on the air." Gaspin's comments came in an interview with TheWrap.com, which called him "a direct repudiation of former NBC Entertainment Co-chair Ben Silverman, who frequently citing the 'managing for margin' mantra and used it to justify many of the Peacock's programing decisions, including NBC's replacing 10 00 p.m. dramas with The Jay Leno Show ." In effect, the strategy disregarded ratings and focused on cutting costs and producing profits. Gaspin also responded to criticism of his decision to pull the critically acclaimed Southland from its Friday-night schedule. NBC's Dateline, he observed, had been doing quite well in the ratings in that period. By replacing it with Southland , he said, "We would likely take a hit in the ratings, and that was something I didn't want to see happen." But several industry executives who declined to be named told the Washington Post that they were skeptical that Gaspin really intends to plunge into ratings competition with the other networks any time soon. One "industry pundit" told the newspaper "How can they do it with Jay Leno sitting there at 10? You're accepting you're going to have a lower number -- that's a lower number on more than a quarter of your schedule. How are you going to win [the ratings race] with that?"

23/10/2009