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PAT: Jay Leno is so angry about what's going on at NBC, did you see his monologue last night? Here's just a little piece of it.
CALLER: Happy birthday to Katie Couric. It's Katie Couric's birthday. She left NBC for another network. I've got to give her a call, see how that's working out. As you may have heard, there's a rumor floating around we were cancelled. I heard it coming in this morning on the radio.
VOICE: I heard it, too.
LENO: So far nobody said anything to me. But you know, if we did get cancelled, give us time to maybe do some traveling.
VOICE: That would be wonderful.
LENO: In fact, I understand Fox is beautiful this time of year, beautiful this time of year. (Applause). I don't think, I don't think there's any truth to the rumor. See, it's always been my experience NBC only cancels you when you are in first place. So we're fine. (Laughter). We're actually okay. The justice department announced they will conduct an antitrust review of Comcast's proposal deal, you know, the merge with NBC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Antitrust review, which is the relationship I have with NBC, antitrust. (Laughter). There's an antitrust, yeah, yeah, yeah.
PAT: I mean, that's an angry rant. You see how angry, NBC? Do you see it? Do you see? I mean, to air that kind of dirty laundry during the show on NBC, something's going radically wrong there. But the debacle at NBC is one of the worst in TV history. At the height of Jay Leno's popularity five years ago, he was number one. And he had been for, what, ten years? They announce he will be replaced with the weird, goofy, bizarre Conan O'Brien. Then to keep Leno once that replacement finally happens and he's still number one, they inexplicably give Leno a prime time talk show every night five nights a week. Everybody knew, you don't have to be in television to know that can't work. That's not going to work! Nobody wants to watch a talk show at 10:00 Eastern, 9:00 in the rest of the country, in prime time. You just, I mean, after the news and there's nothing else on, that's when you want a talk show. Winding down for the day, going to sleep at night. And then O'Brien has been abysmal, he's lost, I don't know, three million viewers or whatever. David Letterman who's been in third place for ten years is now beating Conan O'Brien by two million viewers a night. So now in an effort to fix this debacle, what's being discussed is that they will have Leno come in from 11:35 to 12:05 and he will do the monologue, maybe have a guest and then, and then Conan will do the Tonight Show, it will be a Jay Leno Show leading up to 12:05, that way apparently there's some kind of penalty NBC has to pay, I guess, to Conan O'Brien if they take him off any sooner than they already agreed to. At this point you just cut your losses. You just say, we really screwed up badly; Conan, bye bye, go do whatever you want. He's proven he can't win at that time of night. Let some other network take him, pay the penalty, gave him his money, move on, put Leno back on the Tonight Show, make everybody happy. But, you know, people don't like to admit their mistakes and I'm sure Zucker or whoever's responsibility at NBC won't take responsibility for that debacle, either, any more than Barack Obama has taken actual real responsibility for the problems of the country.
Morningstar via Investopedia