Citizen Power

The news that Jay Leno, the mainstream late night talk show host in the U.S., is moving to a different timeslot isn’t big news by itself. But the underlying reason why it’s happening is news. He was interviewed Tuesday night on NBC News with Brian Williams, and sounded defense about this move. In part, his defensiveness was probably due to the fact that people thought he was going to ABC and Conan O’Brian would get his job, and now that won’t happen.

Leno explained the time change move to “prime time” by saying that people are going to bed earlier because they are working more, and they are working harder, so they are missing much of his current show.

It’s probably true. The U.S. is in a recession and there were 533,000 layoffs last month, so people are scared, and working more and working longer hours, if they are lucky enough to still have a job. They aren’t doing this because they’re bored, or just like to work a lot. Politicians don’t get that, but it looks like the media networks do understand what’s going on. NBC realizes there is a serious economic problem brewing and they are adapting. It would be a bad move to leave one of their highest advertising draws and continue to put him on the air when people aren’t seeing him anymore.

At least the networks seem sensitive about the reasons. I remember well when George Bush was in a townhall meeting in 2007, and a woman told him that she worked three jobs. She meant that she had to work 3 jobs to survive, and he took it to mean she was an industrious American who worked so hard because she had some kind of enormous drive to work. His response to her was “Uniquely American, isn’t it?” It is getting more and more American for people to have 2 and even 3 jobs, as our economy tanks. You can a hear a clip of that famous exchange here .

The economic downturn is even hitting the spinoff parts of NBC, so the economic problems at NBC are deep. There will be layoff announcements starting this week, and executives are even being told to fly coach to the Super Bowl ! This is, however, industry-wide, despite it being more obvious at NBC. This is also affecting ABC and CBS, at least.

I knew that things must be bad at NBC when, during the Mumbai terror attacks of two weeks ago, MSNBC ran only old, canned shows about cops and prisons, instead of live news. They did that for hours and days while the attacks raged on in India, which were covered live on most of the other major networks.

Now, its reported that NBC might even scale back to only 22 hours of network programming a day. That means they would actually go dark — something that has never happened in my memory. I know that when TV first started there was only programming for a certain number of hours a day and then the TV would go to a holding pattern screen and then to static. But this is 2008, the age of 24 hour news, global news, and constant advertising! It’s hard to imagine a giant like NBC having to cut back to the extent that it actually goes off the air for a few hours a day. Part of this is not just the economic downturn — it’s also the competition from online media. Networks like Comedy Central and other online media put many of their shows on the air every day for free. That is tough competition. NBC has responded by putting many of its shows online too, but that cuts down on advertising revenue. Is the future of TV online-only shows?

So, Jay Leno is going to essentially do the same show on NBC, only earlier, and it’s probably because of the economic downturn, and the realities of internet programming. I know people who say they only watch TV online and I have been doing more watching online too. Maybe the next industry to go are the TV manufacturers. Sony announced yesterday that it too is laying off 16,000 workers next year!

Leno’s prime time show will start in the Fall of 2009.