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Jay to Stay at NBC with New 10 p.m. Show
Jeff Zucker has solved his Jay Leno problem. But did he do it by creating an even bigger one for NBC?
Faced with the prospect of losing a disgruntled Leno to a competitor, Zucker, the chairman of NBC Universal, devised a novel solution, creating a new 10 p.m. show where the soon-to-be-ex-Tonight Show host will continue to ply his trade five nights a week after Conan O'Brien takes over at 11:30 next year.
If it succeeds, the move could be a double boon for NBC, keeping Leno from taking his act to ABC or Fox while giving NBC a relatively cheap way to program five hours a week. (Recall that Zucker has been talking about scaling back the network's primetime schedule to save money.)
But that's a big "if." One variable is whether primetime viewers, used to variety, will balk at seeing the same show every night. ABC thought they wouldn't when it scheduled Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on four nights a week in 2000, only to learn otherwise.
One also has to wonder how O'Brien, who is uprooting his life and moving to Los Angeles to host Tonight, felt about learning he won't be the network's top-billed talk show host after all.
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