Jay Leno Discusses His New Show
NBC Experiments with a New Format
Jay Leno’s talk show which airs before the NBC affiliates’ news shows, is a bold experiment for the network. Leno is charged with the responsibility of keeping viewers entertained and tuned in for his entire show, which unlike later night talk shows, put most of their big stuff at the beginning. Leno has to keep his ending fifteen minutes as entertaining as his opening.
Formatting the New Show to Keep Viewers Entertained for a Whole Hour
“How I will lead into the local affiliates,” explained Leno to the Television Critics Association “is the fact that the signature pieces that people like on The Tonight Show – ‘Headlines,’ ‘Jaywalking,’ ‘99-cent store’ - stuff that has always done really well, those will be the pieces that will bring us into the 11 [and 10] o'clock news. I've been doing this long enough to realize there is no NBC. NBC is a bunch of trailers over in Burbank. The real NBC is the affiliates and the people who kind of back the show and get behind the show. And we want to provide a strong lead-in for the 11 [and 10] o'clock news. That will be our job.”
Having a talk show before the local news is a bold move for NBC. Leno doesn’t want to take anything away from The Tonight Show, but also wants something strong that will keep viewers entertained and tuned in for their local news, then ready for Conan O’Brien. This is a heavy task. The question is whether people will want two talk shows each night or if they’ll tune out after their local news.
“When I was doing The Tonight Show, [I] front-loaded the show. We'd have all [the] comedy from 11:35 to 12:00. Then [we] had that big six-minute commercial break. And that's where [we] lost them. [We] lost them to sleep, they have to get up early to go to work, whatever it might be. So then [we’d] come back [and we would] have a comic or an actress from a second-string series, and then the music.” Leno explained that his job now is to keep the viewers entertained throughout the entire show so they will stay tuned for the rest of the night’s programming.
“The intensity will be a little bit more intense. There will be a lot more comedy in the show,” he stated.
Jay Leno Wants to Appeal to Everyone
Leno is hopeful that his programming will be entertaining to a wide audience. “When I started The Tonight Show, it was an interesting challenge. [People said] ‘You stink. You suck. We hate you.’” He said when that happens, “you just work, and you put your nose to the grindstone. And you apply yourself, and you try to turn it around. And that's what we'll do here. We'll go into that with that same technique. So much of comedy now is specific.” He continued, “I grew up in the era of Johnny Carson and Jack Benny, Bill Cosby, all these kind of comedians that just tried to play to all of America. And that's what this show, I hope, will do. I think there will be something there for everyone. We'll have politics. And we can get a little edgy at times and such. But it will be something, I think, that hopefully will play across the board.”
Just like when he did The Tonight Show, Leno expects to capitalize on the events of the day. “You know, television ratings are down across the boards everywhere, but the one place television does well is immediacy. I mean, a classic example of this, I think, would be Captain Sully with that landing of the plane in the Hudson River. The Today show got it as it was landing and got the story live. The Dateline people did a story on the human-interest part of it, and we in late night, me, Conan and the rest, we did jokes about it because nobody was injured. And the ratings that night were huge all the way through because here's an event that was happening that day. We commented on it that day, and it went through the whole night.
“I think the real key to this show is if something happens, if the President does something, we can comment can on it and joke about it and get it on the air first at 10 o'clock.”
The Jay Leno Show is going up against some of the best dramas on TV. As he explains, he doesn’t expect to beat them in the ratings off the bat. “You know, we might not catch them on the straights, but hopefully, we can catch them in the corners. And this is 46 weeks a year. While everybody else is in reruns, we will be doing fresh shows every single night.”
The Jay Leno Show airs weeknights at 11 PM ET/PT on NBC.
Jay Leno
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