Word: nbc
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Leno Show was exactly the wrong solution for NBC's problems, those problems remain real, and they are not only NBC's. DVRs and online media are still killing ad money, and audiences are still shrinking. There may not be room for three big networks programming three hours a night anymore...
Problem is, NBC still has to operate in the old system. That system depends on affiliates, the infrastructure of broadcast TV since Uncle Miltie's day. (Right now, those affiliates have great, if temporary, leverage, because NBC needs them to play nice while it's being sold to cable operator Comcast.) And it depends on pleasing an audience used to ER and Law & Order at 10, not Jaywalking. (See TIME's photo-essay "Behind the Scenes with Jay Leno...
...NBC's experiment was the most radical attempt to change the TV business model, but it wasn't the only one. Fox recently got Time Warner Cable to agree to pay to retransmit Fox's free over-the-air signal, suggesting that broadcasters could someday operate more like cable channels (with cable subscribers paying for it). Reality shows and newsmagazines are, like the Leno show, devices to fill prime time on the cheap - and they'll fill some of the vacuum left by Leno...
...this respect, NBC has a lot in common with print media. I recently talked with a neighbor annoyed about the number of typos she said she's been seeing in the New York Times. The editors are probably stretched thin, I said; the Times just went through a big round of layoffs. That's terrible, she agreed. Anyway, she said, she was going to drop her weekday subscription. Why should she pay all that money and get typos...
That's the same bind that NBC, and media companies at large, are in. People aren't going to enjoy watching a lame prime-time talk show for the satisfaction of knowing they're helping the parent company save on payroll. People who expect something else - lavish scripted dramas or typo-free news from costly foreign bureaus - will get alienated and leave, only deepening the revenue spiral that led to the cuts in the first place...