Posted on 08/18/2012 12:04:35 PM PDT by SMGFan
Angela Weiss/Getty Images UPDATED: The direct cause is not yet clear, nor are the exact areas of programming that were hit by the downsizing.
NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno has laid off about 20 employees, a network source confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.
The direct cause of the shakeup at NBC's late-night staple is not yet clear, nor are the exact areas of the program that were hit by the downsizing. While the Jay Leno-hosted talker regularly tops the late night ratings, its core audience has aged as competition from such younger-skewing shows as Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report has siphoned away viewers. The move comes as executives at NBC owner Comcast continue to evaluate the assets the company bought in early 2011. THR has reported that Leno is paid approximately $30 million. He last reupped his contract in 2010 after reclaiming the Tonight Show from Conan O'Brien. The show currently employs between 150 and 200 people, according to a network source.
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
I bet they kept the comedy writers whose specialty is writing anti-Palin jokes.
All he has to do is be truly bipartisan in his jokes. If he truly took on all the sacred liberal cows, along with the conservatives, we could all watch and laugh at ourselves. Liberals are too phony and insecure to laugh at themselves, though, and Jay feels he has to kiss their butts.
Keep praising and sucking up to Obama, Jay.
It’s working well for you /s
Who’s watchin “TV”? anymore. Except for the “weather” now Unreality, which we are turning off too now.
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno laid off around 20 staff members on Friday, Deadline.com reports.
Some 20 to 25 staff members were laid off this week, with producers on the NBC late-night talk show given the option to take pay cuts or lose their jobs, according to the site. Jay Leno reportedly took a “tremendous” pay cut in an attempt to save jobs. It’s unclear what prompted the layoffs since The Tonight Show regularly beats the other late-night fare in the ratings.
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Jay-Leno-Layoffs-1052082.aspx
No, no, no, you should maintain employees regardless of how worthless they are, or how much money you are losing. Companies exist to hire employees, not make money. It’s the Obama way, don’t you know.
Actually I think that is what happened. Leno did start joking about the Obama admin a good while back and NOW they are downsizing. Conservatives dropped him long ago and the hardcore Libs are going elsewhere because he actually told jokes about liberals and it pissed them off. (at least that is what I have read on some of the liberal websites I lurk on.)
The private sector is doin’ FINE!
The private sector is doin’ FINE!
“150 - 200 each with a specific designated task which no one else is permitted to perform?”
Unions, no doubt.
All those far-right entertainment industry moguls are doing their best to increase unemployment and sabotage the Obama economic recovery.
/s
Television is virtually worthless. A hundred channels of garbage. Much is infomercial. Television news is leftist propaganda. The science channels rely heavily on envirowackoism. The history channels are all UFO and pawn stars. If it weren’t for sports and TCM (bless their leftist little heads), I put the TV by the curb.
There’s got to be more to this, like runaway expenses or something. Viewership is as good as anything’s going to get.
...For the week, Tonight topped the time-period competition of CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” and ABC’s combination of “Nightline” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in 18-49 and total viewers and delivered bigger audiences than Late Show in every key ratings category: adults, men and women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54, plus total viewers...
No one should be on TV for more than a year.
It sucks seeing the same faces year after year, decade after decade.
It’s actually depressing.
and ratings should increase following Labor Day as students return to school and the liberals tune in for the jokes.
A good start......
The Tonight Show died with Carson...NBC has descended into nothing but clueless Obama mouthpieces...karma...everything they touch now(like The Weather Channel)turns to sh t.
I used to check out the late-night shows for decades, bouncing back and forth between all of them, to varying degrees. But after Obama was elected, and they just kept on making vile Bush and Palin jokes while continuing to deify Obama, I got pretty soured on them. Then, Letterman made that rape joke about Palin’s 13-year-old daughter, and followed it a few days later with that smart-aleck ‘non-apology’ of his. That was it for me. I’ve never watched a single solitary minute of ANY of the late-night talk shows ever since. I excised them entirely from my life. All of them.
I only watch Johnny Carson reruns.
“I used to check out the late-night shows for decades, bouncing back and forth between all of them, to varying degrees. But after Obama was elected, and they just kept on making vile Bush and Palin jokes while continuing to deify Obama,”
Yep.
Wealthy liberal Leno gets richer while workers lose their jobs. Jay is a good progressive.
Through Netflix, I've been watching the early shows again and I'm amazed how after 37 years, it continues on with the same producer (Lorne Michaels) as such a high level. The show is also like a time capsule. It's so topical that if you watch, say, a 1977 show and weren't around at the time, you won't get half the jokes because you had to actually be in that time and place to get them.
My only real beef with SNL is that their musical guests almost always suck. Lorne Michaels might have a genius for comedy but has awful taste in music. But that gives me time to go to the kitchen and fix a late night sandwich.
Johnny Carson was okay but his show dragged most nights as he usually had boring-as-hell guests (Tony Randall for instance) and I never got the Ed McMahon thing - that guy always irritated me with his sycophant chuckling.
Jay Leno could have been great and I get the impression he might be a closet conservative, but his political correctness and his reluctance to use liberal sacred cows as a source for his comedy makes him rather dull to watch.
Same here. They are not funny anymore
Yes it did.

My favorite:
"Siss, boom, baa. What does and exploding sheep sound like?
“No can do... What do you look for when tracking a nocan?”
Regardless of what you think of Jay Leno’s show, the man is a mensch.
Karnak could have seen this coming —
NBC has two bulletproof assets: the most successful late-night franchise in history, “The Tonight Show,” and the most successful morning show: “The Today Show.”
Their primetime lineup, however, is a shambles, so the new owners, Comcast, is cleaning house all around.
Comcast fired Keith Olbermann off his low-rated MSNBC show the day Congress approved the sale. Incompetent network head Jeff Zucker soon followed.
Now Comcast wants to see if Leno’s show can pull in the same ratings with fewer employees. If the numbers slip, they’ll be hired back.
Comcast is not gonna risk damaging the most successful late-night franchise in TV history, now that even the morning “Today” show is starting to slip.
Watch for Matt Lauer’s exit from “Today” in 2013.
Leno stays till he decides to retire.
HaHaHaHaha
My first best guess is that they are laying off these employees so that they can keep the “precious” employees on their “precious” news shows which are whirling around the toilet. Since Leno is late night, they don’t much care about the ratings then.
Right you are GG! How have you been? :-)
Doing well all things considered...Hope you and yours are doing fine also. :O)
Carson had some talented people working for him..bet a lot were conservative that the industry won’t hire anymore..PC you know..
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