[BigSkyFreeper]

Also, I recall another reason for this decision was it was a way of cutting production costs. Zucker said months ago that it's relatively cheap to put a live talk show together than it is to hire actors and actresses and film and production crews and produce dramas and half hour comedies in-house. While that may be true to a point, that still doesn't excuse Zucker fiddling around with the program lineup.

The dumbest idea ever put on network TV were an endless pool of stupid reality shows and things like Japanese game shows tweaked to suit an American audience.

[jyoders19]

Zucker wanted to keep Leno and STILL keep the agreement in place to move Conan to 11:35 E in 2009 that both he and Leno agreed to in 2005. Back then Leno said he was going to retire but when he put feelers out to other networks NBC came up with the Jay Leno show to both cut costs and keep him from competing with them. They didn’t think about the affiliates and what it would do to 11PM news, though. That was a HUGE miscalculation on Zucker’s part. If Conan moves to Fox he’ll have no affiliate problems because Fox stations all do news at 10PM eastern and he’ll be able to start his show at 11 a half hour BEFORE Leno and the perv.

[Above My Pay Grade]

Yes, I think the cost cutting was the key to the 10PM Leno show. The thinking had to be that if he got good ratings they would make a ton of money, and even if he got poor ratings, the cost savings from not having to produce 5 scripted dramas, with expensive ensemble casts would make up for it.

What Zucker did not take into account was that Leno’s very low ratings would kill the ratings of local news broadcasts, which are key to local affiliates’ profitability.