The Jay Leno Show

Fun fact: Episodes of The Jay Leno Show are actually episodes The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show with Jay Leno digitally inserted into them.

Apparently, it is cheaper than producing new episodes.

Do you mean In Living Color?

I watched the hell out of that show. A whole slew of comedians that were not white…imagine that. Plus prime time airing of live rap acts. Plus, gyrating dancers. PLus, Homey the Clown. Damon, Jim Carey…it might have become tired/cliched/too raunchy, but, at the time, I thought it was relatively groundbreaking…and not groundbreaking like Leno moving to prime time. ;)

No, I mean The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show.

Damn, I forgot that show…it was ass.

An overweight Leno, with fewer guests, and a not-that-funny-and-far-too-long car washing skit? Eh.

A bunch of my friends loved that skit though so maybe it’s just me.

I’ve always liked Letterman better and besides his getting screwed out of Carson’s spot, Jay was consistantly beating Dave which begs the question why did they f-up their sure thing?
Which proves monkeys could do a better job at programming tv shows.

Conan would have gotten this time slot somewhere else, and they didn’t want to lose him.

That first episode was really terrible. The Cheaters bit was just stupid. Kevin’s cheating on Jay with a Jay look-alike? Just pathetic. I thought they were going to at least have the bit be about the Tonight Show cheating on Jay with Conan. That was itself a really obvious joke, but Conan could have at least made it funny.

And the car-wash thing was really stupid. The concept wasn’t funny. The singer wasn’t funny. The songs weren’t funny. It went on forever and the poor girl just seemed to be getting creeped out.

Seinfeld wasn’t even funny. Usually you can count on his banter with Jay since they go way back, but they shoehorned in that really lame Oprah bit killing most of the segment.

Really, the most calculating thing they did was tease the Headlines for the whole episode and save them for the very end. Guess they don’t want people going to sleep at 10:15.

The statements were separated by a paragraph break, so it may not have been a proto-syllogism.

But then, I respect a guy who manages his money, including indulging an expensive hobby with his pocket money rather than his main revenue stream. Even if I don’t watch his show because it’s lame and he thinks a jackass like Michael Moore is a tentpole guest.

NBC is getting exactly what they wanted out of the “new” Leno Show. The whole idea was to move the Tonight Show to 10:00pm, and it’s audience along with it. This presents NBC with marketing opportunities in prime time that it wouldn’t have had without cultivating a whole slate of new hit shows for the 10:00pm time slot. Then they win again by putting Conan in the 11:30 slot, moving his audience forward and allowing them to charge Tonight Show rates to the marketers looking to go after his younger-skewing market.

While the initial concept of having both shows may have been driven by the desire to retain both Leno and Conan, the implementation is pure accounting/marketing. Producing Leno’s show is far cheaper than producing 5 new 1-hour drama series, and it’s a proven winner for advertising sales going in. Conan’s show appeals to a different demographic than Leno’s did, so NBC gets to charge those advertisers higher rates then they would have when Conan was in his old time slot. NBC cleans up, and gets to keep both comedians happy. It’s all win for them.

I don’t think I could come up with a better collaborator for Leno than The Dan Band.

I really wish that article was online, it is in the issue with the Lady Gaga cover. I used to think the guy was a hack before reading it, but damn if he is not a classy guy. The article turned around my opinion on him. His humor is not for me, but he is a hard-working, down to earth comedian.

Sad to say, but this will do nothing but hasten the flight of interesting 1-hour dramas to cable nets that are willing to promote them better and accept a more reasonable number of episodes per season. 22 to 26 episodes per year is a hell of a lot of episodes, and a lot of network series (Prison Break and 24 spring to mind) foundered trying to make their season-long story arcs stretch that far.

On Top Gear he also explained that it’s also better to have tens of millions of dollars in automobiles in your garage than keep a mistress or two. Yeah he’s justifying largesse and not spending the NBC money is probably for the same reason but at the very least his heart is in the right place. Doesn’t seem like there’s excessive guilt from society there. shrug

The videos on his garage site are great. Leno should incorporate more of that into his “new” show.

I agree with the good guy, boring vanilla show critique. I went to a taping of his Tonight Show in LA ages ago, which is nice primarily because I can say that I went to a taping of the Tonight Show. When Leno came out before the taping to chat with the audience, he seemed genuine and was very accommodating to various requests, including calling one (somewhat crazy) woman’s daughter to wish her happy birthday.

I was hoping they were going to recreate this brilliant Dan Band bit:

Ok, maybe not so ‘brilliant’ but they pull off the choreography surprisingly well.

Was more thinking of his car collecton/museum and the help he gives out from that, but doing something becuase you purely love to do it is pretty classy to me.

Leno loses 7 million viewers the second night.
Ouch.

I really think that, instead of the show he is doing, he should have done something like Top Gear.

That might well end up happening …