NBC Late Night Battle: Roseanne Frangione

I was a fan of Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show for many years and I was sorry to see him leave the program. I don't particularly enjoy Conan O'Brien's sophomoric humor as it often is low-brow and sexual in nature. The few times I saw his previous NBC show, I was appalled to see sketches about bear who pleasures itself and a sexually provocative manatee. Since I refuse to watch David Letterman's show after his disgustingly futile attempt at humor by saying Sarah Palin's fourteen year old daughter was impregnated by a thirty four year old baseball player, most nights I find myself watching Nightline before falling asleep.

I am aware of the effect the recession has had on the television industry and how it forced NBC to make some rather startling choices when it came to filling airtime on the network schedule this year. The average prime time drama costs about $2.1 million dollars per week to produce. A talk show costs about $400,00 per episode. When NBC cut five prime time dramas in favor of one talk show, the network saved an incredible amount of money in production costs, but lost viewers which in turn led to a loss in advertising revenue.

We live in a society of immediacy, where decisions are made quickly and their effects are judged even quicker. I'm not surprised NBC is moving around their schedule as they would continue to lose key advertising dollars if they did not. However, with Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien they have two highly paid performers with iron-clad contracts. It will very interesting to see how this plays out, and to see if viewers will tune in or tune out.

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