Leno Faces a Tough Late-Night Comeback

BUSINESS

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

By SAM SCHECHNER Leno Faces a Tough Late-Night Comeback

E-Poll Market Research Tracks Leno’s Likeability

Jay Leno faces an uphill climb to reclaim his perch atop late-night TV.

NBC is busy preparing for Mr. Leno's return Monday night as host of "The Tonight Show," barely eight months after it turned the job over to Conan O'Brien, only to watch the show's ratings tumble.

As Jay Leno returns to late night next week, he faces questions as to whether he can refurbish his damaged reputation and whether he can recoup the audience that was lost during NBC's tug-of-war with Conan O'Brien, Sam Schechner reports.

The network faces the challenge of winning back viewers who have abandoned its evening lineup and doing that with a host whose affable image took a bashing during the battle that led to Mr. O'Brien's ouster.

The stakes are high for NBC, which plunked Mr. Leno into a nightly prime-time show last fall, then pulled the plug on it last month because of low ratings. Now it is retooling its whole evening lineup, which will include four new shows once the network finishes broadcasting the Winter Olympics from Vancouver.

"It's definitely a double whammy," said Steve Kalb, director of broadcast at MediaHub, a media-buying arm of Interpublic Group of Cos. "It's been hard for them to maintain any kind of momentum."

Mr. Leno will face off against CBS Corp. rival David Letterman, who has canceled some planned vacation days next week and the week after, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Letterman's schedule of guests for the next two weeks includes actors Jerry Seinfeld and Tom Hanks and politician Mitt Romney, this person said.

NBC has been using its Winter Olympics audience to promote Mr. Leno's program. One of NBC's spots shows Mr. Leno driving a sports car to the Beatles lyrics "Get back to where you once belonged."

Mr. Leno dominated late night for much of his 14-year run at "The Tonight Show," averaging more than one million more viewers than Mr. Letterman last season, according to Nielsen Co.

Several observers expect Mr. Leno's return to draw a large audience. Steve Sternberg, a TV analyst, also said he thinks that eventually Mr. Leno's "fans will come back and he will again take over the time-period lead" from Mr. Letterman.

Jay Leno, shown earlier this month, during his defunct 10 p.m. program "The Jay Leno Show."

But Mr. Leno is facing a competitive late-night landscape. While about a third more people watch late-night TV than a decade ago, according to a Horizon Media analysis of Nielsen data, those viewers are spread across dozens more TV channels. NBC executives say that fragmentation has NBCU/Associated Press cut significantly into profit.

One challenge could be getting viewers back into the habit of watching NBC at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time. "They scattered all over the place," said Sam Armando, who heads television research at SMGx, an ad- buying consultancy arm of Publicis Groupe SA. "The question is: Did they form new habits that are going to be difficult to break?"

NBC's decision to shift Mr. Leno back to late night turned into a public-relations disaster last month, when Mr. O'Brien resisted the move in a public letter to "People of Earth." Mr. Leno was painted in the media both as a failure and as coveting Mr. O'Brien's spot on "Tonight."

Mr. Leno's drubbing in the press and online took a toll on his image, though he remains popular. Omnicom Group Inc.'s Davie-Brown Entertainment, which ranks the appeal of celebrities, said that Mr. Leno has fallen to No. 42 on its list, close to Cameron Diaz and Matt Damon. That's down from No. 19 in September, when he was roughly on a par with Brad Pitt and Halle Berry.

The percentage of people who say they like Mr. Leno has fallen nine points to 75% since August, according to surveys from E-Poll Market Research. The percentage of people who described him as "funny" dropped five points to 59% in the survey, though both that figure and his likability were ranked above Mr. Letterman's.

Some analysts say Mr. Leno can repair the damage. "If he uses his humor to connect with fans, it's easy to do," said David Schwab, vice president of Octagon First Call, a celebrity-consulting arm of Interpublic.

NBC is putting the finishing touches on the new program, but Mr. Leno will be taking at least one of the sketches from his prime-time show with him: "Cop N' Kitty," in which he plays a "hard-boiled" police officer whose partner is a "hotshot rookie" cat.

"I know it sounds stupid," Mr. Leno said in an online video disclosing that the sketch would accompany him to "Tonight," "but I think it's pretty funny."

Write to Sam Schechner at [email protected]

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