Host Jay Leno gestures during a panel for his upcoming television series "The Jay Leno Show" at the Television Critics Association Cable summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif. on August 5, 2009.MARIO ANZUONI
Today is Jay Day.
All the wild online histrionics over the fate of Jay Leno's 10 p.m. train-wreck talk show, and whether or not he's about to regain the host role on The Tonight Show, or whether Conan O'Brien jumps to Fox or a half-dozen other wild scenarios, will be determined here shortly, one way or another. Something big, and possibly very weird is about to happen.
Let's set the stage: Jay and Conan's bosses, NBC chairman Jeff Gaspin and primetime prez Angela Bromstad, have to address what has turned out to be TV's biggest soap opera, at least for the last week. At 10 a.m. sharp local time (1 p.m. ET), NBC's top guns have to decide Jay and Conan's future, one way or another.
And the story turns tenser every day. Yesterday Leno was performing standup shows in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. When asked if he was moving back to 11:35 p.m., he hemmed and hawed, but said "I think so," a couple of times. He also described the situation this way: "It's all screwed up."
The Jay-Conan story is the only topic of discussion at the winter TV critics tour, and the two NBC top guns have to fix two problems. So far the Jay-Conan plotlines have sprung from unnamed NBC sources and random TMZ supposition. In accepted soap fashion, million-dollar careers are at stake and egos are at risk.
This should be a compelling live event, since NBC has to right two huge money-losing wrongs - moving Jay to 10 p.m. and putting Conan behind The Tonight Show desk - and not look like the bad guy by slighting one or the other. If the peacock network is ever going to do their damage control, there are roughly 200 TV critics from newspapers and web outlets here, all waiting for answer. Might as well do it in one fell swoop.
The best part is the pressure point: The NBC bosses have to commit, one way or another. One theory suggested that NBC was going to put Jay back at 11:35 p.m., for a half-hour show, followed by Conan at 12:05 a.m., for a second half-hour. Ridiculous. No sane network would ever mount two expensive nightly half-hour talk shows. NBC is already losing money on these two lemons.
Now they have to make the call and we'll be doing it live. Why do I think something big is going to happen? Because I can feel it in the air.
Also, because NBC is a fourth-place network with nothing to lose. And because there was an AP wire story last night quoting NBC affiliate honchos demanding that the mother ship bump Leno back to 11:35 p.m., and find somewhere, anywhere, for Conan. America still loves Jay Leno, it would seem, just not at 10 p.m. And can you imagine the hype value of Leno returning to The Tonight Show? He could joke his way back into it.
And Conan? There are still some things you can't fake, even on television, and O'Brien looked pissed about the whole imbroglio on Friday night's show. Some Internet reports have the lanky Irishman jumping to the Fox network.
Mostly I feel something big is going to happen because last night I saw New York Times TV critic Bill Carter scurrying like a sandcrab down the hallway at the Ritz-Carlton, looking pale and a little distressed.
Bill Carter is the pace car for American TV coverage and wrote the book The Late Shift chronicling the Leno-Letterman contract wars of the early nineties. Carter is juiced in with the networks and if anybody gets the word of something big first, it will be him.
And he looked a bit shocked. Carter was either rushing for the last shuttle to the CBS Survivor reunion party, or he had some big news. We're going to find out very shortly. Join the conversation.