Monday, January 11, 2010

Tonight show and health care reform

NBC's late night experiment has gone up in flames. Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show ends Feb. 12, and who knows what things will look like after the Winter Olympics end.
How did NBC get in this mess? They tried to make everybody happy and keep control of all of them. Now everybody's unhappy and everything is flying apart.
Several years ago, they thought they might lose Conan O'Brien, so NBC promised him the Tonight Show starting in 2009. But Jay Leno was top-ranked in his time period. And not ready to go retire to his garage.
In trying to keep both Jay and Conan happy, now stations across the nation are unhappy with their lower ratings. So Jay's 10 p.m. show must go. Can they squeeze both in after the late local news, or will Conan head to FOX or somewhere else?
And what's going to fill the 10 p.m. timeslots through the week? I watch just a little network TV (hey, American Idol starts Tuesday) so it doesn't bother me much.
Hopefully the Democrats will learn some lessons from this in their health care deliberations. We've got a top-notch health care system. Tinker too much with what works and you could have disaster on your hands.
And angry patients will make more noise than angry TV stations.

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