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NFL Divisional Round Weekend Announcing: NBC’s Late-Night Solution is More Sports

Jan 15, 2010, 3:35 PM UTC

â†µThe most fascinating fight in America right now is the battle for NBC's Tonight Show. It seems that nearly the entire entertainment industry, and the internet, has taken to the defense of O'Brien, but that doesn't mean NBC – O'Brien's current employer who is still letting him host the Tonight Show despite a daily barrage of wisecracks at the network's expense – is hopping on the Coco bandwagon. In fact, once O'Brien publicly announced he would not accept a move to the 12:05 AM slot, NBC has been on the attack. â†µ

â†µâ†µEnter Dick Ebersol. â†µ

â†µâ†µIn an interview in today’s New York Times, Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports, had no problem giving his opinion on the late-night situation:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥Referring to the pointed jokes made this week by Mr. O’Brien and David Letterman of CBS, Mr. Ebersol said it was “chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings.”â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥He added that “what this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan.” Mr. Ebersol is a veteran at the network, with a longstanding relationship with NBC Universal’s embattled chief executive, Jeff Zucker. Mr. Ebersol also has a deep link to the network’s late-night history, having been a creator of “Saturday Night Live,” and he has been frequently consulted on changes in NBC’s late-night lineup.â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µEbersol admits he tried to persuade O’Brien to change his style to make it more palatable to ‘middle America’ but the host refused to take his advice. He also defended Leno by saying Jay had nothing to do with any of these moves before saying, about O’Brien, “we bet on the wrong guy.”â†µâ†µIt’s ugly. NBC’s prime time ratings have already been in the tank for years, and while Leno did better than Letterman in his late-night slot, he completely bombed in the 10:00 p.m. slot. NBC moved Leno to 10:00 p.m. to placate one of their big-ticket stars, but also because producing a talk and variety show five days a week is far cheaper than paying for the production of five new dramas or investigative news programs. So even though Jay was doing poorly, he still wasn’t losing anywhere near as much money for the network as five failing dramas would. â†µ

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â†µSo what's the solution? Well, it's Ebersol. The solution for NBC is more sports.
â†µ
â†µThe network announced their new 10:00 p.m. lineup yesterday and it includes a reality show produced by Jerry Seinfeld, two Law & Order shows, Ron Howard's Parenthood and Dateline. Here's my suggestion: Sports on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. During the season, swap out the Monday football show (due to contract issues with the NFL) for the big-ticket Sunday Night Football.â†µ

â†µâ†µAnd big sports stuff too. Why did Bob Costas do that live interview with Mark McGwire on MLB Network? Costas is NBC Sports, so let him host the show and introduce the different segments, while giving him his own sit-down interview at least once a week. It could be like a combination of Dateline and Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, but sprinkled with a lot more light-hearted actual sports as well. On some nights they could show old Olympics footage – like a show with every single 100-meter world record being broken at once with new video overlay technology, with interviews from the living participants. Or take a famous boxing match from a generation ago and replay it, with live commentary from both fighters in a town-hall meeting setting. That has to be more entertaining than whatever Leno was doing. Heck, tie in other NBC programming and make one day a week the Biggest Loser: Ex-Linemen Edition. NBC was looking for something for Tiki Barber to host anyway. â†µ

â†µâ†µSports on NBC, in prime time, five days a week. And obviously, focus on football as much as possible. Look at last week’s numbers for the Cowboys-Eagles game. Per NBC:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥NBC Sports’ coverage of Saturday night’s Dallas Cowboys 34-14 blowout victory over the Philadelphia Eagles was the most-watched primetime Wild Card Playoff game ever and also set other ratings milestones:â†µâ‡¥
â†µâ‡¥* Delivered the best primetime viewership for any network in nearly a year - since Super Bowl XLIII on NBC.â†µâ‡¥
â†µâ‡¥* Attracted the biggest Saturday primetime viewership on any network in nearly 16 years since CBS’s tabloid-fueled Lillehammer Olympics coverage.â†µâ‡¥
â†µâ‡¥* NBC’s biggest primetime Saturday audience in nearly 22 years since Saturday night comedy line-up.â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥The Eagles-Cowboys game (8:00-11:15 PM ET) drew 32.1 million viewers, the most-watched Saturday primetime Wild Card game ever. The Jets-Bengals game (4:30-7:45 PM ET) drew 25.0 million viewers, the best Saturday Wild Card Game 1 in more than a decade.â†µâ‡¥
â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥For the full primetime night (8-11 PM) NBC averaged 32.3 million viewers, the biggest primetime viewership on any network since NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl XLIII, the most-watched program in television history. NBC Sports Wild Card primetime had more viewers than, among other shows, the 2009 Academy Awards and the 2009 season finale of American Idol.â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µThirty-two million viewers and the game was a blowout ... on a Saturday night. Add in the fact FOX averaged 19.1 million viewers on Sundays during the season, CBS boasted 17.2-million viewers for their games and NBC won 15 of 16 Sunday nights this season, pulling in a season-long rating of 19.4 million viewers and it’s clear that people simply love watching football.â†µâ†µNow, I understand those numbers are for games, and it’s impossible to put NFL games on every night of the week in a 10:00 p.m. timeslot. But heck, even Football Night in America drew 7.4 million viewers as the NFL lead-in on Sunday nights and with the amount of sports available for broadcast, and the amount of athletes willing to do 60 Minutes like tell-all interviews, there should be no problem filling the time with all sports, every night. â†µ

â†µâ†µSaturday, January 16â†µ
â†µTunison is right that this is the best weekend of the NFL calendar. So obviously that means we’ll get three more blowouts, right? Let’s hope not. â†µ

â†µâ†µFollowing a one-hour FOX pregame show, Arizona travels to New Orleans to face the Saints at 4:30 p.m. with Kenny, Moose and Goose on the call. The radio call, via Westwood One, will feature Dave Sims, James Lofton and Hub Arkush. Sims is one of the great guys in the business, even if he does say “times-out” instead of “timeouts.” â†µ

â†µâ†µWith CBS getting both late games this weekend – FOX must love that – their pregame shows are truncated to just half an hour, with Saturday’s starting at 7:30 p.m. leading up to game two. The Ravens travel to the Colts with Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf on the call. Radio with Ian Eagle, Tony Boselli and Laura Okmin.â†µ

â†µâ†µSunday, January 17â†µ
â†µFOX has the early game Sunday with Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Pam Oliver and Chris Myers working Dallas at Minnesota in what could be, even at 1 p.m., the highest-rated non-Super Bowl game of all time. Kevin Harlan, Randy Cross and Mark Malone on the radio call.â†µ

â†µâ†µIn the late game, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms call the Jets at Chargers. Marv Albert, Warren Moon and Scott Kaplan on radio. â†µ

â†µâ†µH/T to Fang’s Bites for the radio pairings. As for the video this week, it’s hard to believe that this genius video was only done seven months ago. I guess we can just play it in reverse now, huh. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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