According to their marketing director, NBC's top marketing priority for 2009 is...
Jay Leno.Yeah, because America is so unfamiliar with that guy. You ever get the feeling NBC executives secretly have money on NBC failing? Or that maybe they got their jobs because they read something about television once? Don't make a new show your top marketing priority. Don't make the new Tonight Show host your top marketing priority. Don't make any of the shows on your network that are actually really good (The Office, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights) but not watched enough your top priority. Nah, don't do that, Peacock. Put all your money behind The Chin. Here's the explanation:
“Leno is the single most important marketing priority of the year,” says NBC Entertainment Marketing President Adam Stotsky. “We are deploying the necessary resources and bringing out the heavy creative guns.”
Stotsky hints that one potential positioning will be as an accompaniment to the network's news programming. “He [Leno] likes to talk about this as a broadcasting brand. You can start your day getting informed on topical issues with Today, get deeper insight with Nightly News and Brian Williams, and then laugh about the news at 10 with Leno.”
Great! Or we can laugh at the news at 11 and 11:30 with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert! Because they're way more funny, edgy, and relevant than Jay Leno! We get it, this 10 o'clock nightly talk show hasn't been done before. Mostly because it's a bad idea. But as a cost-saving measure, it makes some sense. Sacrifice a little in ratings and save a lot of money, which you can then put into other stuff. But making Leno the #1 marketing priority throws all that out the window.
If NBC's executives were chefs, the first recipe in their cookbook would be for chicken salad made out of chicken shit.
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