Just came across this story about the Tonight Show being forced to fire 20-25 staffers. One possible explanation - "I don’t think ad sales are off. I just think the people who bought this company, Comcast, wants to go through everything at NBC and get their money back,” said an NBC insider. That doesn't sound like an outfit that is going to back up the truck for the Big East.
Just the opposite. Comcast is trimming fat so they can pay for better content. It was known that Comcast would clean house and cut payroll. That's what they do.
I think the other very big thing to keep in mind is that sports is a live broadcast where the target audience wants to see it live. In other words, most fans don't DVR the games (skipping ads) unless they absolutely can't avoid it. Most fans want to watch the game in real-time, for fear that someone will ruin it by telling them the score. Nobody is going to ruin Jay Leno's jokes....except for Jay, of course. That's the whole "big to do" about the college football contracts; they sell bigger ad money because they almost guarantee that eyeballs will be on the products. The invention of the DVR has changed college football as we know it (someone should write a book about that!)...
Leno is a garbage show that turned into a PR nightmare for NBC with the Conan situation. It's never really recovered fully. I don't see this as relevant to our TV deal. Shows restructure all the time.
That is fine and good, but I'm pretty sure the NBC late night has significantly higher ratings than either Letterman or Kimmel - it just might be an expensive show to produce. In any event, I am sure the story has no relevance to the Big East television rights.
