Jay Leno, NBC make a prime-time deal - USATODAY.com

Jay Leno and NBC make a prime-time deal

NBC really had itself in a bind, and got out of it with a pretty good tactic.

They were contractually obligated to remove Jay from Tonight in favor of Conan. The most likely result of that would be that the workaholic Leno would go to ABC, directly opposite Conan, leaving Conan pulling in only a tiny fraction of Jay's old audience.

Faced with this problem, NBC decided to roll the dice and offer Jay a chance to do his same old show - except every week night at ten instead of 11:30. It's the earliest any network has ever offered a nightly talk show. The network figures there's not much to lose because their ten o'clock shows are sucking wind and cost a bundle to produce. In comparison, Jay's gabfest is inexpensive to produce. This move enables the network to eliminate five one-hour shows - a tremendous savings in their production budgets - which assures that their profits will improve even if Jay's ratings are weak! It may not work because people may not be interested in a ten o'clock chat show. It's difficult to change something so ingrained into our culture. But it's definitely a strategy worth a try.