Today in Pasadena Jay Leno came out to talk about his new show The Jay Leno Show that will be premiering on NBC at 10p on September 14th. I will admit I have never really watched his show when he had it on at late night, but he won me over today. Largely because you can feel his excitement for it. He says that he was getting burned out with The Tonight Show and is looking forward to change things up. He told us to prep for the show, he started running 4 miles a day and so far has lost about 12 pounds. So that is why I ask with his shrinking size, will he get more of an audience. I really think so.
The show will start out with a monologue like his old one, but after that things will change. He has a bigger set now with no desk and he will start to incorporate the audience more. Also added was a green friendly race track where the guests on the show will be able to race each other like Shaq vs Cameron Diaz. Two changes when it comes to the guests is that there will only be one or two of them a night. Another big change are the musical guests. Instead of having one musical guest every night, they will only have two a week and they will be mash ups of band. Another change is Jay wants to make stars of his comedians as correspondents like Rachel Harris. Leno said he is also talking to Brian Williams about doing a segment on his show about stories that were not good enough for the Nightly News.
Well as we know the affils are concerned about not having a drama lead into their news and Leno knows they are the ones that make up NBC. So what he is going to do is close out the show with his popular bits like Jaywalking and when he is done with the show he will say its time for your news and it will go straight into your local news. There will be no commercials in between him and the news.
So is there any tension between him and Conan? None at all. The two are friends and will not be competing for guests. They will work it out among themselves. BTW on Conan note, NBC says that Letterman is winning with the audience numbers, but Conan is winning in the key 18-49 advertising demographics. Nice spin and interesting.
So when Leno premiere on September 14th, will I be watching? Yes I will and it is no longer about curiosity about what he can do, but because he won me over with his excitement!!!
