Posted by Excellent on April 20, 2009 at 21:40:10:
In Reply to: Jay Leno is staying at NBC, in prime-time posted by madcityradio.com on December 09, 2008 at 07:28:34:
from Tim Cuprisin at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel --
Boston's NBC affiliate doesn't want to air Leno in prime time
Posted: Apr. 3, 2009
Remember the last time a revolution got its start in Boston? That one took a little while to catch on, but it turned out to be pretty big.
This time, the unrest began with an announcement by Boston's NBC affiliate, WHDH-TV, that it's planning to air a local newscast in place of Jay Leno's prime-time show, which launches in the fall at 9 p.m. Central Time.
So far, no other NBC stations have suggested they don't want to air the Monday-through-Friday Leno show, itself a revolutionary change in how a major broadcast network programs the prime-time hour leading in to the regular late newscast.
But NBC is already playing the redcoat, threatening WHDH's owner, Sunbeam Television, with the loss of network programming. NBC owns a station in Boston, WNEU, which carries the Telemundo Spanish-language network, and could easily turn that into an NBC affiliate.
While the loss of the seventh-biggest market in the country would be a blow, it's not likely that it alone will bring a wholesale revolt of affiliates.
But this does put more pressure on the prime-time Leno show to perform - and deliver viewers to the late news.
As for WHDH, an hour of local news gives the station all the commercial revenue from that hour. Network programming has limited local commercial time, with the rest going to the network.
With the TV landscape changing along with the rest of the communications industry, local television stations will have to focus even more on local programming to differentiate themselves from cable outlets. News remains the focus of local programming, and an hour more of it may be one way to generate desperately needed revenue.