What Will Leno Do To Our Genre?

All you need to know about the current state of TV is that tonight Stargate Atlantis airs for the final time, and Howie Do It begins its circle of (hopefully short) life.

NBC’s announcement that it will air five hours of Jay Leno in primetime every week is cause for concern among TV viewing faithful. Nothing against Leno, I find some of his stuff very funny. And I know NBC dreaded nothing more than seeing Leno turn up on another network against Conan O’ Brien.

But a major network is effectively waving the white flag on trying to program the 10 p.m. ET hour. Of course, it figures NBC would be the network to do this. Their failure-filled fall lineup has been one of the biggest targets in the industry over the past few months.

– Pictured: (l-r) Jay Leno, Jake Witherspoon — NBC Photo: Paul Drinkwater

It’s still not encouraging for fans of sci-fi, fantasy or good old-fashioned scripted dramas of any kind. Keeping with a playing it safe strategy, NBC has opted to squeeze a few more pints of blood out of ER’s final season. Adding a couple more episodes to ER will delay the start of Kings, a modern-themed take on the story of David and Goliath. The message here seems clear. New shows gathering buzz are great, but we’ll gladly kick them to the curb for an established show (even a fast-fading one like ER.)

That’s now five hours of Leno per week, a healthy dose of numerous versions of Law and Order and reality standbys like Biggest Loser and America’s Got Talent. Basic math dictates there are precious few hours left for scripted programming of any kind. Heroes is on life support, pending whatever fixes Bryan Fuller can come up with. On a network that had a couple of other hit shows to its name, Heroes would already be gone.

I am no huge fan of Knight Rider, and My Own Worst Enemy got the hook before I could learn who any of the characters were. Those shows, however, at least proved NBC was trying. If NBC or any other network had pitched a fall TV season with 20-30 hours a week of Jay Leno and Howie Mandel, they wouldn’t have had two advertisers to rub together.

That’s what NBC is about to ask us to accept. If somehow they get away with this (an admittedly big if), other networks will line up to follow. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, particularly where cheap TV is concerned.

Sci-fi has always asked big leaps of faith from the audience watching and the creative individuals bringing it to us.  In most cases, it costs far more money than an ordinary show. And yes, for every Star Trek that has been worth the leap of faith, there have been 10 Bionic Women that couldn’t nail the landing. But it will be tragic if we turn on network TV one day and find there is not a single program willing to try the jump.