Subscribe“Five years ago NBC announced that it would hand the job of host of that franchise show to Conan O’Brien in May 2009. Since then the network has maneuvered to try to keep Mr. Leno, who continues to be the late-night ratings leader, fearing that he could leave and start a new late-night show on a competitor’s network. ‘The Tonight Show’ is seen at 11:35 weeknights.
Mr. Leno, 58, was known to have suitors, including ABC, the Fox network and the Sony television studio. But he was apparently persuaded to stay at NBC after aggressive personal wooing by Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric.
Retaining Mr. Leno will undoubtedly be seen as a coup for Mr. Zucker, who has faced some serious questions about the wisdom of guaranteeing ‘The Tonight Show’ to Mr. O’Brien and possibly losing Mr. Leno to another network.
…The new show, which will begin next fall, is expected to be set in Mr. Leno’s longtime studio in Burbank, Calif. Mr. Leno is expected to retain many of the most popular elements of his ‘Tonight Show,’ including his monologue and bits like ‘Headlines’ and ‘Jay Walking.’ One ‘Tonight Show’ staff member said the new program would not be a variety show.
Mr. O’Brien, currently the host of NBC’s ‘Late Night,’ will move ‘The Tonight Show’ to a new studio on the NBC Universal lot in Universal City, Calif., in May. Mr. Leno, who is known to want to work as much as possible, would then miss only three months on the air, and would use that time to prepare his new show.
An executive involved in the discussions with Mr. Leno said that Mr. Leno finally came around to the idea that the television business had changed and a show like his could be a success in prime time.
Running the same show in prime time five nights a week would be a novelty for a broadcast network. Such so-called stripped shows have been a staple of daytime broadcasting.
The offer of a weeknight prime-time show is one that Mr. Zucker has favored for some time. In 2002, when David Letterman, Mr. Leno’s competitor at CBS, was contemplating whether to renew his contract, Mr. Zucker offered him a show at 8 o’clock weeknights. He turned it down.
Executives involved in the decision said Monday that because ratings have decreased and costs are becoming more critical, NBC could reap an enormous financial benefit from this move.
Though Mr. Leno will command an enormous salary, probably more than $30 million a year, the cost of his show will be a fraction of what a network pays for dramas at 10 p.m. Those average about $3 million an episode. That adds up to $15 million a week to fill the 10 p.m. hour. Mr. Leno’s show is expected to cost less than $2 million a week.
In addition, NBC will get more weeks of original programming. Network dramas typically make 22 to 24 episodes a year. Under this deal, the executives involved in the discussions said, Mr. Leno will perform 46 weeks a year.
That cost differential will probably be enough for NBC to absorb any fall in ratings from its current slate of dramas. Mr. Leno has averaged 4.8 million viewers for his show this year, with a rating of 1.3, or 1.7 million people, in the category of viewers ages 18 to 49, which most advertisers favor.
Few shows now at 10 p.m. could be considered hits. They include ‘CSI: Miami,’ and ‘CSI: New York’ on CBS and ‘Law & Order SVU’ and ‘E.R.’ on NBC. ‘E.R.’ is about the leave the air. ‘SVU’ will probably move to 9 p.m. next fall.
There have been no new hits at 10 p.m. on any network in almost four years; ratings for shows in that time slot continue to fall.
That does not mean that either the network or Mr. Leno has no risk in the move. Mr. Leno’s shows tend to fare best in their first half hour; if they were to decline too much in the second half hour, NBC’s affiliated stations would see their news shows adversely affected. And there may be some question about whether Mr. Leno’s show at 10 might diminish the stature of Mr. O’Brien’s ‘Tonight Show’ at 11:35.
But Peter Lassally, the longtime late-night producer of shows starring Johnny Carson, Mr. Letterman and now Craig Ferguson, said that NBC came to Mr. Carson in the late 1980s with a similar idea, but that Mr. Carson turned it down.
‘It’s all different now,’ Mr. Lassally said. ‘The economic factors have changed so much it makes complete sense for NBC to try this.’” *
The Situational Construction of Desks: A Socio-Cognitive Framework What is a desk? Is a desk a thing, or a process? In this paper I argue that a desk is a product of situated cognition. Taking as a starting point dersin's definition of a desk - "precisely that location on or around which one creates a document" - I extend it to include the actors who are engaging in the activity of creating a document. Therefore this work also owes a debt to Actor-Network Theory (ANT). A desk, then, requires a common location, actors, and a locus for the activity of the actors, namely the document. When the actors, more specifically the individuals involved in the production of a document, come together in one location during a common span of time, with the goal of producing a document, a desk comes into being. A desk, then, is a situational construct. Once this group with common goals is dissolved, usually through accomplishing the goal, this situational cognitive construct of desk is no more. This theoretical construct of desks allows us to see why so many different types of objects are referred to as desks (cf. Ikea catalog).
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Testimony of Henry Tavolo
General Dynamics, Advanced Furniture Division
Before House Select Committee on Office Furnishings
Rep. Virginia Foxx, Chair
Classification: Top Secret
August 21, 2008, Morning session
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Foxx: To continue ██████████████████████████████████ desk ████
Tavolo: Well, ██████████ cross-cultural ██████████████████
desk █████████ context ██████████████████ could ███████████████
boss-secretary ███ has ████████████████████████████████
███████████████████████████████████ long history ██████████
████████ bending ████████████████████████ sweep off ███████
████████████████ leverage this ██████████████████████ ops ███
easy cleanup ████████████████
Foxx: ████████████ foreign ████████████████████ desks
████████████████████████████████████████ clandestinely?
Tavolo: Indeed ████████████ mahogany ████████████████
████████████████████ internet. Once we █████████████████████
███████ six minutes ███████████████ formica or even █████████
███████████████ sweat-damaged █████████████████████████████
blotter.
Foxx: ████████████ terrorist ███████████████ "lap desks?"
Attorney for Mr. Tavolo: Off record?
Foxx: Yes.
[Off record conversation from 11:14 to 11:23]
Foxx: OK, let's go back on record.
Tavolo: With respect, I cannot answer that question on advice of counsel.
Foxx: OK, let's break for lunch.
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posted by Dr-Baa at 12:32 PM on December 9, 2008 [3 favorites]