Leno to 10 PM

[Scott Fybush]

So the news is breaking this evening that NBC is planning to eliminate 
their 10 PM programming as we've known it, replacing it in 2010 with a 
new hour-long Jay Leno show.

The Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart notes, in his blog entry tonight 
on the topic, that this move does two things: it gives NBC a way to 
extend late-night into a fourth hour, just as it's done with Today in 
the mornings, and it moves NBC from the "22-hour-a-week" network 
prime-time business, like CBS and ABC, into the "17-hour" business, like 
Fox.

All of which leads me to wonder...

Just as NBC gives affiliates flexibility to shift the extra hours of 
Today around to meet local programming needs (we get hour 3 at 10, 
instead of 9, and hour 4 at 11, instead of 10, so that our local WHEC 
can run Regis and Kelly at 9), could some NBC stations end up doing 
local news at 10 instead of 11, thus starting Leno at 10:37 and smoothly 
leading into Conan at 11:37 and Fallon at 12:37?

I can't imagine WHDH doing that - they're already in the 10 PM news 
business, after all, with the WLVI show - but I could imagine WNBC 
giving it a shot, putting its struggling local news up against WNYW and 
WPIX instead of the tougher competition at 11 from WABC and WCBS, and 
then making WABC and WCBS face off against the second half-hour of Leno 
at 11?

Total speculation here, I know...but we've certainly seen the networks 
do stranger stuff lately, haven't we?

s