Granted, if NBC has hit bottom, they've done so in a cavern deeper and scarier than anything they could have imagined a year ago. But like the rest of the nation, when it often seemed that our very foundations were coming undone and that our economy — or NBC's ratings report — would become a desolate wasteland populated solely by marauding cannibals; in the face of that, to find out we've stabilized on "pretty lousy" doesn't seem half bad. Our guess is its a scenario NBC would take in a heartbeat.

The first glimmers came last week when the Hollywood Reporter made the dramatic announcement that "NBC's prime time talk show has halted its heavily reported ratings slide. The piece goes on to outline how for eleven straight shows Leno had matched or improved its week over week performance in the advertiser-critical adult demo, ultimately earning his highest ratings in months last Wednesday.

When the Jay Leno experiment took to the airwaves, one of its premises was that it would be producing low cost, fresh shows year-round while its scripted competition aired reruns. Initially, that seemed another doomed NBC prediction, when the first wave of reruns hit the air and Leno tumbled before them. But suddenly, within the last week, Leno started holding his own against the repeats.

Last week, during Thanksgiving, Leno actually scored a milestone of sorts, certainly a dubious milestone, but a milestone nonetheless, as a rare Leno rerun earned higher ratings than an Ugly Betty rerun in the earlier 9 pm slot.

Further, the rest of the NBC late night line-up is showing signs of the apocalypse postponed. While NBC's iron lock on the 11:30 slot against Letterman is now long gone, the race between Conan O'Brien and Letterman has now turned from a complete rout into a nearly even match in what looks like it will be a long drawn-out struggle. Among the 18 - 49 year old demo, tvbythenumbers reports, NBC has halted its free fall and is now in an ongoing deadlock with CBS.

Of course, as the Reporter points out:

Leno's recent stability doesn't change the fact that on any given evening, his shows is usually the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network. It also remains to be seen if Leno can continue to defy gravity as the holiday slump gets underway in earnest.

But for a man like Jay Leno who just a few weeks ago was staring down into the cold earth lining his own grave, last place must seem a heck of an improvement from no place. Next stop: second to last place!

Suddenly the Universe is a very cold and empty place.

• Apparently we are not a nation of people waiting for Amanda Woodward to return to Melrose Place. Heather Locklear's trip back to the series did little to ease its struggles, lifting its gruesome ratings by a mere 15 percent to a 0.8 rating in the 18 - 45 demo. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Meanwhile, just as the world was sending its mocking obituaries to the printers, guess who's having a good week? Jay Leno is up five percent this week, "matching its highest ratings in six weeks." [Hollywood Reporter]

• With two and a half months to go, the Super Bowl's ad space is almost sold out. CBS reports a 90 percent sell-out rate thus far, meaning only six slots are still available. Like everything else these days, Super Bowl ad sales are being viewed as a barometer of the nation's economic health. [Ad Age]

• A Writers Guild report of diversity among its ranks finds "little if any improvement" for the prospects of women and minority writers. Variety writes that the report "found that women scribes remain stuck at 28% of TV employment and 18% in features while the minority share has been frozen at 6% since 1999." [Variety]

• Jennifer Hudson will play Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of the ex-South African President Nelson Mandela in Winnie, a biopic to be directed by Darrell J. Roodt, maker of Cry the Beloved Country. [Variety]

• Roger Ebert may be off the airwaves, but his influence lives on, remarkably, as the online buzz king. A survey by Nielsen of which critics dominate the internet reveals that Ebert remains a goliath online, crushing all the competition combined. [thehotblog]

• Making 2012's grosses look like the change fallen under the cushions of your sofa, the video game Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 reported sales of more than $550 million in the first week of its release. The LA Times puts production costs on the game in the $40 - $50 million range (a fraction of 2012 or Avatar), putting its total budget including marketing somewhere around $200 million. Who's in the wrong business now, movie people? [LA Times]

• Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson told a reporter that, despite his PG-13 rating he had upped the violence in his upcoming film after early test screening audiences "were simply not satisfied" with the depiction of a character's death. [Hitfix]

• Nikki Finke reports that investor Carl Icahn has been snatching up MGM bonds like "A bat out of hell." [Deadline]

• The LA Times reports further on Disney's heroic decision to pull the plug on McG's attempt to America's memories of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with his remake. The paper writes that execs saw the project, scripted by novelist Michael Chabon as "too dark" and that they will take another stab at it somewhere down the line. [LA Times]

This Monday's show averaged a 3 rating and a 1.15 in the critical 18- 49 demographic group, which determines the show's desirability to advertisers. The 1.15 number was against powerhouse Monday Night Football, but for the first time it sent Leno below the 1.5 mark that NBC had said, pre-launch, would define success.

The free-falling ratings have also dragged down the rest of the network's after hours line-up. The NY Times reports:

Conan O'Brien on the Tonight Show fell to just a 1.8 rating in the overnight household ratings and the preliminary 18-49 ratings put him well below his main competitor, David Letterman on CBS. (Mr. Letterman's household ratings at 11:35 p.m. even beat Mr. Leno's at 10 p.m. a 3.3 to a 3.0.) ABC's late-night entry Jimmy Kimmel scored a 1.5, putting him closer to Mr. O'Brien — who starts a half-hour earlier than Mr. Kimmel - than Mr. O'Brien is to Mr. Letterman.

Across America, NBC's affiliate stations are sounding increasingly ready for war in the face of sinking viewership for their evening news show, pulled down by Leno's flailing lead-in.

To which the response from the show has been some minor tweaks to the format: moving the "signature" Jay Walking and headline-reading bits to their old slot after the monologe; moving them up from the back of the show — where they had been placed on the insane belief that people would stay around for them and thus provide a strong closer/lead-in to the local news. In other words, making the show even more like Leno's Tonight Show.

And now finally, the press, always eager to take a few whacks, has officially started the countdown clock on Jay's final days.

"To Save NBC, Rethink Leno Strategy" demands Newser.

"Is It Time to Pull the Plug on Leno?" asks an ABC news headline.

"Is Leno's 10 p.m. experiment nearing an end?" asks MSNBC!...of NBC network fame.

However, with the flood of bad press raining down on Jay's head, that can only mean one thing: rebound is just minutes away. While one would have to be certifiable to bet on Leno and NBC at this dark hour, the law of nature that no one ever lost a buck betting against the wisdom of the press has not been repealed.

In the killing fields of NBC chatland, what little peace and stability had been achieved was just been blown to smithereens by a little hint dropped by Jay Leno, that, oh yes, now that you mention it, he'd be willing to take his old slot back.

Pity poor Conan O'Brien; his ratings are off 47 percent from Jay's, competing not just against Leno's legacy but Letterman's ongoing scandal. And then his lead-off batter, in a Q&A with Broadcasting and Cable, drops this:

If someone [from new ownership] comes in tomorrow and puts you back at 11:35, are you thrilled?

Oh, I don't know. Are you married? Whatever you want, honey.

You know I don't believe a word you are saying, right?

I'm not having a bad time at 10 o'clock now. I look at this as a job, and now I'm faced with a challenge, and it's a challenge I find difficult but interesting. I find that when I go to Vegas, whereas before I might not sell out, all of a sudden it's sold out. I seem to be doing better in terms of public appearances. I am reaching a wider audience. Whether that translates to television just yet, I don't know. But I see a difference.

Now why is that, because I'm in the paper every day? I don't know. Because I'm on earlier? I'm actually doing well; this is almost the best year for personal appearances since I started. So there is no negativity there.

Do you want to go back to 11:35?

If it were offered to me, would I take it? If that's what they wanted to do, sure. That would be fine if they wanted to.

If you are Conan O'Brien reading the above, it might occur to you that that 11:30 slot to which Jay is graciously willing to return is the one that you currently occupy.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jay shows himself to be startingly self-aware of the differences between himself and Letterman, and delivering a sort of triple backhanded compliment, saying of Dave's current scandal:

He's not being a hypocrite; Dave has never set himself up as [a model citizen]. If it were me, it would kill me. I'm the guy who's been married 29 years. But Dave has never pretended to be Mr. Moral America, he's never set himself up that way. He's not a hypocrite. I don't know how it will be viewed. He doesn't do corporate days like me, he's not as advertiser-friendly as I am. I'm the guy when Coke or Pepsi is here, I come down and shake hands and take pictures, but he doesn't do that. I don't think it will have a big effect at all.

All this occurs as the backdrop to the ratings horror show of the Leno experiment. The moment we would see the genius of the whole plan, NBC had promised, was when the other networks dramatic shows went into reruns, and there would be low-cost Jay with fresh shows to come in and clean up. Well, last week Jay had his first head-to-head against reruns and the results were not pretty. Leno actually hit his lowest number yet against a CSI: Miami repeat.

And elsewhere, the Leno lead-in seems to be pulling down local news shows across the nation.

So just to sum up the Ben Silverman legacy: NBC has decimated one of its three prime-time hours, its affiliates news shows are sinking, its late night line-up is staggering along at half the viewership of a year ago, and now its 11:30 host must once again watch his back against his network teammate.

The one thing that can be said in this whole arrangement's favor is that NBC getting out of the drama business is probably a great thing for NBC and, certainly a great thing for America. It may not be a law of nature that the big networks are incapable of launching decent dramas, but it certainly looks that way at the moment, and extra-certainly does so for NBC which just surrendered the acclaimed Southland to basic cable. Until the network figures out a way to produce shows that seem to have been created in the same space-time continuum as the HBO shows, Mad Men, Damages and even Lost or 24, it is probably better for everyone that they just sit out a few games.

Taking over Ben Silverman's suicidal command structure, Gaspin has years of interviews ahead of him in which he pleads with the public to believe that, no, we really don't want to die, even as he attempts to pilot his way through a debris field of leftover decisions which continue to suggest that's exactly what NBC wants to do.

In an interview with The Wrap, Gaspin was forced to plead that, yes, NBC really does want good ratings; no, bad ratings are not our goal. As amazing as it may sound that a network chief would need to clarify such things, his predecessor actually made a point of publicly declaring that he was "managing for margin, not for ratings", i.e. keeping costs low was more important than keeping ratings high.

Citing development deals with JJ Abrams and Jerry Bruckheimer he said in the interview, while denying that the recent cancellation of Southland meant that NBC was getting out of the drama business:

"I have been going around town and talking to agencies and talking to producers and trying to make myself visible to say that, while we think we need to produce economically, the goal is not to manage for margins," Gaspin told TheWrap. "It is to put the best possible programs we can on the air."

And while NBC's overall programming budget may have shrunk, "Our development dollars have not changed one bit from five years ago, even though we have many less hours to develop for," Gaspin said. "Our goal is to produce good shows that get whatever's considered good ratings today."

But while the new corporate strategy may be to actually attract viewers, the network is still saddled with an hour of programming every night which threatens to turn their ratings profile into something that Lifetime and Current would flee like a vampire from a crucifix.

In the latest round of stats, NBC's avant-garde experiment, The Jay Leno Show has fallen behind cable programming in viewership among the all important 18 - 49 year old demographic. As Movieline points out, on this Tuesday night Leno was murdered in the demo by FX's Son's of Anarchy, which drew a 2.0 rating to Leno's brutal 1.8.

As long as you are sitting on that little toxic waste dump, maybe saying that you're trying for low ratings isn't such a bad idea after all?

It's great for NBC that they get to save mountains of production money by churning out Jay Leno Show episodes rather than shelling out to stage cop-show shoot-outs, but one of the biggest pillars on which this whole network affiliates contraption has been based is the lead-in networks providing their local stations for their local news shows. So for NBC the Leno equation works out dandy, with them reaping less ad revenues for Jay vs. a drama (particularly considering the sad state of their recent dramatic launches), but spending far less in production costs. But if you're an affiliate, and big chunk of your revenues comes from nightly local news, the fact that someone else is saving money by lowering your ratings is infuriating.

The canary in the coal mine of this bold experiment has always been how long will the affiliates sit still for this reinventing the broadcast paradigm. And today in the LA Times we get the first hint that the answer may be not much longer.

In the piece, one voice from flyover country makes his feelings about the new era pretty plain:

"I'm not pleased with what Leno is doing. I don't think anybody is," said Craig Allison, vice president and general manager of KSHB in Kansas City, Mo. Allison's late news is off slightly from where it was a year ago, and he's anxious about the months ahead.

"I don't think any NBC affiliate wanted to wake up in the fall with a weaker lead-in to their late news," Allison said.

The piece goes on, however, to make clear that NBC has largely been effective in silencing affiliate opposition by buying them off with extra ad slots that they can sell locally. And then, in good newspapery "to be sure" manner, the article offers up a quote to cancel out the above quote's support of the article's thesis.

"

We're quite pleased," said Brooke Spectorsky, longtime president and general manager of WKYC in Cleveland. So far the station's news performance is flat compared with a year ago, although there are "still days in which you squirm a little."

The LAT leaves it to us to imagine the gun held to Spectorsky's skull as he recited that line to its reporter.

However, whether the rumblings are perceived or real, if Jeff Zucker, and your GE bosses are currently looking to sell off their entertainment holdings, this is not the moment when you want anyone thinking that your entire operating model is about to come apart at the seams.

Last night, Tina Fey and company only logged 6.3 million viewers, which was down 25% from The Office which preceded it. It's also down almost a third in the adult demographic from the season debut last year, when Fey was hot off her stint as Sarah Palin on SNL. What happened? Well, there wasn't the heat or media attention of the Palin thing, so the only other way to get the word out about the show's return was NBC promos. And since no one is watching the molting peacock, how would anyone see them? Way to kill your only good show, guys.

On the show, NBC and corporate greed in general were definitely the bad guy. The whole episode revolved around the money troubles at the network so they were trying to reach out to middle America. Hm, does that sound anything like a money-strapped network giving away five hours of prime-time real estate to a cheap talk show that only old people and the chronically unfunny will love? Nah.

To spruce up The Girlie Show Jack orders Tracy and Jenna to appeal more to the middlebrow. Tracy does this by trying to get in touch with his roots and Jenna decides to go country. Taylor Swift she is not. And when the network gets her to sing some down-home promo tunes for their sports division, the only thing they have to give her is off-season tennis. That sounds more exciting than the network's current lineup.

When Tracy realizes that Grizz and Dot Com are keeping him in a bubble of privileged, he tries to go out on the street to meet regular folks, but he can't even find the elevator that he's not afraid of. And when he finally makes it outside he terrifies everyone by asking them things like "Are you a pre-op trans-centaur?" Maybe he can Twitter his way into America's hearts!

The biggest showdown with the network came when Kenneth was told that he can't get paid for overtime anymore. When he mistakenly opens Jack's paycheck and is mesmerized by all its zeros, he demands to get his overtime back. Then he finds out that it was Jack's bonus check and he hits his hillbilly roof and organizes a strike (see the clip below). Sure, everyone might see this as a reflection of the way corporate America reacted during the recent economic crisis, but all of us media hounds know that it is really Tina Fey lashing out against the suits in the home office. She is the one who thanked the network in her Emmy acceptance speech for "keeping us on the air even though we're so much more expensive than a talk show." It takes a real lady to stick it to the man.

And that is why we love 30 Rock. They know that they are the network's only good show, so they're not afraid to take countless jabs at the people who pay their salaries. What is NBC going to do? Cancel 30 Rock? The foam from the mouths of angry media elites would be enough to drown everyone at the corporate headquarters. Without 30 Rock the network will have nothing to win Emmys, maintain some street cred, and, you know, actually make people laugh. In the end, the protest is just like the one that Kenneth wages to get Jack to sign a paper saying he is a big fat liar: totally fruitless, but so much fun to watch.

• The DVR playback numbers are in! Nielsen measures and tabulates up the number of people who ultimately end up watching a show, even long after they air, often boosting upwards a show's total number. The big winners for thus far for the new season: dramas seem to be the viewing of choice in playback mode, in particular, the season premieres of Gray's Anatomy and The Mentalist. The big loser: NBC in general, and The Jay Leno Show in particular which saw almost no playback viewing. [Variety]

• The world's Disney Stores are getting a "floor to ceiling reboot" according to the NY Times. The family entertainment giant wants to turn the experience of shopping for Disney merchandise into more of well, an experience and is considering rebranding the stores as Imagination Parks. [NYT]

• Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, the team behind Comedy Central's recently concluded Reno 911 (and long ago of MTV's The State) have signed a deal to develop a new comedy for NBC. [THR]

• Paramount has paid two million dollars for a pitch. The untitled, undescribed, unknown feature is to be fleshed out by writers Aline Brosh McKenna and Simon Kinberg, and — if you wondered why the big price tag — produced by JJ Abrams. [Variety]

• Matthew Perry wants back on primetime. The former Friend has signed a deal with Sony to develop a single camera sitcom. [THR]

• The Weekly World News tabloid, famed for chronicling negotiations between America's political leaders and extraterrestrial visitors has signed CAA as its agency. The firm will develop entertainment properties based on WWN's cast of characters. No word yet whether Bat Boy will be seated with his fellow client Steven Spielberg at the CAA Christmas party. [THR]

After seeing the first six episodes completed for the second season, the network halted production on the project because, they say, it was too dark and gritty for Friday night at 9pm. Then why not air it elsewhere? Maybe later at 10pm? Oh, right, that place on the schedule is no longer available because Jay Leno gobbled up the primetime lineup like John Travolta at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The good-for-NBC Southland (or what passes for "critically acclaimed" on network TV these days) is produced by E.R. and The West Wing alum John Wells, did well in its original Thursday night at 10pm slot last season, where it debuted to an audience of about 10 million and won its time slot.

Wells, who has created hits for the network for years was none too pleased, as he told The Hollywood Reporter:

I'm disappointed that NBC no longer has the time periods available to support the kind of critically-acclaimed series that was for so many years, a hallmark of their success. We remain extremely proud of 'Southland' and are actively looking for another home for the series.

It was probably much more expensive to pay all those actors and writers and set designers and wardrobe people to make a decent show when you can pay Leno comparative chump change to make not-funny jokes and have people send him in headlines for free (just like the internet!).

Southland, which was set to roll out October 23, will be replaced by Dateline NBC for the foreseeable future. That's right, because news is cheap and "To Catch a Predator" is never gritty—or gripping.

The conversation around Roman Polanski has been a hard one to follow. Part of it is annoyance - it is unnerving to see how certain celebrities fall under scrutiny for consorting with minors and others can make it seem like an unfortunate lapse in judgment.

Jill at Feministe points out how many actors seem to feel that this is just peachy:

What I don't understand is why so many people are signing this petition. On the most basic level, it's especially disappointing when the signatories are people whose work I like and respect. Pedro Almodovar. Wes Anderson. Natalie Portman. Kristin Scott Thomas. Darren Aronofsky. Diane von Furstenberg. Julian Schnabel. Martin Scorsese. Tilda Swinton. Gael Garcia Bernal (there goes my biggest crush). Penelope Cruz.

But they are, after all, just entertainers. It's absolutely heartbreaking when the support comes from someone who should really know better - like the founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

"My personal thoughts are let the guy go," said Peg Yorkin, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things."

Lauren over at Feministe brings her experience into the narratives around Polanski, noting:

Rape is not the only assault. Around rape is a large segment of the population that questions the victim, a culture that looks down on victims for allowing themselves to be victimized, or keep them victimized, questions about the victim's credibility, questions about the legacy of rape and how bad it is, because how bad is rape really? Rape, because various levels and forms of sexual assault are systemic and pervasive across all societies, exists alongside one's experiences of unwanted touching, wanted touching, sexual objectification, sexual desire, sexual harassment, incest, love, leering eyes, cat calls, roaming hands, consent, confusion, tits, vagina, rectum, penis, mouth, rape and not-rape, all of it loaded, all of it veering at rape's ugly legacy, co-mingling, the legacy that tells us to be more careful, to dress more conservatively, to BE BETTER AT BEING VULNERABLE, or BE MORE POWERFUL, or BE MORE FEARFUL, or GET OVER IT ALREADY. Rape leaks into healthy, consensual experiences. It lingers. It pervades.

Roman Polanski initiated sexual contact with someone he knew to be underage, persisted after she said no, pled guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor, and fled the country when he feared he would go to prison anyway.

What's so disturbing about the articles isn't that people are claiming our legal system is flawed. It's that people - be they in Hollywood or your average citizen - are grasping for all kinds of ways to twist this back on the victim and to exonerate Polanski by denying this crime ever happened. So you want him to walk on a technicality? Fine. Admit that! But why are we denying that the rape ever happened?

It did happen.

Polanski admitted as such. So are people so invested in the idea that if we pretend it isn't "rape-rape" then the matter will be resolved?

As Rock says at the end of the clip: "The United States, we want to capture Osama Bin Laden, and murder him. We don't want to rape him - that would be barbaric!"

Rape is a barbaric act.

And I'm amazed it took a comedian to say it outright.

Heartbreakers [Feministe]
Getting Over It[Feministe]

Earlier:
Whoopi On Roman Polanski: It Wasn't 'Rape-Rape'
This Roman Polanski Thing? International Clusterfuck
Letters From Hollywood: Roman Polanski's Rape Of Child No Big Thing
Are Anti-Polanski Celebs Afraid To Speak Up?

After the announcement of today's new game show, it became apparent that NBC is destined to find the cheapest programming possible and is no longer concerned about how many viewers it can attract or making those expensive and pesky scripted shows. The future for the once-mighty station is much like that in Terminator, but before John Conner can return to the past to prevent the machines from taking over. There will be many more sad headlines out of NBC in years to come. A sample:

December 12, 2009: NBC Announces Plans to Phase Out All Scripted Programming by 2014

September 25, 2010:Heroes Promises It Will Actually, Finally Be Good This Season

October 12, 2010: The CW Surpasses NBC in Total Viewers

July 30, 2011: Jenna Bush and Kathie Lee Gifford to Host Today: Primetime

August 10, 2011: 24 Hour Fitness' Biggest Loser Nutrisystem Hour Brought To You By Cheerios Announces Lowest Series Finale in History

April 4, 2012: Original Must-See TV Lineup Returns to NBC—As Reruns

June 18, 2012: NBC Loses Last Scripted Show, 30 Rock, to the Hallmark Channel

August 4, 2012: More Americans Travel to London to Watch Olympic Games in Person Than Watch on NBC

January 23, 2013: After Jay Leno's Fatal On-Set Heart Attack, Dane Cook Prepares to Fill Nightly Hosting Duties

September 14, 2014: Saturday Night Live Attracts 200,000 Viewers, Highest Total in Three Seasons

December 12, 2014: FCC Announces It Will Finally Put an End to National Embarrassment of NBC

It means that we will miss out on our favorite part of the television season, where, after all the months of hype, a bunch of shows fail spectacularly and are canceled after only a few weeks. Usually that time of year is right now, and so far we only have one casualty (RIP TBL). Fuck this series of slow deaths, we miss our annual massacre!

It also means that we're going to be stuck with NCIS: Los Angeles and a host of other crap for the long haul. It also means that, while many are performing well, thanks to NBC and their awful Jay Leno experiment, there are actually fewer series premieres this year than usual. It even further means there are fewer people watching network television. You know when your show doesn't even crack 10 million and it's considered a big victory times are getting tough.

Here's a breakdown of how everything is doing so far:

The Good:

• NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS) is the clear breakout hit with 18.7 million on its debut, proving once again that Americans love shitty television.
• The Good Wife (CBS) bobbled most of it's lead in, but pulled in an excellent 13.7 million viewers and won its time slot. Way to go, Carol Hathaway!
• Modern Family (ABC) rode positive ratings to a 12.7 million bow and its companion Cougar Town (ABC) was right behind it with 11.6.
• Flash Forward (ABC) predicted itself 12.4 million viewers, so we'll at least see how the mystery ends. Still, it's no Lost.
• The Vampire Diaries only scared up 4.8 million (shit more teenage girls than that stand wailing out front of Robert Pattinson's hotel room on a daily basis), but that was The CW's highest debut ever.
• The Cleveland Show (Fox) did just about as well as Family Guy with a 9.4 million on a Sunday night.
• Accidentally on Purpose (CBS) made 9 million people not laugh.
• The Forgotten (ABC) and Eastwick (ABC) were just on the right side of average with 9.5 and 9.3 million respectively.
• Though the numbers for Glee (Fox) weren't the highest at 7.3 million, it's still being considered a victory since a show this good and quirky actually seems to be finding some sort of audience.

The Bad:

• The Jay Leno Show (NBC) started out nice and strong with an amazing 18 million, but then fell to 5.7 million a week later and its ratings continue to go up and down a bit, but usually lands at the bottom of the pile. Please, please, make the unfunny stop!
• Community (NBC) also had a strong debut, keeping most of the run-off from the Office for an audience of 7.7 million. However, the next week, more than 2 million checked out and its ratings were down to 5.4 million.
• Medical drama Mercy (NBC) will be on life support soon, with only 8.2 checking it out on it's first Wednesday night. Yes, NBC officially sucks.

The Ugly:

• Brothers (Fox) started off with 2.8 million. Let's see how long it holds on.
• Melrose Place is hobbling along with only 2.3 million viewers in its opening week, and not much more since then. The network has ordered more episodes and Heather Locklear is set to come back in November, so lets hope she can breathe life into this thing for the second time.
• The Beautiful Life (CW) already got it's ass canceled. We blame Mischa Barton's wisdom teeth.

The joke above about Pee Wee's abstinence ring was the only laugh of the whole hour. The Pee Wee revival is just like The Jay Leno Show, neither are especially bad in theory, but the execution has just been terrible. After this, Pee Wee told a bunch of stories from his childhood. We couldn't tell if these were real events that happened to actor Paul Reubens or fictional events that happened to the character Pee Wee Herman. We did ascertain that none of them were even vaguely entertaining. Then we had to grimace our way through a second segment where Jay continuously turned down Pee Wee's offers of vegetables because they weren't fattening. Just what fat American's need, another excuse to laugh at vegetables. Half way through, we closed our eyes and repeated our mantra of "Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya" until it was over.

What was even worse than Pee Wee, who at least has a reputation for comedy that is only slightly overshadowed by his reputation for public self-abuse, was the the show's new correspondent, Marina Franklin. Leno continues to try his hand at being like the Daily Show and managing to fail. This time he hits on the very new news of white people in Harlem! Franklin manages to get all the way through her entire field report without being funny even once. Even when she came out on stage for a pre-set grilling from Jay, she could barely even crack a joke. It's probably much funnier as a stand up act, but if this is her A game, we blanch at the thought of what she's going to do for her next dispatch. Maybe she can talk about hipsters in Williamsburg. No one knows that they're moving there! The whole segment is below.

Last night the show had 6.8 million viewers, slightly up from it's Monday tally. It was in ninth place last night, well above 10th place finisher 90210, which has slightly more than 2.2 million viewers. Leno was the lowest rated show on all the networks other than CW, with the winner of the evening, NCIS, clocking 20 million viewers. Yes, 20 million people watch NCIS. The mind boggles.

Early ratings numbers — to be adjusted later today — show viewership on the Big Chin's sophomore outing falling off by 34 percent. The Hollywood Reporter reports that "For its second episode, The Jay Leno Show drew a metered-market household rating of 8.0 and 13 share — down 34% from his Monday debut. "

A big drop, but probably less than executives might have feared.

The second night which featured guests Tom Cruise and Michael Moore faced off against stiff competition than on Monday night, going up against Big Brother and a Barbara Walters tribute to Patrick Swayze.

Critics were no kinder to their permanent punching bag's second night than they were to his first. And with every interest in entertainment facing certain doom if Leno succeeds, Hollywood may well be meeting in secret conclave today, wondering if they should bring out all sorts of secret weapons and private militias.

Watch your back Jay. Hollywood won't go down without a fight.

• In the first big pick-up of the Toronto Film Festival, The Weinstein Company came out on top after an "all night negotiating session" over the rights to designer Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man. For the newly contractually-joined pair, it was all a beautiful dream. Ford told Variety "Harvey and I have talked about a collaboration for years, in fact, since our first meeting more than 10 years ago." [Variety]

• Weinstein denied rumors, however, that the release of the Rob Marshall musical Nine is being pushed off until next year, a move which would have knocked it out of the Oscar race. The scuttlebutt started when when Weinstein pushed back the release of The Road, landing it on the same date as Nine had been booked to bow. The change would have shaken up an already wide-open Oscar race but Weinstein declared yesterday that we can handle two releases on one day just fine, thank you very much. [Hitfix]

• At Goldman Sachs' Communicopia in New York, Rupert Murdoch thrilled attendees with his plan to save big media by charging for NewsCorp content, starting with the Wall St. Journal Blackberry edition. Jeff Zucker for his part declared NBC's Jay Leno was blazing a trail to the future with his 10 PM show. Asked about a possible Vivendi deal to buy NBC from GE, Zucker was coy saying the company has been "a great partner." [Variety]

• If you worried that we were running low on ideas after Battleship—the A-Team film is moving forward. Jessica Biel and Sharlto Copley are in talks to star. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Red hot quirky comic Zack Galifianakis is in talks to star in the new film by writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. The movie "It's Kind of a Funny Story" will also star Emma Roberts and is described as a "coming of age dramedy.' [Hollywood Reporter]

• Only one man in Hollywood would dare step on the toes of Steven Spielberg in the venerable American historical Ken Burnsy territory and that man is Robert Redford, who set into motion his own Abraham Lincoln bio-pic, competing with the Jurassic Park helmer's long announced, long gestating Lincoln film. [Variety]

• Fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut was the big news in Toronto last night. His film A Single Man received generally favorable reviews, with Hitfix calling it a near home run. [Hitfix]

• The LA Times reports that Carl Icahn's shareholder agitation against Lion's Gate appears to have been quieted by the company's rising share price. With the company's board meeting scheduled for today, Icahn seems not to have followed through with his threat to nominate a competing slate of directors. [LA Times]

• Helen Hunt will take the lead of Parenthood, a sitcom based on Ron Howard's 1989 film. Maura Tierney had played the role in the pilot but pulled out due to breast cancer treatments. [Hollywood Reporter]

• One more thing that hasn't changed about the new Jay Leno — his role as punching bag for America's critics. [The Wrap]

• Betty White will receive the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award when at the Guild's big trophy show in January. [The Wrap]

Final numbers will be in later this afternoon, and we're not going to bore you with all the ratings mumbo jumbo, but the 10pm show was up 70% compared to Conan O'Brien's premiere and 38% from Jay Leno's exit from The Tonight Show. Though it's not fair to compare an 11:35 and a 10 pm show, that's not a bad showing, and many a weekly drama would be happy with such a debut, but considering Leno is expected to do this every night of the week from now until nuclear winter, it's going to be a long road. Let's see how he does once the novelty has worn off and the universal chilliness from critics has sunken in.

The monologue was horrific, and included a joke about how men like to control the remote while watching TV. Thanks for that original observation, Jay. A follow up segment with Dan Finnerty of The Dan Band singing to a girl in a car wash was tremendously unfunny. This show has been in the planning stages for months, and with the world watching for his first episode, this was the best that Leno could do?

His interview with Jerry Seinfeld was the highlight of the hour, with Seinfeld firing jokes off about the show, not knowing when it was on, and how when he quit his show he really quit the show. Jay should have taken his lead. Having Oprah do a taped segment and not even once acknowledge Jay is about as close to genius as the show got.

Speaking of Oprah, Leno then trotted out Kanye West, in the midst of the brou-ha-ha concerning his bad behavior at the Video Music Awards. Unfortunately, the scandal means that this clip will be show all across the internet for the next day to hear what Kanye had to say. It was something about how his mother's death and too much touring made him act like a dick. We're saving our reaction for a different blog post.

This one concerns the quality of Jay's broadcast, and other than Seinfeld, Oprah, Jay Z, and Rhianna, it wasn't very high. Even the familiar Headlines segment at the end of the show contained far too many penis, poop, and vagina jokes to make anyone other than a 14 year-old boy and your crazy uncle Mort chuckle.

This first episode was Leno's chance to shine, when he should have gotten out his best material and the funniest segments that he's been compiling for months. Instead, the best thing about it was another comedian and an apology that he lucked into. We don't know how this experiment is going to last through the month, nonetheless another year.

In their decision to cancel an hour of primetime with another talk show, NBC has taken a wrecking ball to one of the last pillars of old media. From Network Presidents in the iron towers, to alternative comedians at open mikes in coffee houses - everyone, everyone wants Jay Leno to fail. And around the web, the press has welcomed Leno's bow tonight with all the warmth and ceremony of the nightshift at Abu Ghraib. In a media accustomed to writing glowing portraits every time a new temp comes to work with Ugly Betty, Jay is being met with stone faces all around the picnic.

For a man who made his way as the safest, middle-of-the-roadiest of entertainers since Bob Hope's late period, to suddenly find himself a public outlaw, must be a strange fate. Although the NY Times paints a picture of a man who despite a more or less meteoric rise to replacing Johnny Carson the last true king of media, has nonetheless been treated like dirt all his life, including being advised by a high school guidance counselor to consider dropping out.

The fight against Leno, for network TV partisans, has the look of a desperate final attempt at a breakout - a Battle of the Bulge - one last chance to show your might in a war whose fate has already been decided; a fight that even if they win it, still leaves the networks mortally wounded and with fewer and fewer roads to safety, or as the LA Times' Scott Collins gently put it, if Jay fails they are then let, "to flail about in search of a viable new business model."

Among the foes Leno faces when he takes to the airwaves at ten o'clock tonight:

• TV producers, writers, actors, grips, agents - everyone who takes a piece of the bloated production budgets a primetime drama throws off.
• Affiliate stations. NBC claims its okay with lower ratings than they might get from a drama because the cost of producing Leno will be so much cheaper. But that potentially leaves affiliates holding the bag as the ten o'clock hour provides the lead-in for their wholly owned local news shows.
• Every other late night host, who will have to compete for guests against a show in a far more desirable slot.
• Network executives, who make their careers on their show-picking prowess, script notes and the general meddling that the extended dramatic TV production process leaves room for, have much less to fiddle with on a talk show.
• Cool people, for whom Leno has always represented old, stody and predicable versus the edgier Conan, Kimmel or all time cool people's icon David Letterman.

In fact, the only people who stand to gain from Leno's bow are TV audiences.

You could say that if all you did was eliminate an hour of primetime network dramas and replace them with nothing, that would alone be a net gain.

If one looks at the big three's 10 pm schedules for the fall, at the alternatives to Leno, suddenly nightly installments of Jaywalking and Jay reads the wacky headlines doesn't look all that awful.

Here is the complete list of the new shows airing against Leno:
• Castle, about a mystery writer who finds a serial killer is re-enacting murders from his books (wasn't that the plot of Basic Instinct).
• The Forgotten: Another Jerry Bruckheimer cop show, this one starring Christian Slater as a man whose daughter has been abducted who hunts for other people's abducted children.
• The Good Wife: A lawyer must go back to work and returns to the courtroom after her politician husband is imprisoned.
• Eastwick: A perennially super idea: adapt The Witches of Eastwick..
• Private Practice: A Gray's Anatomy Spin-off.

When you think about it, what was the last time the networks launched a decent drama? Or even a hit one that wasn't a CSI or a NCIS? It's been a while since Desperate Housewivess and Lost came around. Fox and CW still manages to churn out some surprises like Glee and 90210. But in general, the big threes process simply exists to screw up shows that might have been gripping intense dramas had they appeared on HBO, AMC or FX.

Without Leno, that list above might have been two or three shows longer. And so for that alone, America owes him thanks. As Leno himself put it, if his show doesn't work, NBC will just have to "go back to Lipstick Jungle."

• No big deal has yet come out of the acquisitions market at the Toronto International Film Festival, but buyers are said to be circling a fairly large number of films, including the one outings from indie darling directors Atom Egoyan, Todd Solondz and Werner Herzog. The Israeli film Lebanon which took the top prize last week in Venice is said to be the subject of intense jockeying. [Variety, THR]

• Meanwhile the star wattage has burned bright. The weekend belonged to George Clooney who as anticipated, sent the press into a titter supporting his pair of new films. Next up: Drew Barrymore with her directorial debut Whip It and Mariah Carey and Oprah supporting perhaps the most buzzed about film of the fest, Precious. [The Wrap]

• At the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his new film, The Informant, Steven Soderberg has sold the financing for his next film, to be entitled Knockout from Lion's Gate and Relativity Media. [Variety]

• Knockout may, however, prove to be the last Steven Soderbergh film ever. Speaking to The Daily Beast about his plans to retire from directing and take up painting, the director said of The Informant and his desire to go out on top, "If everyone in America will go see it, and make it a hit, then I PROMISE I will retire." [The Daily Beast]

• As expected, the box office weekend belonged to Tyler Perry, America's most reliable deliverer of 20 million dollarish opening weekends . I Can Do Bad All By Myself was Perry's third highest opener taking in an estimated $24 million. The animated 9 took in $10.9 in a smaller release. America, clearly turning its back on quality in entertainment, passed on Sorority Row which earned a mere $5.3. [Box Office Mojo]

• All eyes are tuned on NBC's ratings tonight, after the bow of the new Jay Leno show, with seemingly all of Hollywood praying for disaster. [THR]