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at this dark hour, the law of nature that no one ever lost a buck betting against the wisdom of the press has not been repealed.

Ad Age reports (via) that Silverman might take over CollegeHumor at the behest of Barry Diller, who bankrolls both CollegeHumor and Silverman's new online venture. Van Veen, meanwhile. is transitioning out of CollegeHumor and into his own Diller-funded media startup, Notional, which sounds a lot like Silverman's Electus (both have something to do with online video production).

We're told Silverman and Van Veen have been working very closely together and talking to each other every day. Perhaps a grander merger is in the works that would combine Electus, Notional and CollegeHumor into one venture. Silverman may have been ousted from old media, but he could still be lord of the new media flies. Especially within a venture that actually celebrates a refusal to mature, an inability to grow emotionally and a proclivity for partying to excess. Those are Ben Silverman's specialties, right there.

(Pics: via Getty, Webbyist)

• What may be Miramax's last great premiere took place last night at the AFI Festival, celebrating the debut of Everybody's Fine, the news dramedy starring Robert De Niro, and the company appears to be going out with something less than a roar. There were early hopes that the film might give Miramax — and De Niro — one last Oscar hurrah. HItfix reports however, that "the film a mess in so many ways that neither the legendary actor or the stars who play his children — Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale — can save it." [Hitfix]

• The natives are getting restless and the drumbeat grows ever louder for the NBC/Universal Comcast deal. In their quarterly earnings reports, Comcast reported their profits were up 22 percent, bringing to a crescendo pleas that they just go ahead and buy NBC already and end our long showbiz-wide nightmare of suspense. [Variety]

• At the other end of the spectrum, Time-Warner was the beneficiary of low expectations. Its profits fell 38 percent last quarter, which remarkably was above expectations and led the company to raise its earnings projections for the year. [Hollywood Reporter]

• There may be signs of life in that old DVD market yet. The Wrap reports that after the huge success of the Transformers 2 DVD release, analysts are optimistic about the upcoming crop of blockbuster home releases to fuel strong sales. [The Wrap]

• The American Film Market, where US independent filmmakers peddle their wares for international distributors, opened yesterday and Variety saw hopes that the expo may be coming out of the doldrums it has been in in recent years. In addition to a line-up of films made by and featuring some heavy-hitters, Variety says the worldwide success of a handful of indie films — including Slumdog Millionaire — has created a more favorable climate. [Variety]

• Gerard Butler will star in the directorial debut of actor Ralph Fiennes, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. [Hollywood Reporter]

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.

• The Wrap reports that despite grossing over $300 million to date in their world tour, U2 is only just on the brink of breaking even — just as the tour is about to shut down for the summer. The expenses of hauling around its giant spider-like prong stage are so immense that despite months of sold out shows they are only just putting their heads above the waterline. According to the piece, however the band, sees the tour as a way of continuing to pump some excitement into the franchise as they enter their twilight years. [The Wrap]

• The weekend box office has been abandoned to the monsters. Pre-Halloween fight films will dominate this weekend with Saw 4 and the continued expansion of Paranormal Activity each tracking in the $25 million range. [LA Times]

• District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp has signed up for his next picture. Media Rights Campaign has committed to financing his sophomore outing, an untitled, unexplained project which will go before cameras in mid-2010. [Variety]

• In his overview of the TV season to date, The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd sees the networks, or most of them, staging a bit of a comeback, with a surprising number of new shows actually connecting. Glee, Modern Family, The Vampire Diaries and NCIS: Los Angeles are cited as success stories. The one very dark spot in the network picture continues to be, of course, the black hole of NBC. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Dreamworks has ordered a script for a live action version of the Japanese animated classic Ghost in the Shell. Shutter Island screenwriter Laeta Kalogridi will take a first stab at the project. [Variety]

• Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris have signed on to do voices in Fox's upcoming Rio, by the animation team that brought you Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. [Hollywood Reporter]

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.

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.

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.

Seriously, we're already sick of these two insufferable lovebirds. The engraved invitation was sent to all of America today by Entertainment Weekly which announced the date in a website tease to their cover story that comes out this week. Speculation and spoilers about their nuptials have been buzzing about the internet for months now. Know what? It's stupid.

Jim and Pam are everyman anchors in a sitcom full of crazy people. That makes them just like the cashiers at the supermarket: you're glad that they're there, you have to be nice to them, but you really don't care about what happens to them outside of work. Whether or not they get married seems to have the impact of answering, "Paper or plastic?"

And their drawn out relationship has been going on for five years now. They're a bigger cocktease than Sally Gregoridas, the girl in the 5th grade who would make everyone play spin the bottle, but then wouldn't kiss anyone when the empty two liter of Diet Coke pointed its cap of romance in her direction. Christ, it took them two years just to freakin' kiss! And now their engagement, which has been prolonged since last season's premiere, is the same way .The run up to the ceremony is going to be a drawn-out string of leaked photos, half-hidden promos, and mild exposés in an attempt to goose the show's ratings.

The other reason we hate sitcom weddings is the same reason we hate when celebrities go to rehab, because all the fun stuff has already happened. What's left for them to do? They'll have their kid and be parents, maybe one will cheat on the other or they'll get divorced and then back together again, but their story arc doesn't have many possibilities now that they're together (hear that, Sex and the City sequel?). It's just more of the same push and pull on the heartstrings. That's why soap opera "supercouples" have to get married five and six times. That's the only way to keep things exciting and fresh. At this point Jim and Pam are about as fresh as hearing "Summer Breeze" while standing in line at the DMV, which we would rather do than sit around and listen to people coo about their seating chart.

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.

That's right, we will not be watching tonight's fourth season premiere, or any other episode every again. Things started off beautifully, we were young and in love with your geeky heart, winning humanity, and general sense of fun. You kept things exciting week to week and we looked forward to every time we got to make sweet sweet love to you on Monday night. We helped you save a cheerleader, and together we would save the world from loveless episodic primetime sci-fi programming. However, at the end of our first year together, you disappointed us by not giving us the kind of finale we expect. Like all the women reading Cosmo, if we're not feeling the fireworks at the climax, we're going to have to pleasure ourselves.

You registered our disappointment, and worked hard during our second year, but the thrill was gone, and you squandered what fondness we had for you on flights of fancy and floundering around trying to find which direction to go in. We wanted to leave you then, and we had our bags packed, but you said, "No, stay. I have something great in store. Next year is going to be amazing. I've turned it all around and split next year into two parts. It will make you love me again."

Like Rihanna, we believed you and came back, and you continued to hit us in the face each week, giving us black eyes of boredom, headaches of unbelievability, and a general nausea of horribleness. You forgot who you were and we muddled through it together, hoping that those honeymoon days of our young love could come back. We never even got a glimmer.

This time, when you say that you know the road has been hard, and that you're going to improve. You said you would dedicated the whole year to "Redemption," but we're just not believing you. You proposed a threeway with that lovable villain Robert Knepper, who warmed our loins for the years during Prison Break, and said you would take us to the circus, and we were tempted. But then we remembered all the horrible things you did to us last year, and that we would much rather play with a bunch of girls and gossip than try to save the world with you.

We're sick and tired of your weak lies of improvement. At this point, you've spent more time being horrible than being great. So, sorry Heroes, you're on your own this year. Thanks for the memories, but it's over.

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.

While some shows, like Heroes, have tried to merge product placement and plot on the web, Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry and his crew are now bringing the trend into primetime.

The writer and others on ABC's payroll will help produce eight commercials for Sprint in which "Housewives" characters grapple with mystery, murder and general soap opera drama. Of course, none of the mainstay Housewives will appear in the commodity-driven mini-series. Rather, the actors in the commercials will appear as "background extras" on the actual show, which could be an ultimately embarrassing move for everyone involved.

NBC and Jay Leno, whose new show premieres tonight, are taking a slightly dated approach:

And an easy way to plug an advertiser in an era when TV commercials are at the mercy of the DVR. Leno describes himself as "advertiser friendly," and NBC has already struck a deal with McDonald's, whose Monopoly-based promotion will find Leno announcing the chain's ad featuring NBC stars. Visitors to McDonald's will be steered by placards to Leno's program.
...
Today's challenging economy could well rewrite the old ad playbook, says Brian Steinberg, TV editor at Advertising Age magazine. "We'll see how much he can weave into his show. Because when the ads are part of the program, you're less likely to hit the fast-forward button," he says.

Could this be the wave of television's future? Ads are the program and the programs are the ad? Even if it works, it seems to us viewers have grown up a bit — just a bit — since television's early years and will be turned off by such obvious attempts to buy their business. Or that's our hope, at least, for the increasingly blurry lines between advertising and entertainment must be preserved at all costs.

James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter says that Leno, who's lost 10-12 pounds running four miles each day, will present a "fast-paced hour" with a monologue and interviews with one or two celebrity guests. There will be wacky bits where celebrities race each other in vehicles powered by alternative fuels, as well as pre-taped segments featuring celebrities. For instance, D.L. Hughley will be the show's Washington correspondent and Brian Williams will do a "Stories Not Good Enough For Nightly News" segment. Musical segments which will occasionally feature multiple acts performing together.

Regarding his deep, hard screwing of Conan O'Brien, Leno says that he and O'Brien are a couple of swell pals looking forward to a "healthy rivalry."

"There was never any tension between Conan and I," he said. "Will we fight like cats and dogs to get the guest? Yes ... but that doesn't mean you don't like each other. It's a game. You tease and trash talk, that's the fun part."

Yes, it's all fun. Just like Leno would've loved it and thought that it was great fun had Johnny Carson moved into a primetime with a talk show taped in the same city as the Tonight Show when he took over. Ugh, why couldn't he just take his pile of cash and go off to work on old cars in between stand-up gigs in Branson?

According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, the goal of NBC's multimedia advertising assault is to transform his upcoming show's already sky-high level of public awareness into a tidal wave of frenzied anticipation. NBC executives want you counting down the days until the premiere of Leno's new show, they want you talking about it to your co-workers around the watercooler at work, they want you Twittering about it constantly, hell, they want you masturbating to Jay Leno (And you know that you want to!). But most of all, NBC executives want you to laugh, because your life is shit and you should laugh at Jay Leno's stupid jokes just to add an extra layer of shit to it all.

"For us this is like, in effect, launching five shows," Adam Stotsky, the president of NBC Entertainment marketing, said in an interview.

The network's strategic proposition for Mr. Leno's show is "life needs more laughter," Mr. Stotsky said.

"Most people are dealing with daily pressures, day-to-day drudgery; the economy's got them down, or they may be tiring of the crime time that exists across the 10 o‘clock landscape," Mr. Stotsky said. The comedy show "will be the antidote."

See! You all need more Jay Leno in the black hole of suck you call a life. There's no use denying it, so just bend over, bite down and take your Leno, because he's coming in hard.

NBC's promotional tactics for Mr. Leno involve infiltrating mundane activities and inserting Mr. Leno's mainstream humor. That's why the network made a push into movie theaters last weekend, most notably with a two-and-a-half minute segment on National CineMedia's advertisement reel that runs on 16,000 screens across the country.

Later in the month, Mr. Leno's bits of comedy will also appear on airplanes, at gyms, in elevators and in New York City taxi cabs. "These are moments that are just begging for a bit of laughter," Mr. Stotsky said.

You hear that America? Adam Stotsky and Jay Leno are coming to save you. Aren't you excited?!

Other than his professional failures—taking big, sloppy risks and never learning from his mistakes—there were myriad personality "quirks" that just didn't bode well for a long network career in these depressed, skittish times.

First off, he was always saying dumb things. Like the time he called striking writers who refused to participate in the meaningless Golden Globes ugly nerds who were trying to ruin the cool kids' prom. Or when he basically admitted that he thinks he's the funnest guy he knows. Or hows about that time he called a bunch of his colleagues "D-Girls", the Hollywood equivalent of calling them ineffectual pussies. And who can forget when he declared himself "the perfect storm for making a television executive." (Very destructive storm being an unwittingly apt metaphor, Ben!) That he said whatever he wanted was brave! But it was also dumb.

There was also the youthfully irksome "rockstar" shtick. Silverman's partying has been called "voracious." Because, you know, he came to NBC from the relatively devil-may-care enclaves of producerdom. Those stuffy NBC suits just couldn't handle his wildin'! Wildin' like rescheduling morning meetings to the more hangover-friendly afternoon and hugging executives and signing emails, drunkenly probably, "Love U!" Or maybe they couldn't handle his gangsta freestyle? Likely, though, it was that Ben never showed up for work. He was too busy yachting and yukking it up (flirting?) with Ryan Seacrest.

Basically if you're curious about what it takes to rise from nothing, find fleeting fame and fortune, then collapse and vanish under the weight of your own expectations, just start here and keep on reading. It reads like pretty much any overly-cocky post-college narrative, only with a bunch more money involved.

He gave us so much to write about! And now, like dreams abruptly ended by alarm clocks, it's gone.