Late-night gets a prime new parking space.

NBC announced four years ago that Jay Leno would be leaving The Tonight Show in 2009, to be replaced by Conan O'Brien. With the change happening next May, NBC had to decide what to do about Leno. He is the top-rated late-night host, and they did not want to risk losing him to a competing network.

The solution, reports Reuters, was to give Leno a primetime slot. The new show, tentatively titled The Jay Leno Show, will premiere in the fall of 2009. It will retain some aspects of Tonight (such as "Jaywalking" and "Headlines"), but the format is still a work in progress.

Leno will air in the 10:00pm timeslot five nights a week. This will put it in competition with scripted programming that includes CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. While NBC does not expect Leno to draw an audience as large as such shows pull each week, they feel there are benefits to putting a late-night host in primetime.

The production cost for a full week of Leno will be comparable to a single episode of a typical scripted drama. Airing the show five nights a week will decrease NBC's additional primetime hours from 22 to 17, which will enable the network to devote more money to other programmes. A draw for advertisers could be that, as a topical news show, viewers are less likely to DVR Leno to watch at a later time.

"We are looking to change how broadcast television works in this new media landscape, and we were looking to keep Jay Leno in the family. With this we have accomplished both," Marc Graboff, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said in a news conference. Leno explained, "It just seemed like the time was right for this. Would I do this at the beginning of my career, no. But after 17 years of being on The Tonight Show, it's fun to try something different."

The original information is from Reuters.

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