Notes from the NBC and The CW network presentations at this week’s Television Critics Association press tour event.
— “The Jay Leno Show,” which will open with a quick segment and then go straight to Leno’s monologue, will neither be a standard talk show nor a variety show. Typically to feature one celebrity guest per episode, Leno explained that the guests will sometimes do more than just plug their shows or movies–the crew has developed a race track at the studio for celebrities to participate in “Green Car Challenge” races.
The show will also feature more correspondent humor, with NBC News anchor Brian Williams occasionally appearing to deliver “stories that weren’t good enough to make the Nightly News.” DL Hughley will do politics sketches, while Rachael Harris and Mikey Day will regularly appear in various correspondent segments.
Familiar “Leno” bits such as “Headlines” will be back. In fact, “Headlines” might be one of the few times the host returns to a desk, as the plan is to eliminate the desk as a go-to on the show. The recurring comedy bits will often close the show, a move that NBC anticipates will make the series appealing to local affiliates, whose late-night news programs will benefit from the best possible “Leno” lead-in.
(Partial Credit: EW.com, THRFeed)
— NBC confirmed that “Southland” will take a narrower approach this year, focusing primarily on the Regina King and Ben McKenzie characters. After getting off to a strong start, the show quickly lost viewers, and NBC partially attributes the drop-off to the show having a too broad and serialized focus.
— The “Gossip Girl” spin-off is effectively dead at this point; what little hope remained after the network passed on the show during this year’s upfront season is now essentially futile. The CW has no foreseeable plans to put it on the air.
