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Entertainment & Arts

Jay Leno in prime time...and TV’s other great disasters

By Ramie Becker, Emily Christianson, Patrick Kevin Day, Todd Martens and Denise Martin, Times Staff Writers Of all of NBC's bad decisions, outranking flops like "Coupling," "Joey" and the hiring of Ben Silverman, putting Jay Leno in prime time might just be the network's worst. As many predicted, once ratings for "The Jay Leno Show" at 10 cooled to an unacceptable level, local news stations across the country teamed up to complain about their little-seen lead-in. Now, NBC may be sending Leno back to "The Tonight Show" in late-night -- and it could cost them Conan O'Brien, who's rumored to be heading to Fox as a result. We look back at TV's other disastrous calls, from the "Seinfeld" finale to the cancellation of "My So-Called Life."

By Ramie Becker, Emily Christianson, Patrick Kevin Day, Todd Martens and Denise Martin, Times Staff Writers

Of all of NBC‘s bad decisions, outranking flops like “Coupling,” “Joey” and the hiring of Ben Silverman, putting Jay Leno in prime time might just be the network’s worst. As many predicted, once ratings for “The Jay Leno Show” at 10 cooled to an unacceptable level, local news stations across the country teamed up to complain about their little-seen lead-in. Now, NBC may be sending Leno back to “The Tonight Show” in late-night -- and it could cost them Conan O’Brien, who’s rumored to be heading to Fox as a result.

We look back at TV’s other disastrous calls, from the “Seinfeld” finale to the cancellation of “My So-Called Life.”  (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)

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Nipplegate

Janet Jackson. Justin Timberlake. The Super Bowl. What could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing actually. It all went according to plan. That is, if in fact that plan involved showing a “nipple shield” atop Jackson’s breast as Timberlake ripped away her top. Americans decided that they’d gone too far. “How dare a woman show less than in a Victoria’s Secret ad?” they screamed. “It was just 9/16ths of a second,” cried others, “far too short for me to get really annoyed -- which is even more annoying!” Timberlake apologized for this with the now-classic “wardrobe malfunction” excuse, and the phrase passed into popular vernacular like lightning. Janet -- or Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty -- kept quiet. Of course, we haven’t seen her sporting nipple shields since.  (Awout David Phillip / Associated Press)

Ghost-on-girl action disappoints on 'Grey's Anatomy'

Ghost sex? Really? Soon after ‘Grey’s Anatomy’s’ Katharine Heigl started complaining about plot lines, her Izzie character starts seeing her old boyfriend Denny (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) again. Too bad he’s dead. The two got hot and heavy in season five and the critics came down hard. The big reveal, that Denny was in fact the grim reaper come to tell Izzie she’s dying with metastatic melanoma, didn’t help matters.  (Scott Garfield / Associated Press)

Police ... with flair!

A gritty police drama from noted creator/producer Steven Bocho, pictured, with Broadway-styled musical numbers. What could go wrong?  (Kevin P. Casey / Los Angeles Times)

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