NBC Should Stay With Leno, Affiliates Say : Television: In an informal poll, station managers back ‘Tonight Show’ host over Letterman in late-night jockeying.

As speculation and rumors over who will be the featured late-night host on NBC continue to build--leading up to a Jan. 15 deadline when NBC must match a lucrative offer from CBS or lose David Letterman--the advice of NBC affiliates across the country is not to mess with Jay Leno.

In fact, all two dozen station managers who were questioned in an informal survey said they would be surprised if NBC did anything to disrupt “The Tonight Show,” an established, 40-year franchise now running smoothly and profitably in Leno’s hands.

“Very frankly, I would be quite shocked if NBC was going to do anything other than what they’re doing now: watching the time go by,” said H. Dean Hinson, general manager of KARK-TV in Little Rock, Ark.

That’s not the signal NBC sent earlier this month, however, when CBS offered Letterman $14 million a year to host a late-night show at 11:30 p.m., which would put him in direct competition with Leno. Suddenly, NBC executives backed away from their public support of Leno as they tried to form a strategy to prevent Letterman, who comes on after Leno, from getting away.

Since then, Leno has uncharacteristically dropped his passive attitude and come out swinging. His nightly monologue has included on-air barbs aimed at NBC’s indecision over “The Tonight Show,” the top-rated program in late-night television. Music director Branford Marsalis offered a rendition of “Stand By Your Man” as the program’s new theme song. In interviews, meanwhile, Leno has threatened to leave NBC himself if he loses his show or his time slot to Letterman.

“Given the choice, we would prefer to have Leno stay in the slot he’s in because he’s more broad-based than Letterman,” said Tom Barr, general manager of KFYR-TV in Bismarck, N.D.

By most industry accounts, Leno has exceeded expectations as new host of “The Tonight Show,” averaging 4.6 million viewers a night, close to the numbers Johnny Carson was pulling in a year ago.

“Letterman has youth appeal, especially with college students, but he doesn’t play to the wide audiences,” Barr said. “To disrupt Leno, who’s getting respectable numbers, and to take a chance with Letterman in that time slot for such a big cash outlay just doesn’t make any sense.”

Next Thursday, top brass from NBC and General Electric, which owns NBC, will gather at a management meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., where the late-night affair is not even officially on the agenda but is expected to come up.

The 212 broadcast stations that make up the NBC network have no say in who stays and who goes--although all the station managers interviewed expressed their desire for Letterman to remain with NBC. Some wondered why Letterman’s interests were not looked after earlier, when he was overlooked as a possible host for “The Tonight Show” in favor of Leno.

“What I don’t understand, why didn’t NBC figure these things out a year ago, when Carson first announced his retirement?” said Dow C. Smith, general manager for WVTM-TV in Birmingham. “You had to presume this was going to happen. And then not to give Letterman a clear signal either way, that’s disappointing.”

Despite their desire to keep Leno and Letterman together on NBC, few station managers seemed concerned that Letterman would provide a real threat to Leno if he did hopscotch to CBS.

For one thing, the 11:30 p.m. time period is already jammed with syndicated product that’s competing for Letterman’s youthful audience, ranging from “The Arsenio Hall Show” to “Studs.” Leno, meanwhile, has a solid core audience of older viewers.

John Spinola, general manager of WBZ-TV in Boston, said that Letterman would have to change his act and tone down the bizarre, irreverent elements of his show to become successful in an earlier time slot.

“He’s pretty hip, and he skews toward young males,” Spinola said. “Because his show is so offbeat, his humor plays better later in the night, when there’s less of a general audience. I think what would ultimately have to happen if Letterman goes on earlier, he would have to change his show a bit to accommodate a different demographic mix.”

Perhaps more significantly, there’s a widespread belief that a good percentage of CBS affiliates will refuse to air Letterman at 11:30 p.m. Right now, almost one-half of them delay the late-night crime dramas supplied by CBS to air syndicated programming instead, mostly reruns of such network sitcoms as “Cheers,” “Designing Women” and “Murphy Brown.”

“The affiliate clearances in late night for CBS are very, very low,” said Joe Collins, director of sales and marketing for KNSD in San Diego. “I would think it would be a tough transition for affiliates to go back to a network program in (that time period), when they’re really generating a lot of revenue from their own syndicated programming.”

CBS affiliates preempt the network’s late-night programming for syndicated programming because they generally get to keep a larger percentage of the advertising time sold.

“CBS stations are making money hand over fist in late night,” said the general manager of one NBC affiliate who asked not to be identified. “Where CBS is preempting the network in late night, they are unquestionably making more money in that time period than NBC affiliates who carry ‘The Tonight Show’ and David Letterman.”

NBC has nonetheless been able to retain 99% clearances for Leno and Letterman in their intended time slots based on the tradition of NBC’s ratings dominance in the late-night arena. Industry sources say that Letterman, in contrast, would start off with a 60% to 65% clearance on CBS affiliates at 11:30 p.m., which would not be enough to seriously damage Leno.

A handful of station managers suggested a way to keep Leno and Letterman happy on NBC by shifting the entire prime-time programming block--the period from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.--one hour earlier. That way, with prime time ending at 10 p.m., the start time of both Leno and Letterman would also be an hour earlier. However, federal prime-time access rules would appear to preclude that possibility.

Jim Waterbury, head of the NBC affiliates association and general manager of KWWL-TV in Waterloo, Iowa, suggested an even wilder proposition.

“It occurs to me that NBC programs better than 20 hours a week in prime time that aren’t terribly successful,” he said. “I think NBC has an opportunity to put at least one of these late-night programs into prime time.”

The 10 p.m. hour is, indeed, one of the least profitable for networks because there are fewer viewers watching television at that time, and the one-hour dramas that work best are expensive to produce. Waterbury proposes moving the low-cost “Tonight Show” into that time slot on a nightly basis and giving Letterman the 11:30 p.m. hour.

“NBC would be able to free up money for prime-time production,” he said. “Theoretically, it would also improve their prime-time shows, providing more money to spend on them. The risk, of course, is that it might not work. But we take that risk every year with the network.”