Owner of local NBC affiliate was right about the Jay Leno Show

By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff

Ed Ansin, owner of WHDH-TV (Channel 7), lost a battle last year against moving The Jay Leno Show to the 10 pm time slot. But nine months later, it appears that he was right to fight the change.

On Sunday, NBC officially announced that it would yank the show from the 10 pm spot on weeknights, where it had performed disastrously for four months. Ansin, who has owned the Boston NBC affiliate station since 1993, said his prediction may have been correct, but he was in no mood to gloat.

"I'm glad it?s over," he said yesterday in a telephone interview from his office in Miami, where he owns the TV station WSVN. "It's an experiment, and it didn't work."

Ansin publicly took on NBC, last April, objecting to the parent network's plans to move the Leno show to 10 pm and vowing to air a local newscast at 10 pm instead. Ansin reversed his decision a week later, when NBC threatened to pull his station's network affiliation. Yet the episode was an awkward one, with Leno visiting the Boston station to promote the show despite the snub.

Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, told reporters on Sunday that the network may temporarily fill the 10 pm void with another reality show, Dateline NBC, or reruns.

The network lost 4.6 percent of its prime-time viewers since Leno began airing at 10 pm, replacing more expensive scripted dramas. The change also caused a drop in viewership among NBC's local TV news and late-night programs.

NBC is currently in talks with Leno about moving his program to 11:35 pm, where it would now air for a half-hour on weeknights. Talk show host Conan O'Brien would then air from 12:05 pm to 1:05 am, followed by Jimmy Fallon at 1:05 a.m. Network officials have said the line-up is tentative and that talks are on-going with all three hosts.

WHDH officials said the Olympics will help buffer the change, filling the 10 pm time slot until they end in late February.

Chris Wayland, General manager at WHDH said the station has no plans to air a local newscast at 10 pm, as Ansin had previously attempted to do. But for now, he said, the station is still awaiting answers.

"Obviously, we think this is a step in the right direction," Wayland said of the decision to move Leno's show back. And "we definitely hope Jay is part of the late-night line up."

Leno's show had a strong debut the week of Sept. 14, while other networks were airing reruns. Each episode that week ranked among the most watched 30 shows in Boston, according to the Nielson Co., and Leno hosted big celebrity guests like Kanye West, Jerry Seinfeld, and Tom Cruise.

But the show quickly lost its luster, dropping from an average of 275,700 total viewers in the premiere week to 154,700 by the end the four-week period ending Oct. 15. The ratings crash was so severe it also has hurt the station's 11 pm newscast following the Leno show. In the coveted demographic of viewers ages 25-54 for the first month of Leno's show, viewership of WHDH's newscast dropped by almost half, from 81,200 adults to 49,100.

Ansin said yesterday that he is from Boston and likes Leno, noting that he has special appeal in New England because he is funny but "not sophomoric." He said TV dramas have historically succeeded in prime time television ratings, noting the popularity of Hill Street Blues, 30-Something, and more recently Law and Order and ER. He said that he had been opposed to moving Leno's show to prime time because moving the show to 10 pm was "analogous to asking viewers to watch the Today Show at 10 o'clock" at night.

"Hopefully they're moving toward great success" finding a new show for that time slot, he added. "Hopefully."

Ansin added that Comcast's proposed purchase of NBC from General Electric, which is currently under regulatory review, could bring fresh ideas for new programming options.