Leno's Ratings Keep Dropping — How Low Will They Go?

While scandal-plagued David Letterman enjoys his highest ratings in years, ratings for Jay Leno's primetime snoozefest continue to plummet.

Monday night's Letterman show, in which he joked about his own sex scandal and offered an apology to his wife, got more viewers than any show in NBC's primetime lineup, which included new episodes of "Heroes," unwatchable medical drama "Trauma" and, yes, "The Jay Leno Show."

Not only has Leno's show consistently held last place in its timeslot since the TV season officially began on September 21, Monday's episode was its lower-rated yet, drawing a mere 4.5 million (about a million less than he used to get in late-night when he hosted "The Tonight Show"). According to USA Today, this is a 25% drop from the dramas that NBC used to air at 10 p.m. — most of which were cancelled because of their low ratings! Even more disturbing (to advertisers, anyhow), this drop increases to more than 40% among the coveted 18-41 demographic.

And speaking of "The Tonight Show," Leno's lousy ratings sure ain't doing Conan O'Brien any favours. The retooled "Tonight Show" is now averaging about 2.5 million viewers — half of the audience Leno used to pull in.

NBC is continuing to spout its party line — ratings, schmatings, the show so cheap to produce it's like printing money, the show can only be judged on a year-round basis, wait until you see how well it does when all the other shows are in reruns, etc., etc. — but the real bone of contention is becoming the fact that Leno's show is sucking the ratings out of the local newscasts the NBC affiliates rely on to bring in the bulk of their revenue. Ratings for local NBC newscasts in the top five U.S. markets have dropped substantially — in some cases by more than 30% — and I don't think we've even begun to hit bottom yet. Once the affiliates start complaining (and they will) it's going to be increasingly difficult for NBC to justify keeping Leno on the air.

There are several ways this could play out, but the smartest move at this point would be cut their losses by ditching Conan, paying him out the rest of his contract, canning Jay's primetime show and returning him to "The Tonight Show." Still, it may even be too late for that, now that Jay's No. 1 status is tarnished and he's beginning to take on the appearance of damaged goods. And now that Letterman is the current king of late-night, Jay's reclaiming of that top spot won't be easy.

More likely, NBC will ride this thing into the ground, destroying both "The Tonight Show" and its primetime ratings in the process until a new network president is eventually hired to clean up the mess and try to rebuild from the rubble of this once-proud network.