The Artful Jurist

It's going to be interesting to watch the threads unravel as the NBC television network tries to extricate itself from the late night mess it has gotten itself into.

As you've undoubtedly heard, NBC is pulling the plug on Jay Leno's prime time show because of poor ratings. (Is there ever any other reason TV willingly cancels a show?) And it proposed to put Leno back at his old 11:35 p.m. EST slot for a half-hour program, which would push the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien to a slot after midnight. That's an offer O'Brien has publicly declined to accept.

We can probably assume that, at that level, everybody's working under contract. So people in that high-profile arena don't usually just shout "Take this job and shove it!" and storm out the door. It makes for nasty breach-of-contract litigation. But an unhappy comedian isn't the best thing a network could hope for as the host of a long-standing, iconic program. So, if things can't be smoothed over to everyone's satisfaction, look for some type of legal settlement.

There have been reports that Fox might be interested in wooing a disenfranchised O'Brien for its own late night show. The problem there is that Fox affiliates already have contracts for syndicated programming that they've been running at that hour. Stuff like that doesn't just get undone overnight.

Stay tuned...