Project L.E.N.O. Aims Squarely at Jay

(MoneyWatch)  It's looking as if it would've been smart for NBC to launch its new 10 p.m. Jay Leno show in the summer. The reason is that CBS has rolled out a package to its affiliates, dubbed "Project L.E.N.O." to give more promotional heft to its affiliates; the network -- BNET Media's ultimate corporate boss -- is betting on the ratings of its 10 p.m. series to go up with Leno on five nights a week at 10 p.m., thus also greasing the skids for higher ratings of its affiliates' 11 p.m. newscasts. Project L.E.N.O. offers affiliates additional promotion behind shows such as "The Mentalist", giving them "sponsorable broadcast spots and behind-the-scenes vignettes, sponsorable web banners and tagable radio spots."

Even though Leno needs some prep time to get his new show together, I've been wondering for awhile now if NBC should have launched the show in the summer, to give him a head start on the new fall schedules. It's not as though it's still true that no one launches series in the summer. Things like Project L.E.N.O. give his competition time to get out in front of the biggest change in primetime probably since the start of Fox. That might not be a good thing.

So what does L.E.N.O. stand for, besides the competition? It's short for Late Prime Enhanced News Opportunity. While that's quite a contortion as acronyms go, the objective is clear: to put NBC effectively out of the 10 p.m. competition, at least in the way that it's happened over decades, where the original Big Three networks duked it out in the 10 p.m. slot with comparable programming, usually dramas. You can bet that ABC will soon follow suit with its own version of Project L.E.N.O.

Meanwhile, controversy is continuing over a story in Mediaweek, which, among other things, said that NBC was looking at a seven percent decline in CPMs in primetime. (The CPM, or cost-per-thousand, is the unit upon which TV ad sales are priced.) But it's not exactly what you think. While that may sound dreadful, Mediapost quotes unidentiified buyers as saying they think the decrease should be more like ten percent, with ABC, CBS and Fox each seeing lesser declines, of only two to three percent.

Previous coverage of Jay Leno's move to 10 p.m. on BNET Media:

• Leno, NBC, Laugh All the Way to the Bank
• Boston's WHDH to NBC: Actually, Jay Leno Rocks!
• NBC's Zucker Loves ... Is Committed to Conan ... Jay Leno
• CBS' Les Moonves Can't Wait to Unload About Leno