BURBANK – NBC’s anxiously-anticipated foray into late-night-as-prime-time began last night. The show was a good beginning, offering a little of everything: a fairly short monologue, big-time stars (Jerry Seinfeld, Oprah Winfrey), controversy (lucky get with Kanye West making what must have been a most humiliating public apology for his antics at the MTV VMA Awards from the night before), a very ambitious taped comedy bit from a relative unknown, Jay’s signature Monday night Headlines, and music (Kanye again, this time performing along with Jay-Z and Rihanna). Ex-Howard Stern Show staffer and Tonight Show announcer, John Melendez, is now earning his money from the writer’s room.

My friends at the show, Gary and Mac, have some interesting graphics and effects in store and will surely have a long, successful, and fun run. I’m envious, guys! Early numbers had the ratings at 17.7 million viewers. That’s the highest prime time rating since the American Idol finale in May. Expect some drop-off after the curious turn away, but the question for NBC is: can it hold on to enough of an audience to justify the huge gamble with the schedule? Will the other networks follow suit? You can bet they’ll be watching, waiting to see what happens next. So will I.

Credits: NBC photos by Justin Lubin, combined with the official show logo. I just put them together in the above composites. The bottom photo is from tonight’s show, which (as I write this) has yet to air here on the west coast. Are Tom and Cameron on the set of Vanilla Sky II? Guess I’ll have to tune in to find out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 9:01 pm and is filed under General, Late night TV Comedy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.