  Jay Leno brings his brand of comedy to primetime beginning tonight at 10 p.m with the highly anticipated Jay Leno Show.
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It already is one of the most controversial shows in the history of television. And it hasn't even started yet.
Tonight is the night everything changes in primetime programming. And that will hold true whether The Jay Leno Show is a huge success or a colossal failure.
The Jay Leno Show, which will air on NBC and Citytv weeknights at 10 p.m., is going to prove a big point about the current state of TV, one way or the other.
If it doesn't work, it will serve as confirmation that people still want scripted drama at the end of their evenings. All the TV script writers who have been whining about Leno hijacking five hours a week of network primetime space will be vindicated.
But if it does work, then Leno and NBC's contention that there already is more than enough drama on TV, and people are aching for a few laughs at 10 o'clock, will be rubber-stamped.
Of course, that's a somewhat disingenuous position, not by Leno, but by NBC. If the network had been able to produce some hit dramas for its 10 p.m. slots in recent years, then it wouldn't be in this predicament, would it?
"NBC tried scripted programming at 10 o'clock: Lipstick Jungle, Kidnapped, My Own Worst Enemy, hugely expensive shows," Leno said. "I thought they were OK, but for some reason, they didn't catch on. So now you try something different."
Exactly how different The Jay Leno Show will be from The Tonight Show -- which Leno hosted for 17 years before being pre-emptively dumped in favour of Conan O'Brien -- remains to be seen. Sure, everyone says it will be quite different, and undoubtedly it will start off quite differently. But it's still Jay Leno we're talking about, so how different can it be, really?
"The one thing the research told us loud and clear is that the audience doesn't want Jay to change," said Rick Ludwin, the executive vice-president of late night and primetime series at NBC. "They don't want us to change him. They don't want us to make him into the Captain or Tennille."
Dang, there goes Leno's cover of Muskrat Love.
One definite format change from The Tonight Show is that on most nights, The Jay Leno Show will end with comedy, not music. Then Leno will throw directly to local news at 11 p.m., without a commercial break, on both NBC and Citytv affiliates.
Leno and NBC say they have reasonable expectations for the ratings.
"Do I expect it to beat CSI: Miami (on CBS and CTV)? No, that's the most popular show in the world," Leno said. "But do I expect to catch them in the reruns and stuff? Yeah.
"This is 46 weeks a year (for The Jay Leno Show). While everybody else is in reruns, we will be doing fresh shows every single night.
"We might not catch them on the straights, but hopefully we can catch them in the corners."
Let the race begin.
