TVSquad

While NBC is carefully plotting Jay Leno's exit from The Tonight Show, David Letterman is talking about staying on the CBS Late Show beyond 2010. And since the subject of Leno came up, Dave thinks the guys at NBC are nuts to treat Jay the way they are, especially since he's done such a great job in the 11:30 slot. Letterman even said he wants Jay on his show the day after his Tonight Show tenure ends.

Letterman, who was once the heir apparent to Johnny Carson's desk but was passed over in favor of Leno, has thrived on CBS even though he was crushed to lose The Tonight Show. The supposed feud between Letterman and Leno, and their competition for The Tonight Show, was depicted in the HBO film (and Bill Carter book) The Late Shift. (If you've never seen it, buy or rent it; it's one of the best films ever about how TV works behind the scenes.)

It's a rumor that's been going around Hollywood for years; heck, we even mistakenly thought this was going to happen last year. But now it looks like NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker has finally had enough and is replacing the president of NBC Entertainment, Kevin Reilly.

Over the weekend, Nikki Finke of LA Weekly reported on her blog that Reilly will be replaced by two people: producer Ben Silverman, whose company brought The Office and Ugly Betty to the U.S., will be in charge of the entertainment side and Marc Graboff, currently NBCU Television's West Coast chief, will run the business side. Bill Carter of The New York Times is also reporting on the change, but in a less definitive manner.

News about NBC's fall schedule continues to trickle out, this time from Bill Carter over at the New York Times.

Looks like the network is going to pick up five dramas: Lipstick Jungle (from Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell), Chuck, Life, Journeyman, and The Bionic Woman. The network has not made a decision on Law and Order or Law and Order: CI yet, but it looks like Friday Night Lights is coming back for a full season.

The shows being canceled? No surprise that Studio 60, The Black Donnellys, and Crossing Jordan are gone, but it's a little bit of a surprise that Scrubs isn't coming back. There's been talk that ABC might take the show, but no official word on that yet.

NBC's upfront announcement is this Monday.

Update: Nikki Finke is reporting that Scrubs has been picked up by NBC, but no other info is available about it.

Now someone in Hollywood has confirmed what I've thought for several years.

George Lopez, comedian and star of his own ABC sitcom, told Florida radio station WOMX hosts Scott and Erica that Leno is "the biggest two-faced dude on TV," and went on to call him a back-stabber. He also said that Leno was bad at interviewing his guests.

Anyone who watches Leno knows that Lopez is right. He's an awesomely bad host, mumbling through introductions, laughing at his own jokes, and rushing through everything so fast he must want to get the hell out of there so he can either go home and write more jokes or maybe play with his car collection. In fact, the whole show is a mess, from the addition of Stuttering John as announcer to Leno's "bits." As for the back-stabbing accusation, I can't speak to that, except to say that everyone should read Bill Carter's book The Late Shift and find out about the Leno vs. Letterman Tonight Show feud.

[via TV Tattle]

Like a lot of people, I'll be out there today spending cash and gift cards I got yesterday. There are a lot of TV-oriented books released every year, and many of them are quite good. Some of them are downright terrible (*cough* TWOP *cough*), but let's focus on the good ones. Below is a list of 10 great TV books to give the TV addict in your family.

1. Hello, Lied The Agent, by Ian Gurvitz: Excellent behind-the-scenes look at how the TV industry works, from a writer/producer of such shows as Wings, Becker, and Get A Life. He talks about the dos and don'ts for Hollywood writers, pitch meetings, cancellations, shows the journal he kept a few years ago, and even talks about the new shows that have debuted in the past couple of years. Very informative and just really, really funny.

In today's New York Times, Bill Carter recounts the journey the pilot for Nobody's Watching took from network reject to YouTube hit. In the article, Carter interviews co-creator Bill Lawrence (who is the genius mastermind behind my favorite show, Scrubs) who describes how the WB came very close to picking up the pilot after NBC rejected it, but turned it down after the dreaded test-screening panel thought it's "sitcom about two guys who write a sitcom and live on sitcom sets" might be too confusing.

Since the video of the pilot was posted on the video site, it's been viewed over 300,000 times and has gotten very good feedback from viewers. Because of this, it's getting another look by various networks, including Comedy Central and ABC. But since NBC owns the show, it still has the first shot at it. And the show with which NBC is thinking of pairing Lawerence's baby? You guessed it -- Scrubs.

Bill Carter wrote one of my favorite media/entertainment books, The Late Shift (about the Letterman/Leno battle for late-night), and now he's back with an even more ambitious book, Desperate Networks. It explains how we got the TV landscape that we have today, from all the reality shows to how Les Moonves got to the head of CBS to Katie Couric's negotiations to leave NBC. It's a fascinating read, with many interesting revelations, including:

1. ER was originally set in Boston, but NBC already had St. Elswhere set there, so they asked for the setting to be changed. Chicago was chosen "for no especially good reason."

One of my all-time favorite books is The Late Shift, a blow-by-blow account of the machinations involved in the late-night wars of the early 1990s. Bill Carter of The New York Times put together such a vivid picture of the battle between NBC, Jay Leno and David Letterman, I almost thought I was there during the book's pivotal scene: Leno, in a supply closet next to an NBC boardroom, eavesdropping on NBC executives as they discuss dumping him in favor of Letterman, even though he had been hosting The Tonight Show for only a few months.

Hopefully, Carter can bring his sense of "you are there" style to his latest book, Desperate Networks, which is due out on May 2. In the book, Carter explores the eventful and historic 2004-05 season from a few different angles: the fall of NBC, the slow-and-steady rise of CBS, the great new ABC shows that came on the air (Lost, Housewives), the retirement/departures of all three network anchors, and that nutso FOX network. The publisher's blurb on Amazon promises that Carter will be giving readers a lot of behind-the-scenes dirt, so I'm looking forward to getting this book. Is a TV Squad book review in the cards...?  We'll see...

[via Variety.com]