While working on another story this week, I had occasion to speak with Chuck Spohn, general manager at FOX 16... and he made a little news on the late-night-wars-front.
Now that Coco is gone from NBC, the most likely scenario I'm hearing is that he will wind up back on the air this fall on the FOX network. And it's been widely speculated that FOX would put Conan on at 11:00, 10:00 central time to get the jump on the other guys. After all, FOX does only two hours of prime-time each evening, leaving local affiliates with the 10/9c hour for local news.
While hearing that speculation, I've also noticed that FOX 16 in Little Rock just launched an additional half-hour of local news beginning at 10:00 p.m. So, I ask the big guy at 16 what he'll do if and when he's faced with a decision.
Spohn started by telling me he has no inside information, that FOX has not contacted him about his interest or willingness to air a late-night Conan show. But Spohn noted that several of the FOX/NewsCorp owned-and-operated stations also do that additional half-hour of news at 11/10c in direct competition with the ABC/CBS/NBC affiliates. He indicated that what ever happens he didn't think it would be a major crisis for FOX affiliates, and that the network would find a way to clear the show on most of its stations if it does acquire the services of Mr. O'Brien.
The other option for Conan to go directly up against Leno and Letterman would be ABC. He could bump back Nightline and Kimmel by an hour, or they could just kill Nightline outright (it's been on life support since the departure of now-NPR reporter Ted Koppel). That would raise an interesting question for KATV, channel 7 in Little Rock, which has for years delayed Nightline and Kimmel by a half hour so they can run According to Jim, and before that Everybody Loves Raymond. These bland sitcoms are syndicated fare, providing KATV with additional avails, or slots to air local commercials. The practice must be profitable, but would Dale Nicholson throw it overboard to put Conan on at 10:35 in central Arkansas?
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By the way, it's just this kind of local TV coverage I miss from the Little Rock newspapers. Back in the days of the old Democrat/Gazette newspaper war, each paper employed a fine TV and radio columnist who wrote about prime-time network programming, but also about format changes, the ratings and the comings-and-goings of local broadcast "talent."
Michael Storey of the current Dem-Gaz writes exclusively about national, network programming, and often it seems the paper leaves any mention of other broadcast news to the Paper Trails column. Today's item there about Spirit Trickey appearing on NBC Nightly News this Friday would more correctly be found in a full-service local TV and Radio column.
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