Earlier this year, I wrote about NBC’s scheduling of Jay Leno five nights a week at 10PM.  At that time, I thought it could go either way.  It would be brilliant or a bust.

The early results, for the past three weeks, looks like, at least in the short term, it goes into the “bust” column.  It did start out strong – against reruns.  But when the new shows on ABC, NBC and Fox premiered the week of September 21, the audience moved away from the Peacock network.

Locally, a comparison of the same three weeks last year to this year show household ratings for the 10PM hour down 38% in Indianapolis.  The late news on the NBC affiliate, which depends to some extent on Leno’s lead-in audience,  is down 25%.

Nationally, NBC is down about 25% in households, but in the important Adults 18-49 demographic category they’re down 41%.  And, that’s the group advertisers crave.  There is no demographic data for Indianapolis at this time, but it’s probably not good news.

NBC knew it would be tough sledding against first-run dramas and that over the long run, Leno with 46 weeks of original episodes, believed it would prevail over the broadcast networks when they went into reruns.

Maybe it will evenutally be better on the bottom line for General Electric, parent company of NBC/Universal.  But, it looks like bust from here.

I have a good friend in the public relations business in Indianapolis that has simple advice for his clients caught in a tight spot – Tell The Truth.  And be quick about it.  No spinning allowed.

But I don’t think he would have advised David Letterman to handle his indiscretions they way he did.  Letterman, allegedly being extorted by a CBS employee, did tell the truth, using his late night show last Thursday to admit that he had sex with several female employees who worked for his production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated.  He’s continued over the past few days to continue addressing the issue with comedic asides, not the contrition one would expect.

So far, there hasn’t been a lot of fallout. It’s great for ratings.  I’m sure CBS would have preferred it happening in November.  That’s  when the next important Nielsen sweeps period occurs.

It’s a serious issue. Even though the Worldwide Pants employees have not complained, the risk of claims that they were coerced because of fear of losing employment or favor opens a path that makes lawyers drool.  And, the other employees start seeing disproportionately favorable treatment to other employees, based on you-know-what.

The alleged extortionist has an attorney whose public statements this week sound like Letterman (and CBS) are in for a very uncomfortable 2010.

The public, so far, is giving Letterman a pass. I’m sure Bill Clinton and Mark Sanford are chuckling right now.  Not to mention Sarah Palin.

It’s 40 days to the shutdown of analog television signals and Washington is starting to wake up.   America’s television stations have broadcast volumes of public service announcements, done thousands of news stories, held town meetings and conducted numerous phone banks to prepare consumers for the switch to the digital-only future.

Today, President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team asked for a delay in the nation’s scheduled switch to digital television, citing funding difficulties. The team co-chair John Podesta wrote to key US lawmakers asking for an extension to the February 17 legislatively-mandated cutoff date.

“During the transition, we have discovered major difficulties in the preparation for the February 17 conversion from analog to digital broadcasting,” he said. “These weaknesses mean major problems for consumers.”

By early February projections suggested more than five million requests for coupons to be used to defray part of the cost of converter boxes would not be met, with the figure “increasing by hundreds of thousands every day,” he said.

In addition, the funds provided to support the conversion are “woefully inadequate,” Podesta said, pointing out that particularly low income, rural and elderly Americans would be hit.

The major networks, predictably, support the delay, in the “interest of the American consumer.”

But the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group, suggested keeping the February 17 transition date. It says converter boxes are available in sufficient supply and consumers are aware of and prepared for the transition, but added legitimate concerns about the coupon program should be addressed immediately.

Having been involved with this for years and talking to viewers I’m convinced that moving the date is only postponing the inevitable.  There are many issues.  And even consumers who are able to get converter boxes are confused and have difficulty setting them up, getting a proper antenna on them and understanding how they work with their TV.

Congress provided a bailout for banks and the automakers.  How about a bailout for the consumers?

What Congress ought to do is fund a program that would make technicians available for viewers who need help.  Obama has compared the task ahead on getting the economy going to that faced by FDR.  How about a WPA approach – training unemployed workers to troubleshoot specific problems that the public could report to centralized groups?  Or provide coupons that could be used by confused consumers to hire one of the Geek Squad at Best Buy or some other enterprising group or individual.

It’s politically correct to vote for a delay, June 1 has been suggested as the new shutoff date, but I believe we’ll see the same result.  The only difference is that Washington suddenly woke up at T minus 40 when they should have woken up at T minus 1000.

Nearly two years ago,  I wrote of the passing of Dr. Frank Stanton, long-time president of the CBS Television Network.  Stanton was a big part of the style and identity of the network.

This past Wednesday another important figure from the CBS golden years died. Lou Dorsfman, who joined CBS in 1946 and rose to become its senior vice president and creative director for marketing communications and design, was 90.

He joined CBS as art director for its successful radio networks. Dorfsman’s work at CBS became a model for corporate communications, in the marketing discipline now called branding.

For more than 40 years. Dorfsman designed every aspect of the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s advertising and corporate identity, including the set of Walter Cronkite’s newsroom and the typographically elegant signage for CBS’s headquarters on the Avenue of the Americas in New York, known as Black Rock.

When he joined CBS, right after World War II, the company was already a leader in both advertising and the relatively new field of corporate identity.  Stanton understood the business value of sophisticated design and had earlier hired William Golden as art director for the Columbia Broadcasting Company. Golden designed the emblematic CBS eye, among the most identifiable logos in the world. Dorfsman not only extended Golden’s aesthetic, but developed his own signature style of graphic design.

The advertisements created by Madison Avenue in the 1940s and ’50s were visually mundane and text-heavy. Dorfsman’s designs featured clear typography, simple slogans and smart illustration.

After Golden’s death in 1959,  Dorfsman was named creative director of CBS television and in 1964 he became the director of design for the entire Columbia Broadcasting System. A few years later, he became senior vice president and creative director for marketing communications and design.

Dorfsman maintained tight creative control, which ensured design continuity from the CBS logo to its proprietary typeface, called CBS Didot. The cleverness and subtle beauty of his advertisements were credited with winning over many viewers to both news and entertainment programs on the network.

He integrated graphic design with interior design and on-air displays as well, designing sets for Cronkite’s evening news program and “The CBS Morning News.”

Dorfsman oversaw every detail of the graphics for the CBS headquarters building, which was designed by the architect Eero Saarinen.  Dorfsman selected the typeface and made certain that the spacing between letters was flawless for the numerals on wall clocks, the elevator buttons, even the elevator inspection stickers.

For the building’s cafeteria, he designed a mammoth wall, 35 feet wide by 8 ½ feet tall, of hand-milled wood type that wed antique letterforms to modern aesthetics. It was titled “Gastrotypographicalassemblage” and spelled out all the fare the restaurant offered.  It was removed after 25 years and is now being restored.

Dorsfman retired from CBS in 1991.

Looks like we’re headed into the second week of no Colts football for Bright House Networks customers.  The dispute over retransmission rights continues with LIN Television, the parent company of WISH-TV, the local CBS Television Network affiliate. So, where channel 8 used to appear you’ll get to see more Big Ten Women’s Volleyball instead.

However, Bright House is offering some relief for its customers while they two giants sort it out.  Customers (I’m one) are getting e-mails with instructions on how to watch CBS programs.  They show how to hook up your computer to your TV to watch CBS programs.

It’s pretty simple if you know about DVI, HDMI, S-Video and the like.  And, really easy if you’re familiar with Windows and the multi-monitor display options and have a TV set with the proper inputs. My guess is that group makes up about less than one half of one percent of cable customers.

And, I’m surmising that small group already knows how to hook up a monitor to a laptop to watch CBS.com, ABC.com, Hulu.com or Netflix.com.  They are generally younger than the WISH-TV audience that tends to skew older.

Hopefully, they’re not trying to instruct the same viewers that call every week, incredulous that Channel 6 had changed over their broadcasts to Spanish and that I was an idiot for not realizing that folks in central Indiana speak English.  Somehow, their audio menu got selected to the Secondary Audio Program (SAP) channel which had a Spanish language translation of the program.  But, their powers of deduction failed them.  And, Bright House wants them to watch CBS online?  Good luck.

Most of the networks are now running prime time programs after they’ve had their initial exposure on their websites so 1) viewers can catch episodes, not miss sequential story lines and will stay with the series 2) viewers may see a show online and start watching it and 3) they can put commercials in those episodes and get more revenue from the repeats.

But, the pain point for a lot of customers centers around watching the Colts and Jaguars battle it out tomorrow at 1PM.  And, you can’t watch that on your computer, even if you are an IT genius.