‘Jay Leno Show’ move short-sighted

He’s humble, hard-working and aside from an hour each weeknight and his regular gigs at The Mirage, he lives his life so far from the spotlight that even TMZ rarely catches up to him.

So why does pretty much everyone in Hollywood — not to mention a healthy portion of the media — want him to fail?

For starters, “The Jay Leno Show” (10 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, KVBC-TV, Channel 3) is a terrible idea. It’s basically an admission by the once-dominant network that it no longer can program a full 22 hours a week — even with reruns on Saturdays and football eating up Sundays all the way into January.

NBC can talk all it wants about what an institution Leno is and how much it wanted to keep him in the fold even after kicking him to “The Tonight Show” curb, but “The Jay Leno Show” is all about saving money. NBC can produce an entire week of “Leno” at or below the cost of one episode of a standard drama.

But by stripping Leno across each weeknight, NBC has conceded a third-place finish in that hour and probably will remain mired in fourth place overall.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to say, ‘NBC is No. 1 in prime time,’ ” Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal president and chief executive officer, under whose leadership the network has gone from first to worst, said in March.

The “Leno” move is short-sighted at best — unlike dramas, there’s no demand for talk show reruns here or in the lucrative foreign markets, and there are precious few opportunities for DVD sales or other merchandising, where even marginally rated dramas can really clean up — and catastrophic at worst — if “Leno” succeeds, there’s little to stop ABC or, one day, CBS from doing the same and surrendering the 10 p.m. hour altogether.

The one bright spot in this deal was that with those five hours out of the equation, NBC seemingly would be able to pack its remaining two hours a night with quality shows. Yet “The Biggest Loser,” TV’s most bloated, fast-forwardable program outside of the “American Idol” results show, still occupies two hours on Tuesdays instead of a slim, trim 60 minutes.

And despite the hundreds of millions of dollars “Leno” will save NBC this year alone, the network, like its counterparts, is slashing the amount it’s willing to spend on its existing shows. “Chuck” co-creator Josh Schwartz jokingly told fans at Comic-Con this summer that thanks to very real budget cuts, “This year we can only afford for (co-star) Adam Baldwin to grunt.”

But what really irks most people is that NBC is severing its ties to history — the 10 p.m. slot has been home to such institutions as “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law” and “ER” — and that it’s doing it with Leno.

The same Leno whose overwhelming desire to be liked stripped away most of what once made him funny and left him as edgy as a bowl of Jell-O.

Can you imagine if Leno, not David Letterman, had been involved in the kerfuffle over the joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter? He’d have been on the next plane to Wasilla and probably would’ve shot a couple of wolves from the cockpit just to try to make amends.

But while I’m far from a Leno fan — he lost me once he stopped wearing those crazy “Miami Vice” jackets and palling around with Letterman — I feel bad for the guy.

Leno never asked to be pushed aside for the ridiculously funnier yet ultimately lower-rated Conan O’Brien, whose ratings probably will suffer even more now that he and Leno will compete for the same guests.

And he wasn’t ready to take one of the roughly 8,000 cars and motorcycles he owns and ride off into the sunset.

But rather than jumping to Fox or ABC and taking on both Letterman and O’Brien, he stayed loyal to NBC.

Now, he’s in the awkward position where if he succeeds, by whatever low standards the network is holding him to, his beloved NBC probably will just continue to wither and die.

It’s often said that nice guys finish last, and in this case, it’s a given.

But here’s hoping it’s such a distant, embarrassing last that the network feels compelled to get back in the drama business.

Jay Leno’s abject failure is the only way for NBC to save itself.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.