NBC will be jettisoning Jay while hoping that both he and Conan will stay

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PASADENA, Calif. -- Faced with a possible wave of preemptions by its affiliate stations, NBC officially cut the cord Sunday with Jay Leno's prime-time show.

NBC Universal Entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin said that Leno's Monday-Friday hour, which debuted last September, will vanish when the Peacock begins its Winter Olympic telecasts on Feb. 12. Starting on March 1, the night after the closing ceremonies from Vancouver, Canada, NBC will fill the last hour of its weeknight prime-time schedule with a yet to be determined array of scripted and unscripted programming.

So what's next with Leno and incumbent Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien? Gaspin's announced goal is to return Leno to late night in the half-hour following local newscasts, move the Tonight Show back a half-hour and then start Jimmy Fallon's late nighter 30 minutes later, too. But all concerned have to sign off on this proposal. And Gaspin acknowledged, to a packed hotel ballroom full of TV critics, that negotiations remain "fluid" and possibly ill-fated.

"As much as I would like to tell you we have a done deal, we know that's not true," he said. "The talks are still ongoing."

Leno, O'Brien and Fallon, with whom he's talked personally, have all been "incredibly gracious and professional," Gaspin contended. Beyond that he wouldn't go, repeatedly refusing to talk about any specifics. Fox reportedly is open to the idea of giving O'Brien a late night venue, but for now he remains under contract to NBC.

"Everybody has the weekend to think about it. Let's see what happens," Gaspin said.

In the end, NBC ran into a buzzsaw in the form of Peacock stations, many of whose post-Leno late night local newscasts played to significantly diminished audiences during the November "sweeps" ratings period.

"The drumbeat started getting louder and louder" during the holiday season, Gaspin said. "Then they started talking about the possibility of preemptions. And it was then that I realized that this was not going to go well if we kept things in place."

NBC's scheduling of Leno in prime-time was widely viewed as the riskiest network programming strategy in years -- and perhaps ever. The Peacock cited the cost-efficiency of The Jay Leno Show -- it's appreciably less expensive to produce than a typical one-hour scripted drama -- and the need to reinvent the broadcast network model in times of shrinking ratings and dour economic times.

Gaspin said that NBC continued to make a profit with the Leno show but couldn't put out the fires burning at its increasingly incensed affiliate stations.

"I don't think it's wrong to take chances," he said. "We may have been a bit too early on this one."

NBC hopes to have its late night situation in order before the Olympics start. The network then would use the Games as a "platform" to push its new prime-hours and ideally Leno, O'Brien and Fallon in an altered configuration.

Meanwhile, both Leno and O'Brien have been ridiculing NBC in their nightly opening joke segments since the rumored changes became public last week. Gaspin said he doesn't mind a bit.

"They can do whatever they want in their monologues. I have no issues with that," he said after the interview session, noting that NBC's 30 Rock disparages its home network in virtually every episode.

The Peacock, a national joke at present, can always be relied on to provide fresh material.