A view to a kill

From across the water: “…Never mind that the 10pm slot is widely known within the broadcast industry as a “deathscape”, a terrain so inhospitable, so utterly unfavourable to all forms of ratings life that only the most cockroach-like of formats, the procedural crime drama (Law & Order, CSI: Miami, etc.), can hope to survive it. Nevertheless, Leno was moved, and O’Brien, a pale, freckled 46-year-old — whose quiff is brushed up at such an angle that it looks like a kind of advancing ginger tsunami — got the job that had reportedly been promised to him in 2004. It must have taken all of, oh, a couple of weeks before Zucker realised that he had made a mistake of truly collossal proportions. O’Brien wasn’t just crushed. He was turned to vapour. And then, to the horror of both O’Brien and NBC, the David Letterman scandal broke…” More.

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