NBC announced this week that following his departure from the Tonight Show in 2009, Jay Leno will remain with the network to host a talk show every weeknight at 10:00 p.m.

This, of course, means that NBC will either cancel or move all of its current 10 p.m. series to make room for Leno. The claim is that Leno's show will be far cheaper to produce than the 5 hours of programming that currently fills those time slots. But will ad revenue be high enough to produce similar profits? After all, Leno's current viewer numbers in late night, while high for his time slot, are hardly what a network wants to see in prime time.

And what about NBC's late night talk shows? If Leno appears nightly with high profile celebrity guests similar to the Tonight Show, won't this inevitably hurt Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon's shows? Not only will Leno be competing with O'Brien and Fallon for guests, but if viewers get their talk show fix at 10 o'clock, will anyone stick around for "Tonight" and "Late Night?"

I do wonder if there's more to this deal than meets the eye. Could NBC execs be counting on Leno's show to fail? After all, the primary goal might simply be to prevent Leno from signing with ABC for a show that would compete directly with O'Brien at 11:30 p.m. By offering him a prime time slot, they managed to lock Leno in at the peacock network for awhile longer. Then, if Leno fails to draw big numbers, NBC can cancel his show whenever it wants. But in the meantime O'Brien can build his own version of the Tonight Show without competing directly with Leno. After a Leno cancellation, NBC can simply go back to a more traditional programming schedule.