So when news broke that NBC tapped Jimmy Fallon to replace Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show and move the storied franchise back to its original home, New York City, the public collectively sighed and vowed to remind itself to set its DVR or check out Hulu at work. Clearly NBC is seeking the next Johnny Carson to revive television ratings (which is kinda like the music industry seeking the next Michael Bolton or Kenny G to revive CD sales).

News flash: The Roots are a great house band and all, but the public has moved on.

continued…

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But this isn’t your father’s 11:35pm time slot. No longer is it a lonely post-news netherworld for budding insomniacs and beleaguered parents looking to steal a drink and a laugh before bed. Today, the nightly monologue must compete with Call of Duty, Twitter surfing, Funny or Die marathons and the endless distractions emanating from our iPads and digital televisions. (At least we can still do all these things with a cocktail in hand.)

With an increase in options, however, comes a decrease in loyalty–and younger generations aren’t bonding with TV personalities like the generations that revered anchors like Walter Cronkite and late night personalities like Johnny Carson. Jimmy Kimmel is staring into the abyss, but he’s cool with that–and he should be. continued…

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During her appearance on ‘The Tonight Show’ with Jay Leno last night, Sarah Palin was asked by Leno, “The media does try to get a rise out of you, they sort of poke you, to get you to react, and sometimes your reaction becomes bigger than whatever the initial story was. Have you sort of learned, maybe, OK, I’m not going to comment on that one because it will only get bigger?”

Palin responded in part, “What I’d like is perhaps more opportunity to follow up on a comment I perhaps have made.” Leno asked for an example, to which Palin referred to a recent incident with the TV show “Family Guy,” which made a joke in reference her son Trig, who has Down syndrome.

In that instance, Palin responded via her Facebook page, stating, “If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they’re heartless jerks.”

In her interview with Leno, Palin said her comment, “got out there in the blogosphere, in the different mediums we have today, and it’s left there, not an opportunity to follow up and elaborate on what I really meant.”

However, many would disagree with Palin’s stance. If there is anyone in the world that has the power to “follow up,” it is Palin, who regularly appears on the number one most watched cable news network, Fox News, has a Facebook page with more than 1.4 million fans, and can regularly command the attention of just about any reporter or media outlet she desires to speak with. Scroll to about the 1:26 mark in the clip to watch the exchange, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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This is more AgencySpy’s territory, but PRNewser wanted to provide a quick recap of who “won” and who “lost” in last night’s Super Bowl marketing bonanza.

Winners:

Pepsi Refresh

Although the jury is still out on Pepsi’s decision to skip the Super Bowl in favor of a cause based social marketing campaign, Advertising Age reports that “pass or fail,” the campaign will be a “case for marketing textbooks.”

“It is surprising how much emotion is tied to the Super Bowl in terms of the industry and general public,” Chief Engagement Officer Frank Cooper told PRNewser last week in reference to how much press the brand has received for its choice not to buy an ad int the big game.

Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media for PepsiCo told AdAge that the strategy of using a TV spot and then making that spot into an online or Facebook strategy “does not exist anymore. That is not relevant whatsoever.”

Indeed, very few brands used their commercials as a vehicle to drive traffic to social sites. Did you notice that hardly any commercials promoted Facebook, Twitter or Youtube links?

AdAge reports that agencies Huge, Firstborn, Tribal DDB and VML have all picked up Pespi business in the last few months. Add that to the list of agencies PRNewser has confirmed to be working on the campaign — TBWA, R/GA, Epiphany/Porter Novelli, Edelman and Weber Shandwick — and that brings the total to ten PR and advertising agencies.

Google

Google’s simple ad seemed to have the highest emotional connection with views.

“We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience,” wrote Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a blog post. Just the fact that Google advertised in the Super Bowl will get the company a slew of press.

The Late Show with David Letterman

The ad featuring Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman is getting lots of buzz, for obvious reasons.

Focus on The Family

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the group’s ad garnered a ton of media attention. “By setting up an expectation that it was going to do something controversial, Focus made it easy to come off as moderate and inclusive by comparison” writes Jeff Bercovici at Daily Finance.

Losers:

GoDaddy

The domain seller’s ads were predictable, yet not memorable. What does GoDaddy do again?

The U.S. Census Bureau

2.5 million of our tax dollars for that? The Bureau had to issue a press release defending itself against criticism.

Additional notes:

• The New York Times‘ Stuart Elliott live-blogged the ads.

• Agency Mullen and monitoring vendor Radian6 also hosted “BrandBowl” which examined 98,656 tweets from ad and marketing types. These Tweets, “provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (both positive and negative).”

• AgencySpy will have more commentary today as well.

Leave your take on who “won” and “lost” in the comments.

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His first two interviews: The New York Times and Charlie Rose.

“Obviously, in hindsight, you know, perfect information leads you to that conclusion — that it was a mistake…And I think it’s the sign of a leader to step up and say, you know, when something’s not working, to have the guts to reverse it,” Zucker told Rose.

“At the end of the day Jay at 10 o’clock didn’t work. And I take responsibility for that,” he said to the Times‘ Tim Arango.

All of this comes as a deal with O’Brien to leave the network is said to be imminent.

Several PR executives PRNewser has spoken with said Zucker would have to take the blame in order for the network to “move on,” however some thought the public statements may have come even sooner than they did.

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After just several days of rumors and speculation, NBC confirmed Sunday a change to the network’s late-night line up. Now, the question is, will all parties involved except it?

The changes — moving Jay Leno back to late-night at 11:35 p.m. and pushing Conan O’Brien back to 12:05 a.m. — have been accepted by Leno, but not yet by O’Brien who could be considering a move to another network or a legal battle with NBC for breach of contract. The leak period on this news was relatively short, as the first reports of a line-up change emerged this past Thursday.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter now, as the focus will be on the mixed messages the line-up changes reveal, less than one year after Leno was heralded as the new face of prime-time for NBC.

“You have the combination of expired content, in terms of current public taste, appearing at the wrong time on a medium that has lost its salience, by whatever standards you use,” Paul Levinson, professor of communication at Fordham University told the Times.

On “The Tonight Show” brand, the Times‘ David Carr said, “Not since New Coke has a storied brand been so thoroughly maimed.” Harsh? Yes, but NBC needed to make a move after intense pressure from affiliate stations, whose profits are down more than 22% in 2009 in part after losing “lead in” audiences to their nightly news due to Leno’s slumping ratings.

Allison Gollust, NBC’s executive vice president of corporate communications, declined to make NBC Jeff Zucker available for interviews thus far. Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, announced the plans at an industry event yesterday in California.

RELATED: NBC PR Swings Into Gear On Leno Show Cancellation Rumors

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NBC Universal PR has been battling negative press around the re-shuffling of their late night line up since before the changes were even implemented.

This week, they’ve issued perhaps their most blunt statement regarding “The Jay Leno Show” which has seen low ratings and angered local affiliates who have seen large drop offs in audience with Leno as the lead in to their local newscasts.

Said the network in a statement, published by The Daily Beast:

“Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance.”

Praise for Leno? Yes. But also an acknowledgment that things aren’t going according to plans. It will be interesting to see how the network messages around upcoming changes to their schedule, including rumors that Leno’s show will be canceled altogether. Those rumors, widely reported in the media, fueled the need for today’s statement.

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In his much hyped interview on the first night of “The Jay Leno Show,” Kanye West told Leno that interrupting the acceptance speech of Taylor Swift at MTV’s Video Music Awards, “was rude, period. I don’t try to justify it ’cause I was in the wrong.” Leno went on to ask what West’s mother would think of his actions, which led to the most dramatic part of the interview. Could West have done better in this high pressure appearance? Some PR pros think so.

“Kanye needs media training…Didn’t he plan what he wanted to say before this appearance on Leno?” said Peter Himler, President of the Publicity Club of New York and Principal of Flatiron Communications.

As to whether or note the entire VMA scandal was staged to begin with, one music PR executive who declined to be named for this post, said it was “not staged,” because “he came out smelling so bad.” The executive drew parallels to the NBC Hurricane Katrina TV special where West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” The executive said that incident was, “definitely wild card, not staged.”

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The Lippin Group CEO Dick Lippin sounded off to Reuters on Late Night star Jay Leno‘s upcoming time slot move. “It is a courageous thing to take an icon on late night and move him into prime time,” he said. “With Jay Leno, you have a higher probability of success than with other people. The question is, what will Leno have to do in order to make it appointment television at 10 p.m.?”

In related news, the Lippin Group itself made a move this week, announcing an alliance with jLINE Group, “an event development and entertainment marketing firm.” The alliance will expand the agency’s services in “event development and production, programming brand integration and product placement.” [image cred]

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