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On the subject of Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien's ratings tanking:
I think something they did not account for was the younger audience of high school students, college students, and people in their 20s. Most of them were the only ones up that stayed up late enough to catch Conan on late night. With Conan moving up an hour it shouldn't affect his ratings however high school students, college students, and people in their 20s love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. When Conan was on at 11:30, the younger people could watch Jon Stewart and then flip over to Conan to catch the whole show or watch both Stewart and Colbert and tune into Conan to catch the first guest. Now that Conan is competing with Comedy Central, Comedy Central is winning.
Older viewers who should like that Jay Leno is earlier aren't watching him because they would watch the local news which would lead into Leno. That late at night only Leno, Letterman, and the boys at Comedy Central are on so they would choose accordingly. Now that he's on at 10 he's competing with their "regular" shows and apparently people would rather watch the Real Housewives over Leno. Conan is tanking because he doesn't have his younger audience and the older audience does not understand how a masturbating bear and a rottweiler puppet can be funny.
And on totally different subject soap operas definitely have a huge market for items seen in the show. You can watch Lucky and Elizabeth get married on General Hospital, then head to abc.com and buy a replica of the engagement ring, the outfits the characters wore, etc. Bored housewives will buy tons of this shit. But also those are shows where outfits are more interesting than the plot. Unless Larry David's sneakers were bright yellow or made him fly I don't see how they're newsworthy.
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