Here we are at the start of another work week. What this week will bring in the business of television is anybody’s guess. But in this week or the ones soon ahead, we expect a growing number of deals to be announced, with more local TV stations being sold or traded--and more local duopolies being created. Today, however, we’d like to focus on this modest idea we had, to see if it makes sense to anyone other than those of us trying to think up an idea to start a new column for a new week.

You see, our recent travels have had us jumping back and forth between US time zones. Since we live primarily in the Central Time Zone, we find it is always a slight adjustment to be in the Eastern Time Zone, where the late news starts at 11 pm, rather than the 10 pm hour that we are used to. That’s likely true because we spent our first half-century living in the East. But that shift in thinking about time got us to thinking: It is time to consider the radical idea of shrinking TV’s primetime?

Back in 2009, NBC faced the interesting problem of having too many late-night hosts, with both Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on its roster. In 1992, NBC picked Leno to replace the legendary Johnny Carson over David Letterman. Letterman, who had been waiting in the wings with his 12:30 pm show for NBC, then decamped for CBS, where he successfully hosted “The Late Show” for 22 years. Fast forward to 2004, when Leno had told the network that when his five-year extension expired in 2009, he would be ending his time behind “The Tonight Show” desk. NBC was ready for that move, having signed Letterman’s 12:35 pm replacement, Conan O’Brien, to take over “The Tonight Show."

When the 2009 deadline arrived, Leno had a change of heart. But NBC had already committed to elevating Conan O’Brien to “The Tonight Show, in large part because he was drawing a substantially younger audience in the later time slot.  The network was anxious to keep Leno on the air because his ratings were still substantial. So NBC announced that they would be putting Jay on with his own hour-long show that kept almost every identifiable trait of “The Tonight Show" (brilliantly named “The Jay Leno Show.) It would air each weeknight at 10 pm, starting in September of 2009, and at the same time, Conan would take over “The Tonight Show” in its traditional time of 11:35 pm following late local news on the NBC stations.

Shockingly, audiences felt they didn’t need two very similar talk shows on each weeknight, and both Leno’s and Conan’s overall audiences fell significantly. NBC realized its blunder and scrapped the 10 pm exercise in January of 2010, reinstating Leno as host of “The Tonight Show,” and saying goodbye to a blindsided Conan O’Brien.

We bring that chapter in TV history up because it suggests that the idea of a major broadcast network thinking that the 10 pm hour isn’t as sacrosanct as it might have been in the pre-cable and pre-internet days. Fast forward to July 2025, when the story breaks that CBS is pulling the plug on Letterman’s “Late Show” successor, Stephen Colbert, next May, due to that program now reportedly losing millions of dollars a year. The network says nothing about what they might air in its place at 11:35 pm each weeknight.

We offer this free, unsolicited idea: Consider reducing Network Primetime to two hours a night from 8-10 pm, down from the current three hours.

Then, let your affiliates air their late news at 10 pm. You can start your late-night programming at 10:35 pm, or even allow the affiliates to program a full hour of late local news at 10 pm, and start network late-night programming at 11 pm.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, the FOX network has produced a two-hour primetime schedule since its birth in the late 1980s. Its affiliates have produced their local news at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific (9 pm Central and Mountain), and most have done very well for themselves. With no competition at 10, at least in the majority of markets they are in, they have an opportunity to attract a news audience that doesn’t necessarily want to wait another hour to get the latest news, weather, and sports before going to bed.

Assuming that network television is becoming a less profitable business--seemingly by the hour—— why stick with the legacy schedule that doesn’t seem to be helping anyone in the equation? Especially since there hasn't been a breakout 10 pm network hit in a very long time, especially in the era of streaming, where network audience levels have fallen faster than most people's retirement account balances.

Yes, we know all the reasons why this isn’t likely going to happen anytime soon. The loss of the network ad inventory is considerable. But the savings of not having to program seven hours of original network programming each week would be significant as well. Not maybe as cheap as running the best of “Saturday Night Live” episodes at 10 pm on Saturdays, but much more affordable than new episodes of  “High Potential” for one example. It’s been one of the few bright spots at 10 pm in recent memory.

Plus, having a level playing field for local news at 10 pm would be an opportunity for the affiliates, especially with a mid-year political cycle just ahead. We’re just saying that if the adage is ever true that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” our idea doesn’t seem as desperate as those housewives on ABC were back in 2004.

Of course, that was before housewives in primetime got real. But they appeared on basic cable. On Bravo, no less.