NBC Confirms Leno's Primetime Run Ends Next Month

The best way to control rumors most often is to confront them head-on, which NBC has done today via NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin, who revealed just this morning that Jay Leno's "nightly prime-time show will end with the beginning of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 12," reports KTLA. According to Gaspin, Leno is being courted for an 11:35 p.m. half-hour slot, thereby bumping Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon back a half-hour, however it's "not a done deal," adding he "hopes to have NBC's late-night lineup cleared up by the beginning of the Olympics." Gaspin remarked that it was the NBC affiliates who were not satisfied with the Leno "experiment," which prompted the mid-season shakeup. The news came during NBC's segment of the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena.