text: Though NBC claimed that the performance of The Jay Leno Show offered no surprises and that O'Brien was meeting expectations as well, the network had failed to anticipate the impact that Leno's weaker 10pm lead-in would have on the local 11pm news, which suffered a drastic drop in ratings (between 25%–50% nationwide) as a demonstrable result. As the affiliates rely on the revenue generated during the news, this generated a furor from the local stations and placed pressure on NBC to quickly fix the 10pm situation, which was contributing to a cascading effect on the ratings of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, although the ratings of O'Brien's Tonight Show had already nosedived months before Leno's prime time show went on the air.
  On January 7, 2010, multiple media outlets reported that beginning March 1, 2010, Leno would move from his 10 p.m. weeknight time slot back to the traditional Tonight Show slot at 11:35. Under this proposal, Leno's show would be shortened from an hour to 30 minutes, which would make the monologue, Leno's most popular segment, the essence of the program. This would move The Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m., a post-midnight start for the first time in its sixty-year history, while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon would be pushed to 1:05am, and Last Call with Carson Daly would likely be cancelled. Under NBC's (later contested) interpretation of O’Brien's contract, the host was only guaranteed The Tonight Show in name rather than the 11:35pm slot with which it was synonymous.