If the rumors are true, NBC is about to head for the biggest PR disaster in the history of the network.

Rumors have been flying for a bit now that poorly rated The Jay Leno Show will be off the air when NBC is done with its Winter Olympics coverage. While people at first assumed this meant Jay Leno would be out of a job, it appears that they are simply moving him to his old time slot of 11:35 pm EST. The problem with this? That is the time slot of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.

The rumor goes, and I stress this is rumor, is that Jay will have a new show from 11:35 pm EST to 12:05 am EST.  The Tonight Show will move to 12:05 am EST to 1:05 am EST and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon will move to 1:05 am EST to 2:05 am EST.  Conan will get to keep The Tonight Show name as it is in his contract, although the show will move from its traditional time slot.

Now, if Conan chooses to leave due to the time change, Jay Leno will go to an hour long show and Jimmy Fallon will retain his current time slot.  NBC would have the option of blocking Conan from working anywhere else for two years, but the rumor is that they will not do so as he seems to be the odd man out in this whole deal.

So, in other words, NBC completely botched everything with its plan for The Jay Leno Show, a show that shouldn’t even exist, and a long term promise made to Conan O’Brien will get broken to continue to keep Leno happy for no good reason?

When is everyone going to finally realize that Jeff Zucker, President of NBC, has absolutely no clue what he is doing?

NBC used to be a number one, but under Mr. Zucker’s stewardship, the network has fallen to fourth place and continues to make mistake after mistake.  WHDH in Boston even tried to rebel and not even air the show, but they were later told they had no choice if it wanted to retain its network affiliation.  Even the affiliates knew this was a bad idea!  Yet, Mr. Zucker soldiers on and now is stuck in a potential PR disaster that will see his network getting egg all over its face as it tries to explain why the 11:35 pm EST show is not The Tonight Show, or why one of its long time hosts has left the network.  If any of these rumors prove to be true, it will do nothing but make the network that much more of a laughing stock.

There is one very simple solution that will mitigate the disaster to some degree: simply cut Jay Leno loose.  Conan retains his show, Jimmy doesn’t have to move, and Leno is gone.  You end up with one black mark as opposed to multiples.

When this whole concept was announced back in Dec. 2008, I predicted it would be a disaster.  Guess what … I was right.  This whole concept was flawed from the start, and though pundits, critics and even affiliates tried to warn Mr. Zucker it was a bad move, he went ahead with it.  How has this man kept his job?  If he was a football coach, he would have been fired by now for his win/loss record, but instead he gets to go on and make even more boneheaded decisions that just make the world laugh at this once great network even harder.

Mr. Zucker, please, for the good of the network, step down before you make another foolish mistake like this.