Jay Leno Replacing Nightline?

With Jay Leno's last day, or night, on NBC looming large in the future, speculation abounds that the late night king will still tell jokes at 11:30, but it'll be on ABC. Jay Leno is funny, however I usually catch the beginning of his show, not by choice, but by waking up to it after having fallen asleep during the 11:00 news on NBC, and just before I change the channel to Nightline. So what will happen after Leno leaves the airwaves in May of 2009? The rumor is that ABC is his next home. This leaves me wondering, what will happen to Nightline.

I'm an avid news watcher. I enjoy information. It gives me something to talk about with friends, with students, ETC. Jay Leno is entertaining, and occasionally he hosts a good music group, but his show can hardly be said to make a difference. Nightline's in-depth reporting has changed a bit in the past few years, but it is one of the last places on network TV to find out about the latest medical breakthroughs and world events. Would we rather be entertained than informed?

Yes, at least that's what the message would be if Jay Leno replaces Nightline. One could say that this is a symptom of a world, or at least a country, which wants to laugh instead of crying. With the economy like it is, rising gas prices, never ending involvement in the middle east and a big juicy election coming up, who wouldn't need, and possibly want Leno to make us laugh, and give us a lighter perspective on world events.

I have to say, however, that as good as it is to laugh and be entertained, many Americans are ignorant of the world around us. Many of my community college students are almost proudly uninformed. We blithely live inebriated with entertainment.

I hope that if Jay Leno moves to ABC, we will not lose a half hour of news coverage. We could do without a half hour, or even an entire evenings worth of reality TV, but we should preserve the last half hour of the day so that Nightline can give us a look at the real world around us.