In which we ponder Jay Leno's future

While NBC’s travails in recent years suggest that the network’s name stands for Never Been Competent, the network is watching yet another potential disaster rolling its way in slow-motion: Jay Leno’s handing the “Tonight Show” baton over to Conan O’Brien in 2009.

NBC, in order to keep O’Brien from defecting to another network, signed him to a deal a few years ago that promised him the “Tonight Show” in 2009, and if the network reneged on the offer, it’d have to pay Conan a penalty of some $45 million. May have seemed like a good bet at the time, or at least deferring one more headache for another day. But despite delivering somewhat hackneyed product, the avuncular Leno has been dominating late-night ratings – he even managed to beat David Letterman during the writers strike, despite the fact that Letterman’s show had its full contingent of writers and Leno (ostensibly) had to write all of his material on the fly. Meanwhile, just at the time when he should be gaining momentum, Conan’s begun to face some stiff competition from Craig Ferguson over at CBS. And there’s the question of how comfortably Conan can ease into the new timeslot: He may be too quirky to appeal to as many viewers as Jay does seemingly effortlessly, but if he rounds some of his edges off, his current fans may not be appeased. On the other hand, NBC’s in no condition to p!ss away $45 million these days, so not handing the job over to Conan is extremely unlikely.

NBC has already begun building O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” set in Universal City and sweet-talking Leno about continuing at the network in some other capacity. But Leno has insisted that his current late-night slot is the only one he’s interested in, and that he doesn’t want to move from his Burbank studio (NBC is in the process of selling its Burbank lot and leasing it back).

Which brings us to this New York Times report that even though no one is officially supposed to be approaching Leno about his post-2009 plans at this point, in fact plenty of people already are. ABC is so anxious to become a bigger player in late-night that it’s willing to jettison “Nightline,” Fox wants to finally establish a late-night beachhead and Sony Pictures Television wouldn’t mind cozying up to Jay, either, and their deal would likely be the juiciest and most lucrative.

But: Is Jay in it for the money, or to stick it to NBC and prove just how stupid they were for forcing him to walk the plank just to hold on to Conan? One executive told the Times, “I expect money will play a secondary role to revenge and Jay will look to prove to everybody that NBC was wrong.”

So: Let’s mull Jay’s options for him, shall we?

* ABC: The Times puts its chips here. This would be the only deal that would guarantee that Leno would go directly head-to-head against and pulverize O’Brien into a puddle of pale pulp, if that really is his overriding motivation. And ABC’s sensibility is more in keeping with Jay’s than Fox’s. The downside, however, is that there would be some negative ink regarding Jay’s killing off the respected “Nightline,” a consideration that had a hand in Letterman opting to say thanks but no thanks to ABC and stay with CBS a few years ago.

* Fox: The network is desperate to establish a late-night presence, if only to wash away the bad taste left in its mouth from previous abject failures featuring Joan Rivers and Chevy Chase. Jay’s mainstream, Main-Street-Middle-America persona would be less of a fit with Fox’s edgier fare. And, again, the timeslot consideration – Fox’s show would begin at 11 p.m. – might conflict with Leno’s bloodlust for O’Brien’s head. “Another performer would find getting a jump at 11 an advantage,” a Fox executive told the Times. “But probably not Jay, who will want to be head to head against NBC.”

* Sony: Syndication made Oprah Winfrey an extremely wealthy woman, and could easily make Leno the uber-Oprah of late-night. On the face of it, this would seem a no-brainer: Leno’d get to own not only his show but a prospective series following his (just as Letterman also owns “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”). The Times says Sony would also offer Leno $40 million annually (he currently makes $25 million), making him far and away the highest-paid late-night performer (Letterman makes $30 million). They’d also put Jay’s name on a new theater on the Sony lot and even throw some more coin his way when Sony music artists would appear on his show.

Essentially, Sony’s offering Jay the ability to add every car on the planet to his already sizable auto collection. And with the networks’ market share shrinking on a second-by-second basis, Leno’s syndicated show would be able to cater to the strongest channels in every local market. The lone downside would be that they probably wouldn’t be able to guarantee that Jay gets that NBC-bludgeoning 11:30 p.m. timeslot in every market. And, again, if revenge is the chief motivator, there wouldn’t be a daily overnight ratings report comparing/contrasting Jay v. Conan: Syndicated numbers are issued on a weekly basis.

* Sticking with NBC: Conceivably, Leno might stick around at the network that stuck the shiv in his back and do occasional primetime specials or an opening monologue in lieu of a news update on the “Today” show. The network insists it wants to keep him around, but probably only so he won’t turn up somewhere else and underscore what a mistake showing him the door in favor of Conan was. But that seems about as likely as NBC offering me the job to replace Conan in the 12:30 a.m. timeslot.

So: You’d want to be Jay in this little skirmish. You wouldn’t want to be Conan, and you certainly wouldn’t want to be an executive at NBC.