Not all that long ago, NBC was the network all the other networks wanted to be. With a death grip on yuppie audiences, on well off 20 and 30 somethings, and the magic Thursday night of Friends, Seinfeld and ER, NBC was the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Well that gorilla is long gone. NBC troubles didn’t begin yesterday, but Ben Silverman’s bizarre reign of remakes made them a lot worse. Two seasons of Ben Silverman left NBC crammed with a lot of expensive canceled shows it didn’t actually need. After high profile and expensive dramas like Crusoe and Kings, reboots of classic shows like Knight Rider and Bionic Woman, and a bunch of sitcom imports like Kath and Kim, NBC is in big trouble.

Putting Leno on has been one solution. But what it does is extend late night into what had been prime time television time. And that is a short term solution that manages to eject actual dramas from NBC. The cancellation of Southland is problem number one. Not that Southland was spectacular television, but it’s better than Jay Leno hunching over in a chair and trying to rerun the same routine at a different hour. Leno’s ratings have predictably enough begun sinking, but he’s still profitable. The problem is that running Leno in turns pulls down NBC even deeper into the sinkhole.

There has to be a reason people watch a network in the first place, and NBC doesn’t exactly give people many reasons. The Office still has its fanbase, and even more inexplicably so does 30 Rock, from people who are convinced that it’s actually funny. But that is not enough to sustain a network. Right now NBC looks more like an obscure cable channel than one of the big three networks, and its ratings are trending in that direction. If NBC does enough damage to its image, it won’t have the viewers who will stick around to yawn through Leno. It won’t have the identity to actually interest viewers. With once popular shows like Heroes heading out the door, and not a whole lot to offer viewers except reality programming and Law and Order, a show that makes Leno seem young, NBC has nothing much new to offer except Trauma and possibly Day One.