Pepsi, Leno, and Choice

Place a Coke and a Pepsi in front of me, ask me to choose one, and I will always pick the Coke. Restau­rants offer a dif­fer­ent sce­nario.  They typ­i­cally carry either only Coke or Pepsi.  When I go out to eat I always ask for a Coke, but if the restau­rant car­ries Pepsi, I hap­pily drink it with­out ques­tion.  I enjoy both, but given the choice I like Coke better.

The same has applied to late night com­edy for me as well.  I am a “David Let­ter­man Guy.”  When I was in 6^th grade, I would secretly stay up until 1:30 crack­ing up from watch­ing Dave.  Stu­pid Pet Tricks, Stu­pid Human Tricks, Bite Me, Larry Bud Mel­man, Super Dave, The World’s Most Dan­ger­ous Band — all pro­vided the fod­der for my class­room com­edy rou­tine the fol­low­ing day.  For years I was forced to choose between Let­ter­man and Leno, and the choice was obvi­ous for me — Dave.  I think the guy is hilar­i­ous.  Thus I have never been a reg­u­lar fol­lower of Jay.  In the con­text of either / or, I chose Dave.

All that said I am strangely happy that Jay Leno will be on tele­vi­sion at 10:00pm start­ing this fall.  I have dig­i­tal rab­bit ears on my tv, and that means not many options for com­edy at that hour.  These days, I rarely see 11:30pm, as life and the respon­si­bil­i­ties of adult­hood have pushed me toward a lit­tle ear­lier time for slum­ber.  Gen­er­ally I find myself  turn­ing on re-runs of what­ever sit­com I can find at 10:00pm, and then slowly drift­ing off to sleep.  The only other choices for this time slot are mur­der shows and the news — basi­cally the same thing.  I like to end the day with a laugh, so the sit­com rerun becomes a nat­ural choice. For what­ever rea­son, I find the white tele­vi­sion light and sound of the laugh track con­ducive to falling asleep with a smile on my face.   Now I will have some­thing new to enter­tain me every night.  Jay is like Pepsi to me.  I like Coke bet­ter, but if I can’t get Coke it will do just fine.    It will be nice to have live tele­vi­sion and new com­edy to enter­tain me nightly at an hour that is con­ducive to my work sched­ule.  So until Dave moves to 10:00, I will be giv­ing Jay a shot at mak­ing me laugh.

With regard to your busi­ness, is it pos­si­ble to “remove the choice” in order to reach new cus­tomers?  Can you offer a new ser­vice, deliver a new con­cept, or sim­ply mod­ify your hours to reach those who you might not be reach­ing now?  If a Let­ter­man fan is will­ing to watch Leno sim­ply because it is on ear­lier, what might you be able do with a lit­tle tweak­ing?  How can you change the rules of the game to attract new cus­tomers who might not have pre­vi­ously cho­sen you?  Worth a thought.

Also worth not­ing: at that hour it is more likely that I will be drink­ing a beer or an ice water, and not a Coke.