Are "The Jay Leno Show" and "Parks and Rec" headed for the chopping block? Ratings inside!

    Look, just watch "Parks and Rec" this week, just this once, and tell me I'm wrong:  It rocks.

The Comedy Examiner's Office has been following the numbers for its favorite comedies for the past few weeks.  There's good news for some fans, bad news for others.  I

guess we can all just be happy that there's stuff worth watching on, even if it all won't be on forever.  Read on, gentle Examiner readers...

Previously, the Comedy Examiner has reported on the ratings for "The Office", "Parks and Rec", "Community", and "The Jay Leno Show".  In fact, we've reported on the ratings of Jay's show alot over the past few weeks; their steady decline has been a major point of interest on TV blogs and entertainment sites for some time now.

Well, thanks to Ain't It Cool News, we once again have the numbers for some of your favorite comedies.  How are they doing?  Let's take a look, and then we'll do the autopsy afterwards.  Here they are, with the numbers in captions being the older weeks; the farther to the right they are, the older they are:

3.7 (3.7) (3.6) Survivor
3.7 (4.1) (----) FlashForward
3.7 (3.8) (4.1) The Office
2.9 (2.8) (3.8) Community
2.6 (2.7) (3.2) Bones
2.3 (2.2) (3.1) Fringe
1.9 (1.8) (2.1) Parks and Recreation
1.8 (1.8) (2.0) SNL Thursday
1.6 (1.7) (2.7) The Jay Leno Show
1.6 (1.7) (1.6) The Vampire Diaries

Well, going through the aforementioned shows one at a time, it looks like this:

"The Office" is doing well.  It's important to remember that those numbers on the far right are mostly season premieres for these shows, and those numbers always have a bit of inflation on them.  You can see that after that first week, "The Office" has maintained a pretty steady number.  This show's been on awhile, and it's one of the crown jewels in NBC's comedy crown, so unless this thing took a massive nose-dive for some reason, it ain't going anywhere.

"Community", again, started off with a huge share and then dropped a point the following week.  The good news is, it's stayed about the same, taking advantage of the lead-in that it's been getting from "The Office".  Furthermore, word of mouth on the show has been awesome so far, so it's likely that the numbers will rise even higher in the weeks to come.  My guess is, NBC must be very happy with the performance of the show thus far.  Good work, "Community".

Then we come to "Parks and Rec".  This show's numbers have stayed pretty much the same across the board-- it doesn't have a big second week dropoff like the others-- and that leads this writer to believe that the show's got a core base of fans that aren't going anywhere.  The downside, of course, is that the show just isn't doing the same numbers that "The Office" or "Community" is doing.  This is technically the second season for "Parks and Rec", and hopefully these numbers go up by the end of the season or its future may be in jeopardy.  Which would be a real shame: I love this show; it's hysterical.

And, finally, we have "The Jay Leno Show", which has been in decline ever since it went live.  NBC famously said that as long as the show was pulling a 1.5 share, they'd be happy with the profit they were turning on it.  Well, the show's dropped all the way down from a 3.5 (in its first week) to a 2.6 (second week) to a 1.6 this week.  This indicates that people are growing bored with the show already.  Then again, Jay's fans are very vocal, and even if it does drop below that 1.5 mark, it's unlikely that NBC would drop the show that quickly: they've got Jay on a 2 year contract, so he's gonna really have to bottom out for them to give up on him.

And that's your weekly comedy news numbers, folks.  Stay tuned for next week's around this same time.

And, hey, check out some of the Comedy Examiner's other recent articles, handily listed in the top right-hand corner of this page.  We have reports on David Letterman's blackmail shenanigans, a poll asking whether or not Dave's a sleazebag, Conan O'Brien being banned from Jersey, a report about "The Jay Leno Show" being boycotted, reviews of last night's episodes of "The Office" and "Parks and Rec",  and another poll about Jon Gosselin's recent appearance on "Larry King Live", proof that The Rock is a "Fairy", as well as some other timely stuff.  Click any of those links to go straight to the articles!

Oh, and while I've got your ear:  the Comedy Examiner has a new website! If you like the Comedy Examiner's articles but just wish they were a little more adult-oriented, a little more snarky, and could cover stuff other than snarky pop culture and comedy, then you are cordially invited over to NiceGuyForHire, the Comedy Examiner's newest site.  It's still a work in progress-- we have alot of cool features planned-- but you can still stop by, leave a comment, and check out some of the articles that aren't running here over there.  Give it a shot! 

(Photo: NBC)