• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 16, 2014

Jay Leno’s new show will be about cars and the wealthy people who collect them.

And that’s about all we can deduce from the news release CNBC put out the other day to announce that Leno would be joining the business channel’s non-business prime-time lineup with a new show that will premiere in 2015.

The press release had plenty of prepared statements, but precious little information. It gave no premiere date or, in the absence of such a date, the time of year -- perhaps the month or quarter of 2015 -- in which we might see this show. Neither the specific night of the week nor the show’s time slot was provided. For that matter, the announcement didn’t say whether this show would be nightly, weekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly or -- well, you get the idea. 

Even the title was characterized as “tentative” in the release. “Tentatively titled ‘Jay Leno’s Garage,’ based on his Emmy Award-winning Web series [which has been available to watch on NBC.com for a number of years], the program will premiere in 2015,” said the release.  “From classics to supercars, restoration projects to road tests, ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ is the place where Jay shares his passion for all things automotive, including best investments, valuations and the inner workings of the car collector’s market.”

“This show will be about anything that rolls, explodes and makes noise,” said Leno in one of the press release’s (presumably) prepared statements. “We hope to highlight the passion and the stories behind the men and women who made the automobile the greatest invention of the 20th century.” Greatest invention of the 20^th century? Do you mean besides television, Jay?

Another prepared statement was attributed to CNBC President Mark Hoffman, who was said to have stated, with great enthusiasm: “Jay will add tremendous star power and exceptional content to CNBC’s primetime at the perfect time” [whatever that “time” might be]. CNBC has real momentum and Jay’s personality, tremendous fan base and … [yada yada yada] We’re really excited.”

To prepare for this column, I contacted a few press reps at CNBC to try and fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, much of the data I sought was unavailable. “TBD” (to be determined) was the answer to my questions about: The number of episodes that will be produced for this show in its initial rollout (answer: TBD), the night and time for this show -- also TBD, and the show’s start date -- you guessed it, TBD.

I did get confirmation that each episode of this show will be one hour in length (hey, I guessed right about that even before I heard back from the press rep -- chalk one up for me!). I also found out the show will air weekly. Let the record show that the press reps I contacted responded quickly and courteously, even if these various pieces of information were unavailable.

I had also expressed curiosity about the make and model of the attractive automobile in the photo CNBC released to accompany the announcement about this new Leno car series. Unfortunately, the car was not identified in the caption posted with the photo on the NBC Web site called NBCUniversal Media Village. That’s the site NBC maintains for journalists to use to collect information about NBC’s networks and programs without, presumably, having to contact a press rep for this sort of niggling detail.

However, this particular photo -- the very one that you can see gracing this column -- had a caption that said, simply: “Jay Leno’s Garage -- pictured: Jay Leno.” Well, duh -- we know that’s Jay Leno, although his name certainly should be in the caption. But the car should also be identified because, after all, the photo was made available to publicize a show about cars.

As a free service to whoever writes these captions at NBCUniversal Media Village, here’s what the caption should have said: “Jay Leno with one of the many classic cars -- a [fill in blank with make, model and year] -- that make up his renowned personal collection of distinctive, historic automobiles” -- or something to that effect. You can thank me later.