Hey, you there! Think you can run a network? You may be able to do it better than NBC's boy-king Jeff Zucker, who Jay Leno has just exposed as a total space cadet.

Though Zucker has gotten some grudging credit for installing Leno as the network's 10pm player (all the better to distract you from that billion dollars of profit he's lost over the last three years!), Leno tells the NY Times that Zucker offered him some ridiculous, borderline-crazy ideas first:

He proposed a lot, starting with a half-hour show at 8 p.m. “That seemed way wrong,” Mr. Leno said.

Mr. Zucker then offered a prime-time slot every Sunday night. “Once a week is death,” Mr. Leno said.

So Mr. Zucker turned to another NBC Universal property, the USA cable network. Mr. Leno could have 11 p.m. (even though that would have cut into Mr. O’Brien’s “Tonight Show”). “That sort of seemed like living in the basement of your own house,” Mr. Leno said. “I’m still old enough to think network is the place.”

We're hardly Leno fans, but even we can't take pleasure in Zucker's offer of a much-worse, lower-rated talk show on USA, of all things. This man is somehow running NBC Universal! Did he really think that the workaholic Leno would eschew a huge payday and high-profile slot from rival suitor ABC so that he could follow lead-ins from Monk and Dr. Steve-O on basic cable? And that it would be a good idea to set up such a show to compete directly against NBC's The Tonight Show? Suddenly, the decision to greenlight Rosie Live! is making a whole lot more sense...