Hey, did you hear the one about Jay Leno moving to prime time?

It’s probably a good move. That way, Leno’s audience can actually watch half the show before nodding off.

Of course, to make room, NBC will have to find someplace to put a lot of its prime time programs. Shouldn’t be a problem, though. Forest Lawn is nearby.

But seriously, folks NBC’s announcement last week to move Leno to prime time does have implications for L.A.’s economy. That’s because the army of actors and wannabe actors who live here will have fewer opportunities for work.

Leno’s new five-night-a-week format will take away one hour of each weeknight’s three hours of prime time programming on NBC. For actors, that means NBC an important employer in Los Angeles will have less need for them.

It’s not as if actors are enjoying the best of times, either. There was the writers’ strike last year, and there is a prospect of more labor problems ahead. Actors have been sitting on the sidelines as actor-light reality programs took command of the playing field. And thanks to the proliferation of film incentives elsewhere, much of the acting work is now in other states and countries.

It’s been reported that 90 percent of Screen Actors Guild members earn less than $28,000 a year from acting. Leno’s move to prime time won’t help move that number up.

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If you look at the results of the Business Journal’s poll on the bottom left corner of this page, you’ll see that 28 percent of respondents plan on retiring well after age 65, and 35 percent figure they’ll never retire.

Granted, this is a decidedly unscientific poll, but still, a total of 63 percent are planning to blow well past the age of 65 before they hang it up, if they do so at all. That’s pretty amazing. (What prompted the poll question, by the way, was last week’s special report in the Business Journal, “Eight Over 80,” which profiled eight Angelenos, all 80 or older, who are not just still in the game but still throwing heat.)

I bring this up because of a pet peeve of mine: all those consultants out there striving to persuade business owners that they have a big problem on the horizon because of the tsunami of retirements of baby boomers.

That looming problem will be the same dud as the Y2K bug. I’m a baby boomer and I know not one of my peers who’s planning to retire. And especially now that all those 401(k) plans have been whittled down to 101 (k)s, I’ll bet a new round of retirements has been postponed.

The simple fact is that these days many people don’t feel old enough to retire at 65. (It also is worth noting that the kind of people most likely to respond to the Business Journal’s poll executives, managers, professional people are the very people that companies want to keep from retirement.)

I’ve written about this before, so I’m sorry to repeat, but companies’ problem will not be finding ways to keep baby boomers from retiring. It’ll be finding ways to prod them out the door.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at

[email protected].