Palm Beach Gardens attorney Pepe Sosa admits that he doesn’t watch the local news every night at 11, but when he does, the broadcast he chooses is usually the one that follows the show he was watching at 10.

And pretty much ever since NBC premiered The Jay Leno Show at 10, that news show hasn’t come from WPTV-News Channel 5, the local NBC affiliate.

“If I was going to leave the news on, the lead-in would be important, and lately that hasn’t been Channel 5 at all because of Jay Leno,” says Sosa, 36.

Sosa is apparently not alone — NBC recently announced that it plans to move the struggling Leno show from 10 p.m. to 11:35. That pleases some NBC affiliates, which had seen their ratings slide with Leno as their lead-in, but not current Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien.

In a statement Tuesday, O’Brien politely but resolutely declined NBC’s offer to move The Tonight Show, which he has hosted for seven months, to 12:05 a.m. , calling such a move “the destruction” of that show’s 60-year legacy:

“People of Earth:
… I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision. …
“My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

“Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.”

And on the time slot, local O’Brien fans couldn’t agree more.

“I completely understand (O’Brien’s stance). 12:30 has always been where the edgier, younger guys have been, where Letterman started, where Conan started, and then moved on and got more established. Once you’ve got what is supposedly the pinnacle of late night, why would anyone want to go back?” asked Sosa.

“I’m very disappointed in NBC,” says Toby Srebnik, 37, a longtime O’Brien fan and public relations representative in Boca Raton. “NBC made the deal to let Conan take The Tonight Show, but we live in such a ‘now’ society that after seven months, they’re looking to abandon ship.”

Management from Channel 5 declined to comment , but news directors for NBC affiliates in other cities have publicly cheered the decision to move Leno.

Adam Hanft, a branding expert and pop culture writer for publications such as Slate, said he thinks that the announcements of Leno’s move and O’Brien’s displeasure will be at least an initial ratings boon to NBC and its affiliates, as “everyone wants to watch the train wreck going on.”

“NBC looks weak not to have given (O’Brien’s show) time to bloom, the way they have done with other shows,” he said. “Their schedule is a big mess now, a jigsaw puzzle spread all over the coffee table that no one know what to do with.”

And West Palm Beach’s Daniel Gray, who has followed O’Brien since the 1990s, said he’s going to give Leno another chance at 11:35 p.m. just to see if he’s a better fit at his old time slot.

“I wasn’t impressed with the difference in the mood of either Leno or (O’Brien),” he said, “but I’m willing to watch and see what happens. I’d watch either of them.”