Jay Leno ends his prime-time experiment

Jay Leno has ushered out one of US television's biggest flops, with the final night of a prime-time experiment doomed by bad ratings and bad vibes..

Leno on Tuesday told a few barbed jokes about The Jay Leno Show and Donald Trump told him "you're fired."

"It seems like just yesterday I was telling NBC this was not going to work," Leno said in his final monologue, and it wasn't clear he was joking.

Leno is returning to his old perch at the Tonight show - the program he hosted for 17 years before being replaced by Conan O'Brien seven months ago - after NBC decided to end The Jay Leno Show because of low ratings and affiliate station complaints.

"This show was supposed to be on for two years," Leno said, "but we got five months for good behaviour," he told the audience on Tuesday night.

Leno said he should have known it wasn't going to last, and he showed a film of him pulling his car into a parking space that said, "Jay Leno, No Parking After February 9."

Actor Ashton Kutcher was a guest, and recently retired pro football quarterback Kurt Warner was brought on to throw a few passes to him.

Precious star Gabourey Sidibe came on to talk about her best actress nomination for the Academy Awards.

The Jay Leno Show was one of the boldest scheduling moves in years, but the size of Leno's audience - while fine for late night - couldn't cut it in prime time.

Desperate to keep both Leno and O'Brien, NBC had given Leno the prime-time show five nights a week at 10pm and made O'Brien the Tonight show host.

Late local news shows following Leno on NBC affiliates dropped sharply in the ratings. With some affiliates threatening to yank Leno, NBC proposed cutting his show to a half-hour at 11.35pm and moving O'Brien back a half-hour.

O'Brien refused and took a buyout from NBC.

Leno didn't talk about the Tonight show move during Tuesday night's show.

When the show ended, there wasn't any time to say goodbye. A question-and-answer session with NBC Sports anchor Bob Costas appeared to run long, and Leno barely had time to urge his viewers to stay tuned for the late local news.

O'Brien hosted his final Tonight show on January 22, and Leno is scheduled return on March 1.