Leno Has Wide Lead over Letterman.
Considering Letterman was beating Conan, does this validate the decision to replace Conan with Leno?
An argument at the time was that NBC lost a lot of viewers during the 10PM hour when they had Leno in it every night, since it didn’t hold people until the end the way a crime drama or a reality show would, and that was translating into bad ratings for Conan. So it’s possible that the improved ratings aren’t because Leno’s on at 11:30, but because he’s not on at 10.
I think there’s probably some truth to that, but I also think Leno just has a broader appeal (even though I’m a much bigger fan of Conan).
All the cool people are watching Colbert then anyway.
But didn’t Conan have the Tonight Show for four or five months before Leno debuted his new show? And weren’t the ratings still low then, even when Conan had the benefit of the “regular” scripted shows?
Yes. Here’s a story from the summer of 2009 (before prime time Leno premiered) saying that Conan had 2 million fewer viewers per night than Letterman. From what I can tell, Conan lost viewers in every demographic except for young men.
Letterman didn’t win every viewer that Conan lost, of course. A lot of the older ones drifted over to Nightline, while the not-so-older ones switched over to various cable shows. And while Conan’s losses accelerated after Leno went to prime time, the trend was well established over the summer.
Eh, I like Conan and don’t like Leno, but their was no way to hold on to both talent and it made more business sense to go with the man who had better ratings.
But it worked out for everyone in the end. Leno got his old show back, Fallon has a job now, Conan gets a better deal at cable, and Lettermen still gets to be bitter, which is really how he wants to be.
According this article posted TODAY, Though Leno has been beating Letterman - his ratings are LOWER than what Conan’s “Tonight Show” was doing.
This is what I had been hearing as well.
That article says Leno’s overall numbers are 12% higher than Conan’s. It’s only in the 18-49 range that Conan wins.
I guess I should say Congrats to Leno on winning the old fogey demo?
I buy media and the only clients of ours that target customers in that age range are pharmaceutical companies and insurance brokers (life and medical). Otherwise it’s 18-49 and 25-54.
It’s not just an issue of who’s winning 11:30 now.
NBC used to have both Leno and O’Brien. They put themselves in a situation where they had to choose between the two.
What could they have done not to put themselves in that situation? Conan’s contract was up and they knew he was going to go somewhere else if they didn’t promise him the Tonight Show. By offering him the show in 2009 they got about five more years out of him.
You do realize you just advocated lying to people in order to trick them into doing what will make you the most money?
They could do what moral people do–not offer something that you don’t have to give. Heck, with Jay’s former ratings, they’d have more than made up for the loss of Conan in a very short time. Instead, their most prized demographic refuses to watch the one timeslot where they were the best.
Mr. Serenata and I used to watch Leno then Conan… after the whole drama, we now watch Scrubs on WGN, then Whose Line is it Anyway? re-runs on ABC Family. Yeah, we totally switched to something different. When Conan comes back, we’re going to watch him, no question.
I wonder how many viewers are watching Leno/Letterman because they don’t have anything else to watch? I wonder how many are going to leave once Conan comes back?
You can easily manipulate your numbers to spin it anyway you want.
The real problem is Conan and Leno both appealed to the same kind of viewer. A person who likes Leno is “probably” not going to like Letterman. But it’s more apt that a person that likes Conan would also like Letterman.
The bottom line was Conan wasn’t pulling his weight at that time. Maybe he would’ve gotten better given enough time or if Leno was pulled off. Since we never had the opportunity to do this, we’ll never know.
Also remember now-a-days, it isn’t enough to make a profit. You have to make THE MOST profit.
Say Conan made a 5% profit, but Leno makes a 5.1% profit. You now have to justify to the board and stockholders why you went with Conan and cost the shareholders that 0.1% profit.
So Conan got a bad deal, but really it’s hard to have sympathy for anyone who gets screwed and walks away with millions and another TV deal. NBC didn’t do him right but it’s really just about ego at this point.
And frankly I would say all of us on this board have been screwed a lot worse by our employers in our lives and handled it better than either Conan or Leno did.
I was addressing Nemo’s point that the network put themselves the position of having to chose between Leno and Conan. I argued that the position was unavoidable.
I wasn’t advocating any of the tactics they used.
It’s generally a bad idea to look back and berate people for acting the way they did based on our knowledge of what happened afterwards. But in this situation nobody came out ahead. I have to feel that Conan O’Brien is probably unhappy with the way things worked out - he now has no show at 11:30 or 1:00. Under the circumstances he might have wished he had stuck with what he had rather than push for something more. The network is obviously not happy. Even Leno, who is now back where he started, took a blow to his public image.
So I have to think that when everyone ended up unhappy with the final outcome, there could have been room for negotiating a better alternative if the parties involved had been a little more perceptive of the possiblities.
David Letterman enjoyed it, even if he’s still not beating Leno in the ratings.
I agree that a better alternative existed, but I don’t think it involved keeping both Conan and Leno. A choice between the two had to be made. IMO, NBC lacked the courage and foresight to make the right one.
Why not? It’s like game theory. If you had asked all the parties involved to rank their preferences, it would have looked something like this:
NBC:
- Keep Leno and O’Brien
- Keep Leno
- Keep O’Brien
- Keep neither
Jay Leno:
- Get a better slot in prime time
- Keep my current slot at 11:30
- Keep my current slot at 11:30 but end up looking like a dick
- Have no slot
Conan O’Brien:
- Get a better slot at 11:30
- Keep my current slot at 1:00
- Have no slot
And the results they ended up with were 2, 3, and 3. If they had instead reached an agreement where Leno and O’Brien had negotiated for their existing slots, they results would have been 1, 2, and 2 - everyone involved would have come out better than they did.
[slight hijack] Why is it that, on the whole, conservatives tend to favor Leno, and not Conan or Letterman? Also, is this the case, or am I just deluding myself? [/slight hijack]
To answer the OP’s question: Yes, I suppose that it does. And it’s not all that surprising, either, considering the extended run of pretty great success Mr. Leno has had since dumbing down/blanding out his act nearly twenty years ago.