Conan vs Leno (after action report)

[MTCicero]

@commasense

@Little_Nemo

But in this situation nobody came out ahead.

David Letterman enjoyed it, even if he’s still not beating Leno in the ratings.

Agreed. It revitalized him and made his show damn near a must-watch for a good little while there.

[Max_the_Immortal]

So if Leno is attracting older, less lucrative viewers, but more of them, which of the two appears to be the most profitable?

[Lakai]

@Little_Nemo

Conan O’Brien:

1. Get a better slot at 11:30
2. Keep my current slot at 1:00
3. 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.

I disagree that Conan would have wanted his 1:00am time slot instead of no time slot (meaning he would be free to go somewhere else). So if NBC contracted for Leno and O’Brien to keep their existing time slots then Conan would have left.

[dzero]

I generally liked Coco’s humor but the biggest annoyance for me were some of the ridiculous pantomimes. I could almost get to the point of tolerating it and then he would go into the extended dance remix version and I would have to switch it off.

[Dan_Norder]

@MTCicero

[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]

I think you’re right. Conservatives by nature tend to be older and like older styles of doing things. Leno is positively a dinosaur when it comes to comedy. Leno aimed for lowest common denominator humor, both by topic and by blandness level, and would sometimes go for stuff that was borderline racist and sexist because he seemingly didn’t even know. Old school comedians like Bob Hope wouldn’t have touched some of the stuff Leno regularly churns out.

On the other hand, Conan is so wild and crazy with what he’d try that he wouldn’t stop to think if it was, you know, funny. When he’s reigned in slightly more it played better, like with his work on The Simpsons.

And, really, you can break the comedy of Leno and Conan down exactly like that. Are you more a Bob Hope kind of guy or a The Simpsons kind of guy? Pick one and then watch a guy who takes the style you picked to the extreme. Conservatives as a group loved Bob Hope and were up in arms about The Simpsons. Liberals typically went the opposite way.