So not only is he going directly against his main competition, for some reason his show will be only Monday to Thursday same as theirs. Yeah, people say that in the age of DVR you can record one and watch the other. Unless you’re already watching something else. Like Adult Swim. Or even Chelsea Handler, who seems to get good female ratings in that demographic.
It will be interesting to see what age his audience shakes out to be. According to that same article, all the network shows have average audiences of 50 or more, while Stewart and Colbert are at 40 and 37.
Or his audience could all watch him on the Internet and cause him to fail again. That would truly be ironic.
I’m kinda annoyed that it’ll be on at 11 instead of 11:30. I’m not a big fan of Colbert so I loved watching the Daily Show followed by Conan’s Tonight Show. I’m disappointed that now I have to chose.
The real question is “Do most college kids get basic cable”? If so then Conan will be just fine, though as someone said, in this economy a guy who was paid millions after basically quitting his job on a ego trip, you can’t feel too much for.
As for Lopez he was probably told, “Accept it or your show is going to get axed anyway.”
I’m sure the network would have said that if Conan wanted them to, but I don’t think Conan would do that.
As for the move to TBS, the best he can hope for is to become like The Daily Show or The Chappelle Show. I guess that’s what he wants.
This isn’t a bad decision money wise. Sepinwall reports that TBS offered Conan more money than FOX. Plus Conan won’t have to worry about rating on TBS as much as he would have on FOX. It sounds like a higher paying and less stressful gig than working for a network. The only downside is the smaller audience. But if you’re getting paid more and you have more freedom to do what you want, then who needs a huge audience?
My point is that they come from different backgrounds: Conan was a writer on SNL and The Simpsons, then became a talk show host. Shandling did some script writing, then moved into standup and then did sitcoms. Conan is not an actor. What sense does it make for Conan him to try it now, in his late 40s?
Well, yeah. What did you expect? He’s been a talk show host since 1993.
The Times article was interesting. I didn’t think TBS would have more money to offer, but I guess they did - and he owns his show. I also would not have guessed that TBS is in more homes than Fox. It makes it sound like TBS really isn’t a step down from Fox.
Until 2007 Nielsen didn’t put boxes into colleges at all. They then started a program to try to improve viewing measurements. It only went to families who were already in the program and had children in college, but reached only about 30% of them. See At Last, Television Ratings Go to College.
Meh. I just feel someone has to be the voice of reality after the gigantic tsunami of idiocy that swamped peoples’ brains a few months ago. Reading the stuff from Team Coco was like watching Creationism go mainstream. Shove stupidity in my face and I’ll shove back. But it’s Conan’s fans who are to blame, not the man himself, who’s handled this very well.
I don’t know. But I just realized Exapno Mapcase linked to a different NY Times article from the one I read this morning. Here’s the one about Conan’s move to TBS. I’m guessing I misstated this point:
There was a time when TBS was in more homes than FOX. FOX didn’t have a market share in many parts of the country for the first couple of seasons it was on. Unless you were lucky enough to live within range of a network which turned to FOX, you were out of luck. Even The Simpsons wasn’t enough to open more markets. Football was what finally did it - infact, when FOX aired their first Super Bowl, there were still a bunch of markets without a FOX station, and that was the last straw.
The same thing happened with The WB and UPN, which is one of the reason that so many of their shows failed to get decent ratings. I believe the CW merge was done mainly because most markets had either one or the other.
I would like to take this opportunity to gloat a bit about something tangential - Tina Fey and Steve Carell star in what is right now the biggest movie in the country.
Neither of them appeared on the Tonight Show to promote it, although they were everywhere else.
Yes, I said not for a year, and it’s only been 2 or 3 months so far - but what does it say that nobody who starred in ***Date Night ***went on the Tonight Show to promote it? His first guests last week were Randy Jackson, Kirstie Alley, David Duchovny, Demi Moore and Julie Scardina.
