It’s a pretty risky idea to tell someone he will have to give up a #1 show in 5 years. A lot can change in 5 years but in this case Leno was still #1 in 2009. NBC wanted to eat their cake and have it too by keeping both Leno and O’Brien. In Carson’s case there was only 1 year notice that he was going to retire.
Every comedian wants the Tonight Show job. I don’t blame any of them for wanting it. NBC gave it to Leno when Carson retired. After a start that saw Letterman usually beating Leno in ratings, Leno pulled ahead and kept ahead of Letterman in the ratings for something like 14 years. From a stockholders standpoint, this was absolutely the right decision. That Letterman’s followers were bitter and wanted him “crowned” with a job he would not earn seems a bit odd to me, but to each their own.
About five years ago NBC decided that they wanted to secure the future with their up and coming star Conan, so they decided to more or less retire their ratings winner to develop their new guy. In short, Conan managed to convince NBC to give him the coveted job. They did, and the ratings tanked. The affiliates rebelled, as the stockholders should have. Conan got fired because he was unwilling to take his old time slot back. Leno was willing to take his old job back.
So it looks to me that Conan wanted someone else’s job, got them fired, couldn’t do the job and gets the press to blame the old guy for the whole fiasco.
The asshole here is Conan.
I don’t like either of them, but it’s patently absurd to try and paint Leno as a team player and Conan as a cutthroat opportunist. Conan would have been perfectly fine to finish out his contract and then go to another network to try his hand at the 11:35 timeslot. NBC came to him and offered him the Tonight Show in 5 years to prevent that.
That’s exactly the kind of thing people love to give Leno a pass for. Hey, he was just being a team player. Hey, he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse so how can you blame him? Yeah, great for Jay, that makes him saint. But if Conan does the exact same thing he’s an asshole?
Get real. Conan at least passed the King Solomon test, while Jay failed it miserably. And let’s not forget that Jay’s colossal failure at 10pm tanked any chance Conan never had at 11:35pm, and even with that Conan didn’t do much worse than Jay’s first year helming the Tonight Show.
Jay is clearly the douchiest of douches.
Leno said he thought 10 PM was not going to work but NBC told him to give it a try. As I said above the main reason they gave him 10 was to keep him away from ABC or another network.
One thing I’ve noticed about Leno vs. Letterman vs. O’Brien fan bases is that Leno fans are more casual where the other 2 fans are more die hard.
Letterman fans have this odd thought that somehow he was “owed” the Tonight show because he already worked for NBC. (And because Carson like him.) Show business is like many other businesses where the best guy gets the job and nobody is owed anything.
I don’t understand this business about NBC being surprised that Leno was still #1 in 2009. I’ve been a Letterman fan since I was a kid, but Leno consistently won the time slot for fifteen years, and there wasn’t any indication that that was going to change. Leno had bigger guests and offered, um, broader comedy than Letterman. Everyone’s acting like NBC was shocked to find that Leno was still #1; that’s bullshit.
Plus, I don’t know how you can turn on the television at 11:35 tonight and say that Leno was screwed by all this. I return to this: could you imagine Johnny Carson giving us the “aw shucks” routine after taking the Tonight Show back in 1993? There is a thing called class, and Leno doesn’t have it.
I don’t think show business is a meritocracy; I think success in Hollywood is all about who you know and who you blow. But even if it is a meritcracy, Leno didn’t originally get the Tonight Show based on merit. He got it based on cutthroat negotiating tactics by his manager.
I’m not sure how it’s a lack of class to accept a great, very high paying job. Especially when it’s the exact same job you did a great job at for 14 years. It’s not like Leno taking the job back means O’Brien is homeless. He gets $32 mil to do nothing and he will get another job this fall.
The affiliates have plenty of leverage. For one thing, many of them threatened to pull Leno’s show completely, and air Oprah, Ellen, old sitcoms, infomercials – it didn’t really matter because even with lousy ratings, they’d be getting more revenue from the time slot than with Leno.
Or, let’s say NBC had managed to put Leno on at 11:35 and move “The Tonight Show” back to 12:05. NBC would’ve had to negotiate new clearances with the affiliates for Leno, Conan, Fallon and Daley (new timeslot=new clearance). In that case, the affiliates would have been within their rights to not run Leno at 11:35, put their own 30 minutes of programming in there, and scoop up that revenue.
Bottom line, NBC tried to keep both Leno and Conan and mishandled it badly. They resolved the issue by forcing Conan out and moving Leno back. It probably made sense from a short-term ratings standpoint, but I think it’s a long-term mistake.
I remember some people here had this nutty idea that Hollywood stars would be mad at mean old Jay and boycott the Tonight show starting today. Looking at the lineup for this week we can see that’s not true.
Monday, March 1 - Guests include Jamie Foxx, Olympic Gold Medal Skier Lindsey Vonn and a musical performance by Brad Paisley
Tuesday, March 2 - Guests include Sarah Palin, Olympic Gold Medal Snowboarder Shaun White and a musical performance by Adam Lambert
Wednesday, March 3 - “Jaywalk All-Stars” with the Cast of “Jersey Shore,” Chelsea Handler, the most decorated American Winter Olympian of all time Speed Skater Apolo Anton Ohno and a musical performance by Avril Lavigne
**Thursday, March 4 - Guests include Matthew McConaughey and Brett Favre and a musical performance by Lifehouse
**Friday, March 5 - Guests include Morgan Freeman, Jason Reitman and a musical performance by Robin Thicke
The web site “Stuff White People Like” had the best take on this (I’m paraphrasing):
**
Conan O’Brien’s fans are extremely devoted, and will support him loudly and enthusiastically in EVERY way possible, except the one way that would actually do him some good- by watching his show.**
That sounds about right to me. I’m not a big late night talk show fan, period. I rarely watch Leno, Letterman, Ferguson or anyone else in those slot any more. But in my limited experience, the people most outraged by Conan O’Brien’s cancellation weren’t watching his show regularly anyway. Oh, they were all MEANING to watch his show more, but somehow they never got around to tuning in.
Let’s put it this way: the average Leno fan is a 45 year old housewife in Dubuque. The average Conan fan is a single, highly educated, 30 year old male in New York. The average Conan fan is a MUCH more desirable viewer from the advertiser’s point of view.
The snag is, that housewife in Dubuque really WATCHES Jay Leno 3 or 4 nights a week. The Conan fan, if the truth be known, hasn’t actually watched Conan’s show in years. Ask him, to name the best bit Conan has done on ‘Tonight’ in the past 3 months, and he’ll either draw a blank, or name the Masturbating Bear or “In the Year 2000.” Something he remembers liking on Conan’s show 5 or 10 years ago, back when he was still following it.
Conan’s fans are too busy doing all kinds of hip stuff to watch TV!! Watching TV is for boring people.
Apples and oranges. I guess you are saying that Leno is an ass for returning to the Tonight Show? If he refused, you think Conan would still have the gig?
What exactly would you like to have seen happen?
What’s so hard about this? I would have liked for Leno to not jump at the first opportunity to fuck Conan over.
Shockingly, class does not precisely correlate with sheer economic self-interest.
Just to clarify this: when a network affiliate runs a network program, most of the commercials are run by the network, and the network receives all of the revenue from those ads. The local affiliate only has control over the “station break”, usually at the bottom of the hour (which is when you’ll see ads for local businesses, as well as promos for the affiliate’s news programs).
Compare this to the affiliate running a syndicated program during that same time…depending on the exact nature of the syndicated program, the affiliate will have control over most, or all, of the commercial space in that program, from which it then receives all of the revenue.
I find this particularly ironic. Will they compare notes about their respective un-retirements, and attempts to force other guys out of their jobs?
(Not a Jay Leno fan here, and I never have been…)
In 2008 when it was very obvious Leno wanted to stay at 11:35 did Conan turn down the Tonight show so Leno could stay at the job he held at #1 for 14 years?
I hear this a lot but can someone explain what exactly Leno’s manager did? From the recent NBC late night issues, all I know is that Leno once hid in a closet to eavesdrop on what NBC execs were saying about him. I don’t see how that helps him get a contract.
What exactly did Leno’s manager do? What didn’t Letterman’s manager do?
I hope Lambert comes out and asks Palin why she thinks she can’t get married 
If Conan had tried to take my job he could expect a lot worse than an imaginary metaphorical fucking over. Fact is, he not only tried to steal another man’s job, he was successful. When he failed to put fannies in the seats they fired his ass and the other guy wasn’t bitter about it and took the gig back.
There is no way that Conan was ever “entitled” to another man’s job, it was beyond extra-ordinarily rude and well into super assholish to demand that Leno “retire” so he could get it. This was a man’s job. Conan turned super asshole when he demanded that Leno be taken out of his job so Conan could have it. He was fired for the dip in ratings. Leno has not “fucked Conan over”, although Leno has cause to do a hell of a lot more to Conan than fuck him over. You come after my job, you should expect a lot worse than an imaginary “fucking over.”
Conan was a super asshole the moment he demanded another man’s job. And his fans are super assholes for not realizing this. Particularly when Conan moves to another network at 11:30 and gets fired again for losing to both Leno and Letterman.
:smack: I feel stupid. For some reason I was thinking of all the shows as a package deal. But of course they can choose to not air one show and stick a syndicated show in that slot.