Once the Late Night Wars happened everything changed. Letterman on CBS was just a watered down version of himself as he tried to be the “new” Carson to appeal to the earlier time slot.
Leno stepped in smoothly giving a consistant performance night after night without making waves and taking little chances.
I remember Conan’s premiere and everyone wondering how a no-name newby could ever fill the void Letterman left behind. He did well. He did great. And he’s consistant. However, after 10+ years that consistancy has become boring for me.
I still have a hard time watching Letterman with the constant “APPLAUD” and “LAUGH” cues given to the studio audience without end. He’s become such a one-trick pony I can’t figure out if he’s lost his edge or if he’s just bored.
I now prefer Leno. His jokes are always current, his skits focus on jokes (not making Leno the center of the joke), and his various co-host roving reporters are always funny.
I only catch Conan about once a month as of late and I’m always suprised he’s still running the same old gags.
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This summarizes my feelings remarkably well. Letterman lost it years ago, and his constant tourette’s-style repetition of jokes, faces, words, and bits is intolerable today. Leno tries just to be funny, rather than hip or edgy. The one time out of 100 when hip or edgy works, it works very well, but the other 99 losers would keep me from watching.
Conan has the worst of both worlds. He’s mined his small bag of tricks until they are completely paid out and are painfully repetitious, but he is constrained from doing anything that’s not hip or edgy. I suppose a new viewer would like him until they realize this, but I don’t see how he retains old viewers.
He is often the funniest at doing pure interviews, with Leno the worst. Their bits are just the opposite. If you could find a host who could combine the good parts you’d have gold. Craig Ferguson comes closest, with a good monolog and funny interviews but his comedy bits are too often dreadful. Maybe if you moved him earlier and forced him to be less stupid-silly he’d blossom.
When O’Brien was early into the show, an NBC exec told him that, in all honesty, if the ratings ever dipped below a certain point, the show was canceled. But after a while, they noticed that nothing anyone else put in that time slot did anywhere near as well. That’s how he lasted. And even when he couldn’t get first pick of guests, his staff had an unusually good knack for spotting up-and-coming musical guests, which locked in that desirable college demographic (Common sense says that Carson Daly should have duplicated this success on his music connections alone; incredibly, it never happened).
I’m looking forward to his tenure on the Tonight Show.
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I will be surprised if they actually sign Conan for The Tonight Show. Yes, it’s said to be all but a done deal that Jay is going to retire soon, and Conan will take the helm, but Conan will be about 45 then and in another 5 years, that “cool, my baby” hipster shtick coming from a 50 year old man is going to resonate about as well as Paris Hilton anchoring the CBS News.
The networks want a younger audience, making Conan a poor long-term investment. I wouldn’t be surprised to see NBC re-sign Jay for two extra years, while the execs hope for his younger replacement to materialize. Conan might then stomp off the NBC set and head to CBS or ABC. Either way, I can’t see Conan reinventing himself and his current repertoire isn’t going to play in Peoria in, say, 10 years, so you can imagine how he will play in the major markets.
I have never watched a lot of TV, but always liked Letterman, Jon Stewart, Colbert and Trevor Noah.
So I never got into Conan, though many comedians thought he was the funniest one. I didn’t see the appeal of Conan’s sidekick. I loved his work on the Simpsons, of course.
But I started listening to Conan’s radio channel with podcast, the best interviews from the show, his brighter moments. And it is genuinely fantastic. A very quick witted and knowledgeable interviewer. Can make anything funny and light, but is focused and informed.
What are your favourite moments? Or, looking at old threads, do you find him overrated? He did mention novels written by John Schwarzwalder that sounded like they would be good reads but are very unavailable in used book stores… he sounds like quite the character from Simpsons writing days…
Wholeheartedly agree. His ‘Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend’ podcast is my favorite podcast right now.
He’s very funny and has a wicked sharp wit, and he’s also a fantastic, insightful, empathetic long-form interviewer.
There’s also another Conan I don’t like so much, who shows up sometimes in his travel shows or that Hot Wings episode he was in— the obnoxious ‘look at me’ comedy attention whore who will do or say just about anything for a laugh. He’s talked about it many times, how he just can’t help himself; he has to try to get a laugh at any cost. I sometimes feel a little embarrassed for that Conan, until I remember he’s a very rich man who built his own comedy empire and is revered by his peers and up-and-coming comedians alike. Who also has a wonderful family and a great life. Then I feel less bad for him.
My story is somewhat reversed. I was in university when Conan took over “Late Night” and it blew me away; it was almost like a surreal parody of Letterman. They had the first biopic about Tonya Harding, starring Scott Thompson as Tonya and Conan as Jeff Gillooly! I regularly posted in the usenet group alt.fan.conan-obrien back in 1994. I kept watching the show for a few years, but I eventually moved to a place that didn’t have cable TV.
When he came out with his podcast, I thought it was great at first, especially when we was interviewing old friends from The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. But after a while I got a little tired of his endless riffing and his interviews with unrelated celebrities are kind of hit or miss.
By the way, my favourite podcast with Matt Gourley (one of his sidekicks) is Bonanas for Bonanza the (tongue in cheek) Bonanza rewatch podcast.
One of my favourite Conan jokes from the old days (with bandleader Max Weinberg):
Conan has done a couple of travel series, “Conan Without Borders,” which was on TBS, and “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” which is on HBO Max, in which he travels to a country and explores the country, often meeting locals. They’re fun, especially when he doesn’t try so hard to be funny. I particularly enjoyed the episode of Conan Without Borders in which he visited Ghana (along with Sam Richardson, a Ghanian-American comedian and actor).
On TV Andy Richter did not appeal much to me, but he is somewhat better than I thought he was. He does his own podcast, not in the same league.
On TV, Conan was sometimes way too self impressed. A bit like David Spade. I disliked Spade’s smarmy SNL stuff (and sided with Eddie Murphy about cheap shots).. But his comedy is now hilarious, much more humble and relatable…
