There were lots of stories. It’s Hollyweird. Leno came back to be a ratings giant, Letterman’s ratings dropped, and someone eventually found a smaller show that matched Conan’s ability to draw an audience.
I really like Jimmy Fallon and I hope he does well. He seems to genuinely love doing it and acting like he is the luckiest guy alive. I get that some people don’t like his laughing at his own jokes or the way he interacts with guests, but I really like it. Plus she has got talent in bucketfuls.
The book about the whole situation is a pretty fascinating read. I think it’s called The War for Late Night and it’s by the same writer that did The Late Shift about the Leno/Letterman fight way back when.
I’m going to assume that “she” refers to Kristen Wiig. Nothing says more about the differences between Fallon and the past than her totally worthless bit.
Leno is old-school. He’s part of the mindset that says that as an entertainer you are always prepared, you always give your all, you are there for the audience not yourself. At some point that changed. Andy Kaufman is the poster child for this, although Larry David was doing it at the same time if not earlier. Comedy became performance art. You worked to amuse yourself and the other hip comedians who thought like you and maybe the segment of the audience who were hip enough to pick up on what your were doing. Comedy moved from jokes and stories to performance pieces that were “courageous” because the audience might not get it, not laugh, maybe even walk out. Norm MacDonald has built an entire career on this.
You saw that when he almost dared you to laugh at a bad joke on Weekend Update. SNL has given this attitude a home, and Wiig clearly picked up on it. You would never see a poorly-rehearsed bit like that on Leno. It’s funny because it’s so bad! You know who else you’d never see doing that? Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld is famous for his preparation. He put out a whole film, Comedian, chronicling his hard work into re-entering stand-up after the end of Seinfeld.
To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Seinfeld. I thought his routine was awful. The audience liked it, though. And that’s the difference between his segment and the later one. Wiig and Fallon were amusing each other, with the audience secondary. Maybe that will work better when it’s cut out of the context of the show and excerpted as a separate bit on YouTube and elsewhere. Television is famously the “cool” medium (“Cool media requires the audience to be active and fill in information by mentally participating. This is multi-sensory participation.”), and the Internet is cooler than cool.
The audience walking out is participation. Staying and watching the audience walk out is participation. You can’t lose. Unless the audience never walks in in the first place. For that we have to wait and see.
Actually I meant ‘he’ as in Fallon, but I am a bad ttypert.
So what does the author say/imply happened? Did Conan shoot himself in the foot or did Leno crush Conan like a worm? Just a synopsis, please. Someone might actually want to buy the book(s).
Is it possible his best writers stayed behind? I never watched him before but was impressed with his talent after seeing a montage of his skits. Agreed, lots of talent. Heck of a voice. He’d kill as a singer in a cover band and I mean that as a serious compliment.
With that said, I expected more. Where’s the energy?
I understand what you’re saying, but this sentence sort of captures how I feel. If you’re telling jokes that you don’t think are funny, but the audience does, what a cynical way to exist. Your description of the old-school way to be allows for this perfectly. And it’s interesting you don’t like Seinfeld.
Maybe I’m an asshole because I think comedy can be ‘art,’ but if you don’t believe in what you’re doing, just letting the audience be the ultimate gauge, that depresses me.
Carson, I think, actually addressed this a little. In a story Conan O’brien told when Carson died, he saw Conan do a set that didn’t get very well. Afterward, Carson told Conan “that’s the only way to do it.” He didn’t say taking risks and doing what you like *would *work, but it is the only way it really can work.
I highly recommend reading Carter’s book if you’re interested in this stuff. I have a post here discussing some of the often-overlooked facts in the whole NBC late night war: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15453232&postcount=10
I’m going on 2-3 year old memory here but let me see… This might be a little long.
If I recall, Conan’s contract was ending in a few years and he’d made it no secret that he wanted the Tonight Show or would be looking at other offers. I believe ABC, who really wanted a late night competitor against Leno/Letterman and Fox were both perusing him.
NBC didn’t want to lose Conan, so they announced that in five years Conan would be taking over the TS and that Leno would be retiring.
Leno felt forced out, which he was, but as a company man didn’t want to rock the boat by pretending to not be ok with the whole situation.
After Leno left, he nearly signed a deal with ABC but NBC panicked and rather than let him go there and compete against Conan - they signed him back to do his 9pm primetime show. He didn’t think it was a great idea but decided to be loyal to NBC and give it a shot.
Conan’s ratings started out slow but not terrible. The thing with late night is that the ratings for your local Late News are hugely important to retaining viewers in the late fringe daypart (what we media buyers call anything that airs after late news). If you have a strong late news, you’re going to have a strong late night number whichever station you’re on. Seriously, it’s less about Leno vs Letterman or whatever and more about what your TV is already tuned to after you’re done watching the weather report for the next day.
Conan’s ratings were doing ok, not great but not terrible. I believe they were growing. All that came to a halt when Jay Leno’s primetime show came on in the Fall. His show was in the 9-10pm hour and was the lead in to local news.
Just as the Late News (LN) lead in is important to late night, the Primetime (PT) spots are also hugely important to your LN numbers. Jay’s primetime show TANKED immediately. He says it’s because they put the best sketches and whatnot at the end of the hour, thinking it would help the lead in to LN, but people changed the channel before getting to the good stuff. Makes sense to me, he knows TV better than I do.
So what we have now is Leno’s PT show tanking hard, which made the local LN programming start to tank hard, which in turn made Conan’s ratings tank hard.
So Conan was really never given a fair shot to build his ratings up before Leno’s PT show dragged it down. It sounds like excuse making from Conan and his fans, but as a media buyer I can promise you that it’s absolutely a true cause and effect.
Late News programs in some markets went from being #1 in the market to #3 or 4 while Leno was leading into them. It got so bad that some stations started refusing to carry his PT show at the risk of getting alienated by the network.
In the end they said “Fuck it, get Conan out of there and bring Leno back.” Since Leno never wanted to leave in the first place, of course he took them up on it.
Conan really did get fucked over, but not really by Jay Leno. He got fucked over by NBC brass that were too wishy washy about moving forward and not wanting to let either of their top talents leave the fold.
The book goes into a ton of detail with great insider interviews and stuff. It’s really good.
Let me rephrase, then, because this is not what I’m saying at all.
There are lots of fourth-rate, lousy “comedians” who pander to the audience with cheap jokes that get guaranteed laughs. Nobody cares about them at all.
Seinfeld and Leno and others who follow them today believe very strongly in what they do and work endlessly to hone their craft so that the finished product is first-rate. That’s why they spend time for free at small clubs to test out the material to know what works and what doesn’t.
Other comedians work variations on this. They have some set routines and a framework for the show but like to bounce off audiences and do bits they improv on the spot. That’s almost impossible to do on national television or for large audiences that have paid $100 for tickets, though. If you want to say that Seinfeld is a victim of his success, you can, but that’s a slice of his career and ignores his trying and failing in the smaller venues.
Risk-taking is wholly different. Kaufman took risks and pushed envelopes and all those phrases. But he planned them out as much as possible. He didn’t make up stupid stuff on the spot. He had a craft and a vision of his art. When he did an Elvis impression, it was a perfect Elvis impression, all the better to contrast with the terrible character he had been playing earlier.
What I’m accusing Wiig and the others of is laziness and sloppiness. That’s the opposite of risk-taking. It’s knowing that you can fail without any penalty for doing so. You pay the price for bombing and alienating audiences. Kaufman pretty much drove himself out of comedy. Larry David stopped being a stand-up and went into behind-the-scenes work. When’s the last time you saw Norm MacDonald do anything?
I am saying the exact opposite of that they’re “telling jokes that [they] don’t think are funny.” They’re telling jokes that they know are funny because they’ve worked so hard to make them funny. They’re not the cynical ones. Their opposites are. Nobody will make everybody laugh; good comedians know who their audiences are and aim for them. If I’m not part of that audience it doesn’t matter what I think. I can tell the difference between “I’m not your audience” and “You’re just trying to make your buddies laugh.” If you can’t, I think this makes you part of the problem. Right now, in today’s comedy world, a lot of people are part of that problem.
To be fair to Wiig and the others you’re mentioning, for a late night show you only have a few hours to write all of the jokes and bits for that night’s show - which gets recorded around 4 or 5pm. If you’re talking about a rehearsed stand-up act like what Seinfeld did, then yes it’s practiced and polished and it’s his style/brand, but Wiig just showed up and did what was asked of her. Big difference.
Thanks for the recommendation. California NBC execs wanted their Kate and Edith, too. Which ended up annoying the “talent”, embareassing the network, and setback the network plans to gain a younger demographic.
I wonder how much of this was responsible for the decision to move the Tonight Show away from the California execs and putting it under control of the NYC office when Leno finally retired?
Quite seriously, this is a big part of the business model. If people will pay 99 cents to see the Wiig/Fallon interaction on their smart phones, then that is far more important to the bottom line than is pleasing the real-time Tonight Show audience.
So a “you have to see this weird interaction” is, in many ways, a more profitable-to-NBC recommendation than is “you have to see this tight set of jokes.”
I’m not seeing it. You’re blaming Conan’s bad ratings on Leno as if every show prior to Leno was gold up to this point and he just stumbled across the finish line.
Thanks for the info. Do you have any idea, or an educated guess, if the move to NYC was a result of the screw ups by the NBC brass in CA?
I’m not sure I follow you.
What I do know is that Conan’s ratings were doing decent and growing until Leno took over the 9pm slot. The Late News numbers tanked on NBC affiliates everywhere and Conan’s numbers followed suit. It’s well documented and I can pull up the ratings books to see it myself.
If you’re suggesting that Leno’s 9pm numbers weren’t as bad as the other prime they had been running, you’re wrong. It was dreadful, and they were running it nightly - not once a week like a normal Prime show.
Ok, I’m actually pulling the numbers to illustrate.
These are for the Milwaukee market (picked at random). Demo is Adults 25-54 (most common demo purchased):
M-F 9-10pm (Prime)
November 2008: 5.2 rtg.
November 2009 (Leno): 2.9 rtg.
-45%
M-F 10-1035pm (Late News)
November 2008: 5.8 rtg.
November 2009 (post-Leno): 3.9 rtg.
-33%
M-F 1035p-1135p (Tonight Show)
November 2008 (Leno): 3.0 rtg.
November 2009 (Conan): 2.5 rtg.
-17%
So even though Leno was dragging down Prime and LN, Conan still managed to keep a better percentage of viewers year to year than Prime or LN did.
The real story here isn’t about the ratings for the Tonight Show, it was more to do with upset local affiliates that were hemorrhaging viewers like crazy and were very vocal in their displeasure (as they should be).
He was classy in removing the ban of Joan Rivers.
She kind of ruined it by being classless when she was asked about her opinion of Jay Leno.
Reference:
Joan Rivers classless? You don’t say!
Isn’t that her thing?