Leno/Conan Shakeup at NBC

TMZ is reporting that there will be a big shakeup w/ Leno and Conan due to the networks sagging ratings. Leno will go on hiatus on Feb 1 and after the Olympics are over he’ll be moving back to 11:30pm. No word on if it will be his half-hour show at 11:30 pushing Conan back or if they’ll give Leno back the full hour and dump Conan. They say that both Conan and Leno have already been told of the changes.

I’m not a Leno fan and love Conan, so this makes me very unhappy. They’d be better off just cutting the cord w/ Leno and moving on.

TMZ’s sources are usually pretty reliable.

Story here.

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than finding decent programming that people want to watch. :rolleyes:

Wow…aren’t they going to owe Conan a boat-load of money due to (presumably) violating their contract?

It’s also not just about “Leno” and “Conan” – it’s also about the Tonight Show name and franchise. I know that the personality tends to be more important than the vehicle these days, but are they going to dump Conan as Tonight Show host after only a few months and return Leno to that spot? Or are they going to move the Tonight Show from the timeslot it’s had for decades to put a new “The Leno Show” or whatever they want to call it at 11:30?

Either way, it’s NBC’s own fault for thinking that a primetime talk show would work. :smack:

It’s hard to separate Conan from the carnage that is putting Leno on at 10. That hurts affiliates, and hurts his lead-in. It turns out that Leno’s audience is picky as hell. It does not surprise me, given his formula.

I love Conan and it makes me sad that he will now never get a shot to do the Tonight Show without any strings. They were setting them both up for failure here.

A few years ago, I was a Conan fan and hated Leno. But on his new show, Conan came off as stiff, serious, and unhappy. It was just painful to me. He used to be so goofy and irreverent on his old show.

By contrast, Leno seemed to spring out of the doldrums and actually seemed cheerful and gung-ho about his show now. Maybe it was just the routine of doing Tonight Show that is comedy poison.

Yes – this was first time that a Tonight Show host went on to something similar as opposed to retiring or doing something else besides a talk-show. This was bound to hurt the Tonight Show brand because folks who liked Jack gave Johnny a chance and folks who liked Johnny gave Jay a chance. But Conan never had the luxury of letting the Tonight Show aura give him time to grow into it (like Jay needed, btw), because those who liked Jay were able to keep watching him and leave Conan as just “Conan” and not “The new guy on The Tonight Show”.

Very short-sighted and silly of NBC, if you ask me, to so cavalierly damage one of their oldest and most successful properties.

If he’s fired O’Brien’s contract probably has an out clause so that they only have to pay him for 1 year.

They don’t want to cut Leno totally because they know he will just to go ABC or some other network and take 11:30 viewers with him. Of course if O’Brien is out then he will go to another network as well.

This format of show is terrible. Neither Leno or Conan is funny.

They are both funny but they don’t seem to have the same fan bases. Letterman is funny too but I still can’t figure out why so many Letterman fans hate Leno. Not sure what they think about O’Brien.

I think they are (supposedly) both decent, well respected people, but I am afraid you are right.

Neither one is able to make me laugh more than once or twice for the entire hour length of their shows.

It’s too bad for all involved, but the new time slots have been a trainwreck all the way around…

I never found Letterman funny at all, he comes off as all too smug, but I can see how others find him funny. Conan, I don’t get at all, but his followers seem to be the most fiercely loyal to him. Conan’s audience is more likely to follow him than anyone else.

Since Comcast is going to buy out NBC, I am not so sure if I’d be inclined to see if this story turns out true. We’ll have to wait and see. Perhaps NBC plans to do this but after the sale is completed who knows. Who knows how long the sale will take?

NBC is so far in the cellar what does it really matter?

I find Letterman obnoxious as a host. He uses his guests as cannon fodder instead of letting them be the show. I long for the episode where one of his guests gets up and leaves after the 10’th interruption. O’brien is just goofy stupid but he’s better then Letterman.

I’m not a big fan of either, but really did not like Conan. I tried him when Comedy Central ran reruns and I found him annoying.

Comedian Steve Agee posted this on Twitter (@steveagee):

Hmmm…

They forced Leno out for Conan (announced 5 years ago) and then last year decided to keep him by giving him the 10 PM slot. Leno said recently he never wanted to leave 11:30.

If it is true, NBC has 5 hours of primetime to fill. That is a lot. Dateline better get busy.

It came out the other day NBC has ordered a large number of pilots for next fall - way more than usual. That’s what makes this seem true.

I’m old enough to remember Jack Paar, who left the Tonight Show and started a prime time (10:00 pm I think, but it might have been 9:00) variety/chat show that was pretty successful for two or three years, and I think he got tired of the show before the audience got tired of him. That is, he left the show before he needed to. But I am relying on 40-year-old memories here, so some of this might be wrong.

I never liked Leno, not even when he was young and occasionally semi-funny. Now he just seems tired and formulaic. As for O’Brien, I’ve only seen a few minutes of him here and there, maybe three times altogether, so I don’t have much of an opinion, but I wasn’t immediately grabbed by his comedy genius.
Roddy

Conan is the oldest guy to take over the Tonight show and he’s the only one who hosted another talk show before taking the job.