Hey, they’re not nearly as funny as the posts that say: “Conan’s numbers are half those of Leno’s, so they should shit-can Leno 'cause I don’t like him.”
If you find that hilarious, you’ll love “Headlines.” Leno reads typos in ad copy.
Is that any better than the people arguing, “Conan annoys me and his fans are rabid, therefore NBC should agree that Conan’s views concerning the contract are less solid than Leno’s”?
What the hell else would a bunch of Conan fans say? Obviously, none of us, present company excluded, are lawyers. Wtf do we know from a contract? We just want our guy to win. That is why we are fans. We want to watch Conan do the Tonight Show. What the heck are you talking about? Are we supposed to be peering over our spectacles, perusing the legal documents before we post on a message board who we would like to see win?
Conan is funnier, edgier, and better relates to the younger audience segment. NBC should have simply cancelled the Jay Leno show, or never given it to him in the first place (now, Leno’s once “nice-guy” image is tarnished in my view)
But no matter, NBC already has a poor history of backstabbing their late night hosts - case in point, they stabbed David Letterman in the back when Johnny Carson retired.
Letterman made more money than Leno for lower ratings, guess that worked out well for him. And Conan could get a similar deal - more money from Fox than his NBC deal.
It would seem safe to assume, given that all of the contract signatories are big business and have their own agents/managers/lawyers, that there are elements of the contract that are disputed with regard to their application to this specific set of circumstances. It does seem like if Conan’s lawyers are going to state that the contract “implied” something, that it was perhaps not written as well as it could have been (and not to Conan’s advantage here). If the TS at 11:35 was important to him, they should have gotten that into the contract. Until we all get to read it, though, we can’t know what’s going on.
Maybe Conan’s people are assuming that NBC will not want the PR hit of a protracted contract dispute with their erstwhile heir apparent. They may be right.
/How’d I do?
I tnink that their point is that the 12:05 clause was meant to cover occasional moves of the show, like pushing it to 12:05 for a week or two because of playoffs, or the Olympics, or some special news coverage or something. Not that they would wedge a permanent half-hour show between the Tonight Show and the local news, which would take away part of the Tonight Show’s core audience.
Up until very very recently, I was 100% behind this solution. But after reading this thread, I have a new solution that I think would actually work.
Leave Conan alone. His viewership will increase if you get rid of Leno.
Let Leno have a 1 hour variety show on Sunday or something. I don’t like Leno, but I’d tune into that occasionally. Leno (to me) is no good as a talk show host. He’s a terrible interviewer. His strength is mixing with people and telling jokes (IOW A variety show!)
Leno’s 15 years older than Conan. He’s got a lot less career left in him than Conan does. Problem is no on at NBc is thinking for the long term. So what if Conan’s got lower ratings than Letterman right now? For crying out loud the boy’s been on the air less than a year, not to mention Letterman’s likely done in couple years. I guarantee if you just let Conan develop his show the same way every other ‘Tonight Show’ host has been allowed to do, he’d be kicking ass and taking names in a few years.
As a result of NBC’s horrible programming and ratings right now, the suits are just desperate for instant gratification, even if it means forever tarnishing their most popular, revered, oldest and cherished property.
Here’s what I’d love to see happen:
– NBC offers Leno the Tonight Show back. But he declines on the grounds that the circumstances don’t feel right and he won’t do that to his friend Conan.
– NBC then offers to let Conan keep the show. He too declines, saying what’s done is done, smell ya later.
– As an emergency contingency, Jimmy Fallon (or Carson Daily, or Wendy Williams, or Joel McHale, or my cousin Warren) takes over the Tonight show, and consistently places a distant fifth behind Letterman (CBS), Leno (ABC), O’Brien (FOX), and Family Guy reruns (WB).
It’d be exactly what NBC deserves.
Here’s what I think will happen:
– NBC offers Leno the Tonight Show back. He cheerfully accepts.
Yeah, I tend to agree, not knwoing the specifics. But in this case, Conan’s people should have made for darn sure that there was some language preventing this eventuality. This is why we pay lawyers- to cover all of the bases. Someone dropped the ball here.
When do American businesses think long term? A few do, most do not.
I said that earlier. Why don’t the boneheads at NBC listen to us?
How much less career left? How long would he be kicking Conan’s ass? How many years of Leno and Letterman kicking his ass, while advertisers keep pulling out, is acceptable before things possibly turn around in the long run but possibly don’t? It might work out well, but it might not; if it’s your job on the line, would you rather sidestep those questions by keeping Leno at NBC?
As someone who has been arguing Leno’s case in this thread, are you saying that’s a good thing? :dubious:
It’s not a good thing, it’s just reality.
According to the book “The Late Shift,” which spawned an eponymous movie about the scramble to fill Johnny Carson’s shoes, one tactic used by Micheal Ovitz is relevant here. Ovitz was engaged by Letterman to break the “unbreakable” contract he had with NBC. One element of this contract was NBC’s right to match any competitor’s offer. NBC was planning to counter any attempt by CBS or anyone else to steal Letterman away by simply matching the money they offered.
Ovitz’s twist: he got CBS to offer Dave a base salary that was what they actually intended to pay him, and one that NBC would have not-so-cheerfully, but resignedly, matched. But Ovitz also had CBS offer Dave a huge amount – $50 million, I think – if they failed to air his show at 11:30.
See the brilliance? To CBS, that’s a non-issue; they always intended to air him at 11:30. but for NBC to match that deal would have been impossible, since they wanted to keep Dave at 12:30.
I relate this story to say that after that illustration of the importance of specifying hours of broadcast in contracts, it’s amazing to me that Conan’s team would be trying to claim some sort of “implied” time for the Tonight Show.
Is Conan angling that there’s some sort of legal reason they can’t push him back to 12:05? I think Conan’s just arguing it’s a stupid thing to do to the brand, and he’ll have no part of it. I don’t think (I haven’t read everything, though) he’s planning to stop NBC from moving it because of a threatened lawsuit.
I understand you see everything through the eyes of a legal-savant, and I respect that. I don’t think most people are viewing it that way, though.
bup - read the link from TMZ in my post above. He’s saying his contract implies that the show is at 11:30.