No idea how reliable the source is, but supposedly Jay is considering walking from the network all together:
http://entertainment.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/01/13/jay-leno-may-follow-conan-obrien-nbc-quit/
Man, this fuck just keeps getting clusterier.
Wow, those are some great photos of Leno and Conan they chose.
At least the Hollywood lawyers will be happy about this.
From post 215:
Conan has lost the network over $200 million in revenue. He should get his old slot back on his new salary for the remainder of his contract. If he doesn’t like it then he should ask for a release from his contract. He is there to generate money for the network and is failing at this.
What we’ll never know is how well Conan’s show would have done if Jay’s show was not on at 10pm, draining guests, advertisers and viewers from it.
Plus if it had gotten anything like the promotion that Leno’s show got. As they say, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics – show biz revenue figures should be added as a fourth item on that list.
We already know that because he followed Jay before.
All this legal wrangling and dealmaking came from NBC’s affiliates who pressured the network to put something with higher ratings on, right? If my math is right, we’ve got 4 shows competing for 2.5 hours of time:
10-12:30 divided between a high-ratings grabber, local news coverage, the Tonight Show, and Leno’s show.
Maybe they need to think outside of the box. Here’s something that may work. Tell the local news to move their news to 10:30. Then air a half-hour show with higher ratings than Leno’s at 10 to lead in. Move Leno’s show to 11 and follow that with the Tonight Show.
This way, the Tonight Show gets to keep itself at 11:30 and Leno gets his 30 min show, only a little later than he’s used to. The local news should be happier with this setup than Leno’s ratings killer. Conan would be happy that he got to keep his spot and his show, Leno will be closer to this old target audience. The local news doesn’t have to air at 11, our local FOX affiliate has their local news at 10. If its true that even reruns are beating Leno, then whatever NBC decides to air at 10 should be a better lead-in for the locals. This seems like it would satisfy everyone, at least for the time being. Then again maybe I’m not looking at it from a network executive’s point of view…
His lead-in (local news) is hurting, because the local news lead-in is hurting - Leno’s show.
Keep in mind Leno’s Tonight Show was also getting hammered in the ratings at first until Hugh Grant fell in his lap.
In my opinon the only real fucktards here are the Execs at NBC. Conan is understandably upset as is Jay. But the fubar lands ultimately on the decision makers.
That’s not at all the same thing. A much smaller number of people will stay up to watch the Late Night show at 12:35am than will watch the Tonight Show at 11:35pm.
If they both quit NBC who takes over at 11:30? Not Fallon except maybe as an interim solution.
ha ha… speaking of coco… Today’s (Wednesday’s) woot.com posting has a reference to coco.
http://www.woot.com/
Jon Stewart!!! Actually that woudl suck because it would ruin the Daily Show and would make him tone down his crticisms.
So scratch that idea.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that the fucktards are the decision makers at NBC. The problem is what are they going to do now? They jammed it into their own butts, that’s what. If either Jay Leno or NBC had a conscience this would be easily fixed. Jay needs to go away (or do a Sunday variety show, like I suggested earlier) and give Conan a chance. I predict that Conan over the next 10 years would be way more valuable that Leno. NBC only wants to put a bandage on their problems by taking Leno back. That’s a short term solution at best.
So is Leno’s “I’ll walk to” just some sort of negotiation tactic? A warning that if NBC doesn’t make a move soon and stop dicking around that they’re going to lose both of them? I can’t see it as anything else, since Leno is thisclose to getting what he wants.
How do we know that’s what he “wants”?
Now? Good point. We do know that he didn’t really want to leave the Tonight Show in the first place.