Agreed, but this is messed up. NBC has screwed Conan over on this one.
Maybe they should let Leno host Monday and Tuesday, Conan Wednesday and Thursday, then have Wild Card Fridayz.
This is NBC trying to avoid another Leno/Letterman incident after Carson left by screwing over two hosts instead of one. Either O’Brien or Leno should leave for ABC or Fox or cable. There isn’t enough room for so many talk show hosts in one network. Not in this economy.
Ferguson is indeed really good. He’s got a great rapport with guest and audience, and he’s clever and just self-effacing enough to pull it off. Conan, who I love, drifts too far into uncomfortable territory with his self-effacing stuff. Jay and Dave are downright arrogant, Dave in a “big dog” kind of way, and Jay in a passive-aggressive “what, me?” kind of way. But on the earlier shows, that arrogance plays better than the “what a dork I am” energy.
So, Ferguson is great, but give him “The Tonight Show” and you may lose a good deal of that charm. I think that’s what happened to Conan- a good deal of their best stuff was based in the premise “What kind of crazy thing can we put on the air tonight?”. Once you are the anchor program, that gets complicated. Letterman has trouble with it, and you can see him straining at the leash sometimes. This is where Leno shines- he produces an extremely predictable and low-key product, and he has absolutely no personality. This is McDonald’s tv, this audience wants to know basically what they are going to get every night.
You put Conan on that big stage with that prettier audience and he just kind of locks up. His buffoonish qualities are highlighted at the expense of his quirky charm. Sometimes he is downright bizarre- I can understand with absolutely no problem why this earlier audience is not taking to him.
According to Nikki Finke, Conan would get $50 million if NBC drops him as host of the Tonight Show or if the show moves later than 12:05am. Apparently Leno also gets a $50 million penalty if he doesn’t get at least 2 years of his 5 year contract. So that’s over $100 million in penalties if they change things too much.
Not sure how that compares to what is being lost in ad revenue though. Don’t really care that much; I’ve been watching Letterman since his morning show and Craig Ferguson is my absolute favorite show. Leno: never found him funny, never will.
I’ve never much liked Conan, though I realize he is a very funny writer. He wrote an article for Entertainment Weekly a few years ago during the TV strike that was so excrutiatingly hilarious I never threw that issue away.
So why don’t they have Jay and Conan do the Tonight Show together? They can take turns behind the desk, every other day.
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(just kidding! :D)
I hadn’t really paid much attention to Craig Ferguson until recently when I saw him interview Morgan Freeman. The two of them together made me laugh out loud. I would love to see Ferguson get the Tonight Show if they wouldn’t mess with him. He’s a natural.
Even when Conan was on Late Night, I didn’t think he’d do too well taking over Leno’s show. Their comedy styles are just too different. I think it makes sense that the ratings are down, even without taking the Leno show into account.
The funniest things Conan did on Late Night were not his jokes. His monologue quite often fell flat. The jokes themselves could be funny, but were often told in an unfunny way. Conan’s best bits were his improvisational comedy.
How do I know they were unfunny? I’m not just relying on my own taste. I judge funny by the audience reaction. Very rarely did Leno’s Tonight Show jokes not get a pretty good laugh. (Although they don’t seem to work as well at 9:30.) It happened so often to Conan that often his monologue included joking about that.
I think people expect the Tonight Show to have a really great monologue, and I have yet to see Conan deliver. His self-defecation usually shoots himself in the foot.
ETA: Bwahaha, beat you Leaper!
I would hope so. I mean, when that happens, you really stink up the place!
ETA: Arrrgh! Those few seconds correcting a tag got me beaten! Dammit!
That’s the best typo ever. Lord, the visuals.
TMZ is now saying that the Conan’s fate at the network is his choice - either take the 12a-1a slot (w/ Leno getting a half hour from 1130p-12a) or he can leave. Their sources say that Conan is pissed and didn’t expect this. He’s considering their offer though.
Report also says that they can block Conan from going to another network, but they won’t. I imagine he’s talking to Fox and ABC pretty heavily right now. If Conan leaves, they’ll get Jay the entire hour.
What a major clusterf*ck. :rolleyes:
Jay was #1 in that time slot What’s his reward? They start talking a retirement deal a few years ago. I thought then it was the stupidest thing I ever heard.
It really shows nice guys don’t win in Hollywood. There’s never been any trouble with Jay. No wild nights on the Hollywood strip. No trips to rehab. No women claiming they slept with him. He’s a hard working guy that hasn’t let celebrity ruin him.
There won’t be any winners in this shakeup. Fans of Conan will be outraged. Jays fans have been pissed for a long time. It’s a mess.
I don’t understand why Jay doesn’t walk away. He really doesn’t need to put up with this crap. He’s wealthy, and still has a solid stand up career. Screw tv. Do what he loves.
I would guess he goes to Fox or ABC. It’s only fair they let him go. I don’t think he wants to be 2nd fiddle to Leno.
I’m pretty sure when Conan signed his deal Leno was not signed for 10 PM so that was already a negative thing for him.
FYI it was way back in 2004 when Leno agreed to step down in 2009 so they could promote Conan to 11:30.
To be fair, it’s not like Conan has any scandals, other than the hornymanatee.com incident of '06. The closest to a bad boy on late night is Letterman.
NBC should stop letting the host of *Late Night *think he’ll be the natural heir for the Tonight Show. It leads to messes like this involving Jay Leno twice already!
Well, maybe Conan will go back to the Simpsons.
I think Leno likes doing the tonight show. I’m not sure why, but I tend to agree that it was a bad move at the start to give him a deadline. I do feel sorry for Conan, I don’t know what he will do.
Let’s be honest, we are talking about guys who have all the money they will ever need. In both cases, these guys are concerned about the businesses that these shows represent, the jobs and the lifestyles of people who have been loyal to them and whom they seem to have genuine affection for. I am trying to imagine the personal angst that Conan must be feeling right now, for essentially uprooting the lives of a bunch of people for something that at the moment is looking very uncertain.
I think the cultural import of these kinds of things is hard to gauge. These are maybe the last predictable cultural touchstones that we have left, in terms of the mass media. For some reason the uncertainty actually makes me uncomfortable, and I rarely watch any of these shows (I’m a Stewart/Colbert guy meself) . I am sure I am overreacting.
I think that this is a vary valid point-----Less than a year ago, Conan had at least 50 people uproot their families from NYC to move with him to LA for his new show. I realise that there are no sure things in life, but Conan seems like the kind of guy who would not take their loyalty to him lightly, and doubtlessly feels a sense or responsibility for his staff and crew.
While I think both Jay and Conan are sucking hard with their new shows, both seem lke decent, hardworking guys, and it’s too bad for it to end up lke this.
I take no joy in saying “I told you so” but predicted this way back when.
Why they would replace the Number One late night talk show host, who clearly didn’t want to leave, is mind-boggling.
I only hope all of the bigwigs at NBC lose their jobs as well - this was a stupid idea from the get-go, and anybody with 1/10th of a brain could see this train wreck coming from miles away.
The only late night talk show I watch now is Craig Ferguson, and only if I happen to be awake then - which is rare of late.
It appears it wasn’t Leno’s numbers but rather the fact the local news numbers were off.
Second it also appears Conan couldn’t even come close to taking on Letterman. Though to be fair to him, Leno also got off to a slow start, and he could’ve been hurt by the decline of numbers from Leno’s 10pm show
ABC doesn’t really want Conan as they already have a proven product and don’t want to mess with Kimmel and Nightline.
This leaves only FOX and the local affiliates aren’t going to be happy with anyone making them give over an hour worth of valuable local time to the network, especially for Conan, who proved he wasn’t able to hold his numbers at that time.
On the other hand Conan now that he’s hurt will be worth less. This means that ABC and FOX would be more likely to take a chance now that they won’t have to fork over so much money to get him.
NBC I read will have to fork over anywhere from $25 million to $50 million to buy Conan out of his contract, but that implies that Conan would be off market if he takes that sum. If he want out ASAP he will have to negotiate and wind up with much less
The only winner appears to be CBS which has two stable late night products and was able to get a bunch of weaker series in the 10pm - 11pm (9pm - 10pm Central) slot to be more successful than they would have been, if they faced stiffer competition from NBC