I think a smarter move is for NBC to put Leno on at 11:05. The local news should come on at 10 / 9 central. This gives the affiliates a healthy lead in from shows like Biggest Loser and 30 Rock and their competition is Fox news. Leno comes on against CBS and ABC news. Conan is happy because he still gets the “Tonight Show” moniker.
If they want to keep Leno at a 1 hour length, then it just flip-flips Leno and the news. If they shorten Leno to 30 minutes, Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly are moved up by a half hour, so I imagine they’ll be happier too.
Sure, it’s a big change. But I think it makes so many people happier they’d be fools not to do it.
Conan took a lot of cracks at NBC and they were pretty funny. He had a whole list of career choices that he was considering inclusing hosting a morning zoo program with Andy and working a comedy club. His other options were funnier, but you get the gist.
I liked the bit about the vampire boy getting upset that the Avatar guy was taking his job and Andy Richter explaining that he wasn’t really taking his job, he was just sharing duties and that Vampire Boy would come on a half hour later.
Yep- if he quits, they probably don’t have to pay him. So they basically make him as uncomfortable as possible while still honoring his contract, he declines, then everything goes back to where it was, sans Conan.
I imagine that this was planned as a contingency all the way back when they signed that original contract with Conan promising him the Tonight Show.
I honestly got a little choked up reading that. I recall watching his first attempts at Late Night when I was a (younger) idiot, with my college friends. I feel like I have grown up with the guy.
More power to him and I hope that he can get something to keep his staff busy, and perhaps with less interference.
Loved Conan’s joke last night about the Winter Olympics revenue loss, and about being the new host of Last Call With Carson Daly. Leno also seemed to be having fun with the whole “we’ve been fired AGAIN thing”. I got the impression that Leno feels pushed around but is happy as long as he’s on tv, while Conan seriously feels like he’s being fucked over by NBC. Now I gotta see what Letterman & Fallon had to say.
Somehow, I get a feeling that these moves are going to hurt EVERYBODY, as the audiences are going to get fed up and just stop watching these shows altogether.
See I found the statement as very passive aggressive. Clearly he’s mad because he couldn’t deliver the goods and now like a kid who sucks at baseball, but owns the ball, he’s taking his ball and going home.
Insincere, sincerity doesn’t suit him and that is how the statement reads to me.
It’s easy to bash NBC, but Conan was being killed in the ratings, and NBC took an virtually unknown writer and gave him a chance to be famous.
Let’s say you were a secretary at a job and they made you manager, if you weren’t able to manage they’d let you go too, or move you back to beig a secretary. It’s pretty straight business all around
It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
It might be better for everyone if he went back to the Simpsons. Maybe he can go there and bring the program back to the point it was when he left it
From my biased view, wherever Leno go, trouble follows. Leno’s poor ratings in his new venture hurt the ratings in the local news programs because of poor lead-in. This in turn hurt Conan for the same reason. The only way Conan had a chance was if Leno had left all together. I like Conan more than Leno.
IMHO: Ferguson > Kimmel > Conan > Letterman > Leno > Falon
Unfortunately, my opinions don’t match the Nielsen ratings
He was getting killed in the ratings, but (a) it takes time to find a new tone and audience when you change to an earlier time slot, (b) Leno’s show was undercutting his profile and viability as a genuine replacement, and (c) with no prime-time lead-ins to the affiliates, NBC’s programming decisions were diluting his potential audience even further.
This isn’t the statement of a guy who’s unhappy about his situation and leaving in a huff. NBC did everything conceivable to make things as difficult as possible for him to succeed, so I would be pissed too if I was given a dream job and then had one hand tied behind my back. Would he still be trailing Letterman in the ratings if nothing else had changed? Probably, but then you could blame him completely on the merits. But this was bullshit, and Conan played ball and tried to make it work, but just couldn’t. I’d venture to say nobody could have. And that’s why it sucks.
Jay didn’t get fired the first time. Jay agreed to RETIRE and then changed his mind. Well, too bad, Big Chin, but NBC made plans to move on without you.
I wonder if anyone’s pointed out to him that Johnny didn’t storm into the NBC offices and demand the show back less than a year into Leno’s run, and Leno just about drove the show into the ground for the first year.
I’d also like to see someone throw this quote from when Leno agreed to leave Tonight back at him:
