NBC has a strong 2 hours of late night programming. Winning the key demos and total viewers.
It’s a shame the fools are firing their star. Stupidest decision I’ve ever heard. I’ll be very curious to see how far NBC’s ratings plummet in that 2 hour block by next summer. By firing Leno and moving Fallon they are screwing up both rating winning shows.
So, who’s being fired?
Fired/pressured to quit/retire. Leno the ratings winner is out of a job.
I’d love to see him return on another network and kick NBC’s ungrateful ass. This guy has dominated the ratings for years and made them lots of money.
He should have done that the first time around.
You mean the guy who wouldn’t be known if he hadn’t been given a break by Letterman?
Seriously, I thought the leave was voluntary… he originally retired several years ago, then came back and screwed Conan. Don’t get me wrong, I think Leno was one of the funniest stand up guys I’ve ever seen, but I can’t fault NBC for agreeing to let him retire (again).
Leno did not “retire” either time. His contract came to an end and NBC decided they wanted to make a change. Conan screwed himself by not being able to attract ratings. And since Leno made his debut on The Tonight Show five years before Letterman had his program, the claim that Letterman gave him his break is bizarre. Not to mention that Leno, not Letterman, was Carson’s “permanent guest host” before he retired.
Like him or not, I don’t care. But get the facts straight.
Carson. I think you mean Carson gave Leno the break. And Letterman, actually. Here it is in 2013 and we still feel Johnny Carson’s legacy.
This has been the case for years. And I know the horse is way, way out of the barn on this, but I don’t get the emotional component here. Ok, so NBC isn’t bringing Leno back after his contract is up. Who cares? They do have to plan for the future.
<shrug> Getting canned from any job stings. We all like to think our efforts are appreciated at work. You want to think that your boss is satisfied with your job performance.
Imagine you’re the top salesman at a car dealership. You’ve consistently outsold the other car salesman in that dealership for years. They even gave you a little trophy and a $50 bonus as salesman of the year. Then your boss says it’s time to retire because you’re old and not appealing to the younger customers that want cars.
My understanding is that NBC thinks that Leno’s audience is too old and wants to bring in Jimmy Fallon because he’ll attract younger people. (And then Seth Meyers will get the Late Night slot. It’s almost as if there’s an express elevator between the SNL floor and the Late Night floor.)
Although I think Conan is about as funny as pancreatic cancer, I do think Fallen is funny and a perfect replacement.
My question is, unless it is broken, why the hell are you fixing it?
Leno is in no hurry, and his ratings are very good - so why not let the guy hang around until he decides to leave on his own, or the rating really do tank?
So yeah, he is being gracious and leaving…and I think Fallen will do fine in that slot, but when the dust settles, the ratings are going to be just about the same, so what was the fucking point of rushing it all?
Letterman had a show on NBC before his current one, long before Leno started on the tonight show. Leno was a frequent guest on that show.
It very well might. That doesn’t make NBC stupid. I assume Leno isn’t happy about this buy he understands the reality of showbiz and his employment, and he’s been paid extraordinarily well for the job he’s doing.
From the linked article, it appears that Kimmel is doing very well with the 18-49 demo and I imagine the fear from NBC is that he’ll gain on that demographic (esp since his time at his current timeslot is very recent) and a younger late night host may prevent Kimmel from taking that crown in the future.
Yes, this ^.
But then NBC decision-makers have been wrong more often than right (by far) in recent years, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.
Lorne Michaels owns/produces Late Night - so he’s the guy hand-picking the host of that show, which explains why it’s gone from Conan (SNL writer), to Fallon (SNL cast/Update desk), to Seth (SNL head writer/Update desk).
True, but Leno’s big break was from Carson. At the time, Letterman and Jay were friend(or at least friendly). He became one of Letterman’s favorite guests because, let’s face it, Jay is fun to talk to(or was at the time, anyway).
However, the break that Jay really got was from Carson. Just like Drew Carey, who was a successful comic, but got a huge break from his appearance on Carson.
I’d like to see him try. It would be an interesting experiment in answering the question whether the time and channel made Leno, or Leno made (alright, kept) that slot the king.
Damn you all with your high and fancy stats and facts… I have analogies!
In the early 80’s my college friends and I loved Letterman… and that is where we got exposed to Leno. A bunch of us even went to see him do stand up Memorial Day weekend in 1983 (Cracker’s Comedy Club, Indianapolis). He was wearing a Late Night with David Letterman hat.
Sure, we watched Carson sometimes… whenever we had to spend time with our grandparents. (Kidding, I loved Carson as well)
NBC has a history of making boneheaded mistakes like this. They also canned Norm MacDonald from Weekend Update on SNL because they didn’t like his politics and his ragging on OJ Simpson (one of the NBC execs was a friend of OJ’s), and they replaced him with Colin Quinn - voluntarily firing one of the funniest Weekend Update anchors in the history of the show and replacing him with one of the least funny hosts in the history of the show.
The last time they let go of Leno he was also on top in the ratings. That time it made some sense - Conan’s contract was coming up, and he was threatening to bolt to another network if they didn’t give him the Tonight Show gig. Their fear was that Leno was on his last legs, and if they lost Conan they would not only lose the host of Late Night, but they would have no successor for Leno. So they eased Leno out when his contract came up and gave the job to Conan.
Where they went wrong that time is that they never gave Conan much of a chance - when his ratings didn’t immediately come out stellar they wrangled a pretty sleazy way of kicking him out of that job and putting Leno back in - thereby winding up with exactly the situation they were trying to avoid - not having a host for Late Night and having an aging host of the Tonight Show.
They got lucky in that Fallon turned out to be pretty good (against the expectations of most), and Leno managed to hang on to #1 and even grow his audience. In the meantime, Letterman got surlier and less funny, and essentially became a cranky old man. That cost him a lot of his young audience as well. Dave’s edginess as a young host was awesome, but as he got older he went from being intelligently sarcastic to bitter and angry - kind of like what happened to George Carlin.
It didn’t help that Letterman turned out to have a penchant for banging interns in his office. Dave’s lost a lot of audience over the years, allowing Leno to stay on top by just being consistent and easy-going.