We Americans are funny about we go to bed with . . .
Fixed your post for ya.
As one poster to another, that’s bad juju on this board. If you’ve got a quote box with “Originally Posted by XXXX,” what’s in the box needs to be what was in the original post.
Upon review, I concur.
Apologies, Exapno. I was going for harmless snark, but I see that I fell way short of the mark.
But Jay Leno still sucks donkey dicks. 
Thanks for the links. I never saw Leno before he got his own big show and I have always wondered why he got it, since he’s not funny. Now I know better.
I miss Jack Parr, you juvenile delinquent! There was also no more good music made after Glenn Miller’s plane crashed. Now get off my lawn!
Jack Paar, and everyone else is Hitler.
I’m old enough to remember Carson as an adult. For the last ten years, he was phoning it in, appearing only three times a week and visibly not caring. His bits got old and repetitive but his audience wanted schlock and he gave it to them. Thirty years was ten too many, at least.
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t great in his prime. He’s basically SNL. People filter out the bad, boring, week-to-week got-to-fill-90-minutes drivel and remember only the good stuff, then compare those memories to a full current show. Naturally, the full current show can’t possibly compare. Yet there were times when the show was better than others. It wasn’t a constant fall, but it wasn’t equally good either. Carson is deified in memory, but he had bad shows, bad years, and bad decades, along with good shows, good years, and good decades.
You keep saying that. So far you’ve named exactly one bit, which I contend you’re totally wrong about. That a sidekick moved from one show to another - totally voluntarily - does not mean he was “stolen.”
It’s funny because network shows are put on the air for the commercials. Not for the fans, not for the performers. For the commercials. People who don’t watch television don’t count in the ratings - which are produced only so advertisers know how many people are watching. Even recorded programs only count for a week, because that’s all the advertisers care about. When people boast about not watching the show on a platform that includes commercials, it’s a signal to the network TO TAKE THE SHOW OFF THE AIR.
If you don’t get that, you’re what I’m making fun of.
Except online video does come with commercials. And it also comes with something the Nielsen people can only dream of: a full count of the number of viewers. And in some cases, it also comes with full demographic information.
Being able to go to advertisers and say “We can guarantee you X million viewers (and Y hundred thousand will be between 18-49) for your ad” should have been a slam dunk.
Not only did Carson only work 3 days a week at the end of his run, he took almost the entire summer off starting as far back as the late 70s.
BTW, the other 2 days a week were reruns for one day and guest host for the other day.
Speaking as a moderator, let me clarify: It’s not just a matter of juju (or success or failure in humor) – it’s actually against the rules.
You may want to check out the rules and guidelines in About This Message Board.
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
I’d name more, but you’re either only skimming my posts (#24 clearly lists more than “exactly one”) or you’re being deliberately obtuse. In neither case is my participation worth it.
Joke aside, I think this is part of it. Late-night talk show hosts are on 5 nights a week, which is more viewing time per week than most viewers (barring those who watch daytime soaps/talk shows) put in on other prime-time viewing choices. If you want to unwind with a late-night talk show before bed, you don’t have many options to go with. So if you’re really a fan of a particular show, you get really invested in it because you’re watching it every weeknight.
Conan fans thought he was finally getting his big chance to break his talk show format out into more of a mainstream audience, and thought that Leno wasn’t helping matters in the process.
If the Chicago Tribune gets incensed letters about changes to the paper’s format, font, or overall size (not number of pages, but size of the newsprint page used), then I can see how night-time talk show viewers can get mad about something that doesn’t favor “their guy.”
nevermind
To all of you who feel that Johnny Carson was just as inoffensive and milquetoast a host of the Tonight Show as is Jay Leno, you might want to watch this, and tell me if Leno’s ever done anything that daring, potentially alienating of vast groups of his viewers, and outright fucking cool?
Ultimately I think it’s a generational clash.
Old vs New.
Leno vs Conan.
or you could see it has two different schools of comedy which I guess ultimately does boil down to old vs new once again.
Personally, I hate Leno. He aggravates me. Late night talk shows rely completely on the personality of the host, in my opinion, and something about Leno just rubs me the wrong way. I do agree that Conan can be juevinile, but I think that he is very lively and I do always love when he makes fun of himself.
I agree with one of the previous posters who said that late night talk shows on prime time television are becoming blah in general. I feel that the younger generations are jumping on the Comedy Central model of late night talk shows with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert at the forefront.
But to get back to the OP, I think that it is ultimately a clash of comedy. Conan fans see Leno as representing the “old school” comedy which they feel is washed up, and Leno fans see Conan as representing the demise of classic comedy and a move towards cheap laughs.
I sincerely believe that if you hooked me up to a polygraph and said “Leno/O’Brien fiasco!” the needle wouldn’t even quiver.
Or if it did at all, the deflection would be far less than if you said “Ham sandwich!”.
For those who didn’t watch the whole video and thought this was the wrong link, the actual clip starts at about 5:37
I also must admit that I have no interest in watching the guy be debunked in such an embarrassing way, so I can understand why it wasn’t reused.
And apparently those commercials are worth a lot more than television ones, as you tend to only get one commercial per break