I don’t really follow these late night shows that often. I just know that David Letterman and Conan O’Brien are preferred, and most people cannot stand Jay Leno.
Andy Richter spouting off http://tv.gawker.com/5489186/andy-richter-goes-off-on-jay-leno-and-nbc-on-live-with-regis-and-kelly
tvgawker’s take on the whole conan and leno thing, with the viewpoint against leno. Lots of Howard Stern hating on leno.
http://tv.gawker.com/tag/thetonightshow/?p=2&replies=collapsed
the people talking about leno basically say “he says one thing and does the other” kinda guy. Tries to act one way but isn’t so. Stuff like that.
Current thread about the Leno/O’Brien brouhaha. If you’re looking for a more general reason, it’s mostly because he’s bland.
I haven’t commented in the other thread, but I also think that, for younger audiences, Conan was “their guy.” He wrote for The Simpsons, had new and edgy characters and finally reached the pinnacle of his career and took over a major TV franchise. So when “their guy” was then replaced by the “old guy” again, lots of people took it a bit personally.
To be fair, “people” love Jay Leno. There is a reason why his show does relatively well in the ratings. What some people dislike, and have always disliked, is that he is a safe comedian that treats comedy more as a science than an art. He’s what they call, a hack. An adept, and careful observer can guess most of the punchlines and topics of his jokes. He goes for easy laughs, and rarely challenges the audience. You will never learn anything from Jay Leno, nor will you have to rethink your opinions or assumptions on anything. There is no takeaway. His comedy is empty calories in a sense. He is to comedy what USA Today is to journalism.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that. However, purists, many of whom are Conan fans, typically want comedy to aspire to more than that. They see it more as an art. Accordingly, they have no respect for a guy like Jay Leno who, for the purposes of this analogy, can skillfully and (nearly) flawlessly recreate the works of the masters, but cannot push the boundaries of the art form, or create his own unique style. So when you ask a “purist” if Leno is a good comedian, it’s like asking if being able to paint a great copy of the Mona Lisa makes you a great painter. In most respects, it certainly does. A person who can do that clearly has a lot of artistic ability, but they may or may not be a good artist.
Are you basing this only on what you see on the Tonight show? Or have you seen him do comedy in clubs? I’ve seen him in person and what he does on stage is not what you see on TV.
He does consciously try to appeal to the Great American Audience. He’s not as edgy, doesn’t take obvious political sides, doesn’t work dirty although he’s sometimes a bit naughty. That is an Art, BTW, not a Science.
Oh, and the “He” in that first sentence referred to Johnny Carson. You know, the sainted, revered Johnny Carson?
Leno followed exactly in his footsteps. The more like Carson he became, the more successful he got.
Why then, Exapno, do you think people don’t hate Carson?
The chin thing always bothered me.
I just think he’s awful. I’ve never once heard him tell a joke where I didn’t see the punchline coming from twenty miles away. It’s bland, boring, and just generally horrible comedy. Recently, he seems to have added in more and more product placement into his routines, too, which is just evil icing on the crap cake.
My WAG is that the audience split into fragments after Carson. Really, during Carson. People tend to forget about Arsenio Hall, but his show started in 1989. He found/created an audience that wasn’t interested in Carson. That audience was there and growing for a while - as I said in the other thread on this, Carson had been phoning it in for years - but had no real outlet. He gets the benefit of the memory effect, though: people only remember the good stuff.
After 1992, audiences could stick with Arsenio or go to Dave, who did great stuff in the early years. It wasn’t that everybody abandoned the middle: after 1994 Leno beat Letterman in the ratings for 15 straight years. It’s just that there were real choices, along with a newer younger audience whose opinions were not set.
The choices are more apparent than real. Each of the five late-night network shows has an average viewing age of 50 or more. It’s the cable alternatives, TDS, Colbert, George Lopez, who get younger watchers. Conan will undoubtedly skew younger as soon as he starts because that’s what the cable audience is like.
Why the passion then? Just one of those irrationalities of life, I guess. Search for any threads about Howard Stern.
Dave just laid into Jay again. For someone on the outside-looking-in on this last dispute, he still seems awfully bitter and disgruntled, and appears genuinely happy Jay’s rep has suffered as a consequence.
Dave is on the outside looking in, but he still has an axe to grind, and I’d imagine there’s a great deal of schaudenfreude watching Jay squirm.
Letterman makes more money than Leno for lower ratings. Guess he must have a real good agent.
Yes, but Jay is squirming all the way to the bank.
I have never seen him in person, but I have heard his stuff, and know several people who have seen him whose opinions I trust. I agree he has much different material when he is not on the tonight show, but I don’t think that changes anything I said.
Your statement that he followed exactly in Carson’s footsteps echos what I said. It also highlights why many people find Leno’s act tame, and hackneyed. Comedy has changed a lot since Carson’s day.
Furthermore, I think what Leno does is more of a “science” than what most big comedians try to do. Leno knows how to get easy laughs. He knows the demos, and he plays to their expectations. There is nothing wrong with that, and it doesn’t mean he is a bad comedian; it just means that people who have different expectations of what comedy is, and how some one in his position should act, will be turned off by his act.
Leno has his job not just for the jokes he tells, he has an entire show to do. There are probably many comics funnier than Leno who would be horrible at running a talk show.
Leno’s comedy, while safe, is also often a bit mean spirited. I agree with the empty calories summary above. Conan’s humor is often unkind, but not usually mean spirited. I am thinking the Janet Reno thing where they guy voicing her did not bother to shave. That is unkind, but it doesn’t seem as petty as Leno’s stuff does, and Conan is more likely to be laugh out loud funny. I also get the impression that Leno thinks he is cool. He is more what Carlin describes as “chilly” Conan does not and David Letterman knows he is not.
But the big thing that is going on in this dispute is that Leno made a move and when it did not play out the way that he and the network wanted he called backsies. This is the big time, that crap did not play well on the play ground and it seems worse that childish now. It certainly is not cool.
Leno is hated because he’s old.
Not old as in aged; old as in his act. He plays to and for boomers.
Good for him, I guess. But I suspect a lot of younger people, whether they watched Conan’s show or not, felt like - "This is bullshit. Leno is an unfunny dinosaur. GTFO of the way for somebody who can actually speak to Gen X and Y.
Conan is on 60 minutes this Sunday. Because of his buyout he can’t say anything bad about Leno or NBC but he is said to “flirt” with that restriction. He could not do any media interviews until May 2nd.