Wow. NBC has decided to go to the mattresses. Bill Carter has a killer story in tomorrow's NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/business/media/15conan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Zuck appears to have appointed Ebersol as his button man, and they have put a contract out on Conan. I paste some of the action quotes below. The two that stick out (in addition to the one in the subject header) are that "[Conan] was just stubborn about not being willing to broaden the appeal of his show.” and "“we bet on the wrong guy.". If anyone had any lingering doubts as to the truth of the rumors that Conan is history at NBC and Leno is taking back the Tonight Show, this will eradicate them. This is the narrative that NBC has chosen to go with - not that the Leno Experiment was a failure, not that they handled the end game like asshole hacks, but that they had no choice but to bring Leno back from primetime to save the flagship late night slot from Conan's astounding and stubborn failure. I love the logic behind this too - Conan's problem was that he was too smart, too funny, too hip for the central time zone (and I thought everything was up to date in Kansas City). Unlike Leno, Conan refused to "broaden his appeal" (which can only be read here as "dumb down his show"). I have seen about 75% of Conan's Tonight Show episodes - he remains the worst interviewer in late night television (something we are still seeing this week, as evidence nicely by his awkward set with Gervais) and he has never seemed real comfortable with his Los Angeles setting (small illustration, one night he had both LA icon Magic Johnson and Boston icon Larry Bird on to promote a great book they wrote together; Conan obviously idolizes Bird and has an instinctive antipathy for Magic and the Lakers - something I can relate to, since I have it in the reverse. But rather than either pretend to be an LA guy, or just play his Boston passion for exaggerated laughs, he was apologetic and tentative and awkward). His best work with SoCal was when the weather turned cold this winter and he was able to make fun of Anglinos for freaking out when the mercury dropped below 65. That is the persona he needed to develop to make things work - he is an east coaster and he will make fun of LA tropes - even as he grows spoiled and self-congratulatory himself. Indeed that is the pattern of about half the people who live in LA - many of whom continue to wax nostalgic about their east coast roots and memories - typically while eating bar b que by their pool or driving to the beach the weekend after Thanksgiving. All of this to say that Conan's Tonight Show surely was a work in progress. But from the first week he had the funniest, most biting monologue on late night, and some of his set pieces were hilarious (Conando, Twitter Tracker, the Wax Figures, Triumph, etc). My 7th grade son could have figured out by Halloween that the Leno Experiment was going horribly wrong for NBC. Their standard line, that Leno performed as they expected even though the low ratings were killing the affiliates, was never coherent, and is nothing but an insult to all concerned, as if they want to be believed, it would mean they intentionally put on 5 hours of programming that would about break even, knowing it would cost their affiliates millions of dollars. Meanwhile it was Leno who never figured out how to do a comedy/talk/variety show in primetime, and by all reports who stubbornly refused to tinker in any fundamental way with the format of the program, long after it was obvious that the ratings were terminal - not just for him, and for the affiliates, but for the Tonight Show as well. The attack from NBC on Conan is shameful and disgusting, and pretty much tells you all you need to know about the people running the show over there. That it might have been motivated by a perceived need to stroke Leno's ego might tell you what you need to know about him as well. ************** (SNIP..."The executive, Dick Ebersol<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/dick_ebersol/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, chairman of NBC Universal<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nbc_universal/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Sports, said the reason for Mr. Leno’s return to NBC’s late-night roster after a short stint in prime time this season was a simple one: disappointing ratings for Conan O’Brien<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/conan_obrien/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s “Tonight Show.” Referring to the pointed jokes made this week by Mr. O’Brien and David Letterman<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/david_letterman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>of CBS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/cbs_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, Mr. Ebersol said it was “chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings.” He added that “what this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan.” Mr. Ebersol is a veteran at the network, with a longstanding relationship with NBC Universal’s embattled chief executive, Jeff Zucker<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/jeff_zucker/index.html?inline=nyt-per>. Mr. Ebersol also has a deep link to the network’s late-night history, having been a creator of “Saturday Night Live<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/saturday_night_live/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,” and he has been frequently consulted on changes in NBC’s late-night lineup. Ratings for Mr. O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” have dropped off sharply from what they had been under Mr. Leno. Mr. Leno himself experienced a prominent failure when he moved to prime time with a show in September that struggled so much that NBC’s affiliated stations demanded change. Mr. Ebersol chided Mr. O’Brien for declining to take advice about how to adjust his show to the 11:35 p.m. slot from the style he had used on NBC’s 12:35 a.m. “Late Night” show for 16 years. He said he had met personally with the host three weeks before he stepped behind the “Tonight” desk for the first time to urge him to take steps to expand the appeal he had built up in his “Late Night” years, saying that NBC hosts beginning with Johnny Carson<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/johnny_carson/index.html?inline=nyt-per>had recognized the importance of making the show appealing first and foremost to cities in the central time zone like Chicago and Des Moines. (SNIP) Mr. Ebersol labeled that a “specious argument,” saying that for much of the last five years, Mr. Leno had much lower lead-in audiences than Mr. Letterman got at CBS and yet he always won in the ratings. “I like Conan enormously personally,” Mr. Ebersol said. “He was just stubborn about not being willing to broaden the appeal of his show.” “Jeff and I are big boys,” Mr. Ebersol said, referring to Mr. Zucker. “When we do something big in the public forum and it doesn’t succeed, we know we’ll be the butt of criticism. But you don’t personally attack someone who hasn’t done anything.” In this case, he added, “we bet on the wrong guy." (SNIP)
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