I admit I like Conan, and the handful of weeks I worked on "Late Night" were easily among my favorites in my five years in the industry. But what fans of his don't want to admit is that there is a way of looking at it as though NBC is making the right choice. There is a way of looking at Conan as a failure. If, that is, you ignore everything else that led up to and along with the decision to make him host of "The Tonight Show."
Jay spent years as guest host of Carson's show, borrowing from Carson's fanbase to build upon his own. Leno also spent years as a guest on Letterman's old show doing essentially the same thing. Conan never had that opportunity. In fact, NBC made it clear that, if you liked Jay, you didn't have to watch Conan, which eliminated any of Jay's fans from bothering to establish a connection to Conan. Whereas Leno appeared on Carson's Tonight Show weekly and Letterman's Late Night six to eight times a year for years prior to taking over the show, I'd be shocked if Conan appeared on Leno's Tonight Show more than once a year in the show's history. Granted, NBC was under no obligation to work towards sharing the audience, but the stated reason for announcing the switch years in advance was to avoid any loss of audience -- to allow for a transition from one host to another. But a transition is not defined as a sudden stop of one thing and a sudden start of something else. There was supposed to be a gradual movement between the two things, and that just didn't happen between Jay and Conan. Instead, NBC made deliberate moves to put a show on at 10pm which would generate lower ratings than the other shows that were there. And then NBC deliberately hung Conan out to dry. As even NBC has stated, Jay didn't fail. He performed EXACTLY as they wanted him to (PGAGE's collection of the numbers will verify that Leno fell more-or-less at the threshold of 1.5). And those low (but anticipated) numbers directly translated to lower numbers for local newscasts, which led to lower numbers for Conan. NBC chose a strategy which would guarantee the destruction of 150 minutes of its programing day -- 22.5 hours per week of fewer people watching. So Conan failed... which was all he could do. Out of curiosity, I went back to TVorNotTV's initial thread about the concept of Jay in prime time, begun back on 12/8/08: http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv/browse_thread/thread/c1c33b470853387a/88c789569842574f?hl=en&q=Leno+to+stay+at+NBC&lnk=ol&; Looking at all of our comments, we were all asking the right questions, but since this is all about the egomaniacs of television, I'll just focus on my comments (you can go back to the "Leno to stay at NBC" thread to reread what everyone wrote, which I recommend). I initially described the concept as "elegant and stupid," then went on to state "I think it cuts Conan off at the knees. He still follows Leno, al-be-it with a 35 minute news break in between (so much for the seamless transitions between shows NBC and the other networks have been attempting). What is currently 'The Tonight Show' won't be going away, which means its audience can easily follow Jay 95 minutes earlier and fall asleep that much faster, leaving Conan high and dry." And, when it was revealed that the network's aim was not to beat the competition, but merely to save money by producing less profitable programing that was less expensive to produce, I replied, "That is a cop-out on the part of Leno and the execs. It is lowering the bar. 'We will suck profitably' is something prostitutes should say, not the producer/host of a TV series... And, by playing this time-shifting game, they've potentially muddied their own long standing late night dominance." Before I forget, someone mentioned how averse Aaron Barnhart now seems to be towards NBC and Leno, but, at the time, he was a huge fan of the idea, offering reasons that didn't make sense to me then and still don't today: http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2008/12/leno-at-9-this.html -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
