I've already written about my opinions regarding Conan O'Brien's talent in front of the camera and my belief that he got a rare opportunity with limited competition over a long haul, and I'm glad he made a lot of money.
Plus, in their misguided zeal in believing Conan was the wave of the future, NBC executives made a critical mistake with their decision to subject Jay Leno to a slow death over five years, then realized their error too late and made a bigger one they're now trying to undo.
I also stated Jay Leno was not my cup of tea, and that I much preferred his predecessor, Johnny Carson, and David Letterman, Johnny's rumored choice to take over his seat. When Dave left NBC after a year and went head-to-head with Leno and came out on top, I never understood why he lost his ratings advantage to the much more benign Jay, but I acknowledge it and tip my hat to Leno.
NBC has now realized they made the wrong decision and are clumsily trying to sort out their mess, and in so doing they are making even more enemies, not the least of which is the aforementioned Conan O'Brien.
Today, Conan issued a statement in which he said he would not agree to the proposed shift of his time slot to past midnight. He said it was on principle, and, whether I am a fan of his front of the camera skills, I have to admit it was a legitimate stance to defend his honor, considering the decision came much quicker than one might have thought and he wasn't given a very long time to hold forth at the 11:30 hour.
However, since he lost much of Jay Leno's audience, I take issue with Conan's excuse, blaming his failure to match David Letterman on the NBC schedule. He said
It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.
But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
This is nonsense. A network schedule is not a be-all of ratings success for what follows, not to mention the fact that Conan was on at a late night hour, separated from prime-time by the local news, neither of which should influence a viewer's choice whether to watch him if they really wanted to. Johnny Carson was on during fallow periods of NBC programming and always remained the king. Similarly, Leno, after a year at the helm, had to deal with the upstart David Letterman and the "it" factor he represented, ultimately copying some of Letterman's zany man on the street vignettes and, perhaps because of his less abrasive form of comedy, emerged as the victor in most subsequent ratings periods.
In the meantime, Conan was very well known to the general public and had a show for over 15 years before he switched to the earlier time period. I cannot believe that, with all the publicity of Conan's taking over The Tonight Show, with or without hit NBC shows, if the public preferred Conan over Dave they wouldn't have switched to NBC from whatever prime-time network they'd been watching or whatever channel they were tuned to for the late night news, even from CNN's Anderson Cooper.
This robotic mindset that networks and media critics ascribe to the television viewer is nonsense for an audience mostly equipped with remote control devices. Conan failed to attract an audience, because, I hate to say it, don't want to be cruel, but more viewers preferred to watch David Letterman than him. Irrespective of Jay Leno's failure in prime-time, if Conan had been on top NBC wouldn't be moving him.
Even Jerry Seinfeld said as much when he recently expounded on the situation:
What did the network do to Conan? I don't think anyone's preventing people from watching Conan....once they give you the cameras it's on you. So, I can't blame NBC for having to move things around. Conan has a chance to destroy everybody. Go ahead. You're out there. Take it. I don't think anyone's done anything to Conan.
Whether you agree that Conan's a major on-air talent or not, there are loads of people who did great on one show and then didn't on another. Kelsey Grammar, Patricia Heaton, Jerry Lewis and even Lucille Ball. You can't just blame your own shortcomings and/or failings on factors that make little or no sense.
And that's what it's all about, and Conan should take his $40 million lumps. Not a bad consolation prize, which he may have to forfeit if he fails to fulfill his contract, in which NBC reportedly has the right to start his show up to and including the midnight hour. If Conan refuses to perform, perhaps NBC will have the right to sue him or withhold any monies. Or maybe they'll release him to a network like Fox. But as I said in my earlier piece, what makes him think he'll be able to win the audience over Dave and Jay Leno, who, if Conan leaves, will certainly get The Tonight Show back?
Michael Russnow's website is www.ramproductionsinternational.com
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Regarding Conan and Leno, these are separate issues. Leno's show deserved to be canceled, because it was doing horribly in the ratings at the 10 p.m. hour and affected the local news (which I've agreed ad nausea are affected by the lead-in shows).
However, they would not be bringing Leno back to 11:30 and pushing Conan to midnight if they thought Conan was doing a terrific job in the earlier time slot. He is not! I guarantee you that if Conan were a hit at 11:30 they would be paying off Jay and wishing him good luck. But they think, based on Jay's past performance in that time period, in which he was mostly beating Dave until the end, that he might do the same (read that to mean better than Conan) if they brought him back to 11:30.
However, Conan was not doing so well against David Letterman; whereas Leno up to his last Tonight Show had, for the most part, been beating Dave.
Therefore, NBC in a not very pretty action decided Jay Leno might still be valuable to the network and hoped, from past experience, he would be better suited in a face-off against Dave.
Them's the facts. So, Conan was pushed back -- though only by half an hour. It was a cruel, hard business decision, which may or may not work. But then it was a cruel, hard business decision in 2004 to publicly force Jay Leno out in the manner that he was. NBC's problem was that they bet on the wrong pony. And Conan won't accept the fact that he was not embraced by the public in the manner that NBC predicted. Instead, he is blaming a lot of situations for his current plight, but not once have I heard him suggest that his perceived talent and abilities, which failed to attract a larger mainstream audience, might be part of the problem.
Had Jay Leno not failed at 10 p.m., they probably would have stuck with Conan longer. Had Jay failed, but Conan was beating Dave, they would have said Adios to Jay and kept Conan where he was. But Jay failed and Dave beat Conan, and NBC is trying desperately to get the best return out of the tens of millions of dollars it has, perhaps foolishly, invested in both Jay and Conan. Frankly, except for their wounded egos, neither is suffering much, so I'm not feeling sorry for them.
in show biz, this is much ado about zilch. both jay & conan will be rich & employed. anybody who cares about the plight of their crews & staff better be equally zealous over the cancellation of any tv show, or concede that they are a hypocrite.
any talk of "the tonight show at any other time just isn't the tonight show" is bogus and self-serving.
anybody reverent of the tonight show or johnny carson should understand that carson didn't want either of these two as his replacement, he wanted letterman.
ultimately this is a business decision for nbc, and neither conan nor jay has lived up to their billing in their current format, so nbc is trying to return to a format that was successful for them.
a) Jay Leno at 10 sucked the life out of Conan. When Carson left they watched Jay or Dave. When Leno left they could just watch Lenos till, cutting the legs out from under Conan
b) Half of what Conan wanted to do didn't get approved by the network. They haven't let him run his show
c) the show at 12:05 would no longer be the tonight show..it would in fact be the tomorrow show.
First of all, in my previous article (linkable at the top of this one) I clearly said that, while I don't believe in prime-time lead-ins to other such shows, I do believe they affect the late night news.
The reason I believe this is because there is not much difference between local newscasts (unless you are personally attracted to a newscaster or the color of his/her hair). Whereas the variety and mix on different networks and cable channels are such that they provide the impetus to reach for the remote if you're inclined to do so.
Therefore, I still maintain that with all the resources to publicize shows, if you're aware that Lost is coming back, but you're watching a favorite show on CBS or Fox, I'm sure you'll have no problem switching to ABC.
I agree that Conan was hurt by Jay Leno, but not because of the ratings. Jay could have been number one, and there still might have been a saturation point for people who watch such shows, not wanting to view another of similar format. But that would have affected Dave and Jimmy Kimmel as well, and would have provided more of an excuse to switch to Nightline or a repeat of Anderson Cooper on CNN.
If people are fans of a show or personality they will find that person (unless they're buried on a digital channel). What made Conan different from Jay were his antics and the brand of his humor, but those sort of differences were fulfilled by David Letterman, who does it better. Not specifically the vignettes or bits, but the important stuff that attracts talk/variety viewers: the monologue (Dave was a long-time professional stand-up success, as opposed to Conan's zero experience) and Dave's much more superior and sophisticated interviewing style.
Regarding the writer who said Carson had no significant competition, I mentioned in my article Joey Bishop, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin and Pat Sajak as a few very well-known competitors who succumbed to him. He also, since 1979 had the provocative and interesting Nightline, and still came out on top.
I never said that networks don't schedule in the manner I derided. They really believe that the audience will stay on the schedule for the 9 p.m. show if they're watching the previous hour. Maybe the audience will if they don't have a TV Guide or the other networks are in repeats -- I've done that, too -- and in those instances the sampling of a new show will be helped.
But if there's a hit show on another network, something people want to see, you can put anything after the number one show at 8 p.m. and people will still switch their dials.
That's why I maintain that, while I agree that the local news was hurt by Jay -- because, I repeat, the local news is not all that different from one channel to another -- if Conan were attractive to a viewer, who'd been watching the news on the CBS or ABC affiliate, they would have switched over, but they didn't.
Lastly, Jay Leno did not want to retire. No, I don't have a videotape of his mindset to prove it, but the fact that he accepted the 10 p.m. slot showed how eager he was to have a show. The fact that he didn't make an effort to make it different is the real story. And in any event, Conan O'Brien, while not helped by Jay's show, was not stifled in that, had he done a better show or were he a match to Letterman in talent he might have succeeded.
However, I do agree that sometimes it takes time to build an audience -- that's the only way Conan succeeded at first, and he didn't have much competition at all. His main rival, Tom Snyder, did a much different show and wasn't even on at all in the first year or so when Conan had a clear field to himself. That's what helped him succeed, and familiarity built him into a celebrity persona in the minds of the TV audience. Famous guests on to plug their movies and TV shows validated his importance to the extent he became comfortable to a segment of viewers and this fact was publicized to one and all, even viewers who normally didn't stay up to see his show.
Obviously, some people continue to like him a lot. But it's not as if he were unknown, even to the majority of the audience who rarely stayed up to see him at the later hour. And the numbers demonstrate that a vast majority preferred Letterman -- he couldn't even beat Dave in the 18-49 demographics. That's what was his undoing, because Conan actually started off with higher numbers in June and steadily went downward. When you build a new show the reverse usually occurs, so I can forgive NBC for coming to the realization that Conan wasn't the panacea they thought he'd be when they came up with the plan to oust Leno in 2004.
The decision to cancel Leno is the only issue here. Leno was making the network money, lots of money because he has no agent and the show was cheap to produce. Still, NBC is cancelling Leno. Being cancelled is part of the risk he took with a new time slot and untested territory, so *he* should have walked away with *his* consolation prize regardless of whether Conan was bringing in the ratings. Conan's ratings since you make the argument that they had nothing to do with Leno, then they also should have no bearing on Leno's own show being cancelled. But Leno did not want to go away, and the network must like Conan or they would not have kept him for five yrs to keep him from other jobs.
All are acting in bad faith except for Conan, that's why he is getting the emotional support. NBC keeps jerking him around and wants to keep Leno from competing at another network. It's not much more complicated than that. Now Conan would like to walk and go on with his life. NBC has to let him out of the contract or argue that it did not breach it and make Conan do the show at 12:05.
a. quit blaming phantom factors for conan's rating problems. IF PEOPLE WANTED TO WATCH CONAN, THEY WOULD WATCH CONAN.
c. if the show is so good, who cares if it starts at 11:35 or 12:05. IT'S STILL THE SAME SHOW.
i don't know about b., but my snap judgment is that conan had no problem being in bed with nbc until they personally screwed him.
People who watch late night shows after the 10 or 11 o'clock news aren't 18-34 year olds. It's an older audience. Most have never seen the Simpsons.
A little more gravitas and the Tonight Show will be competative again.
You have to be pretty oblivious to say something like that. You do realize that Conan lost most of Jay's audience to Jay! I mean, can you imagine how poorly Leno would have performed had Carson stayed on NBC with a talk show an hour earlier?? Leno should have bowed out gracefully instead of sticking around like an unwanted guest, and I think it's perfectly fair to blame Conan's ratings woes mostly on him. Not to mention that the whole reason Leno's new show is being canceled is because it was killing the nightly news, ooh wait, I forgot lead-ins don't matter. Damn nightly news blaming it's problems on Leno.
This is an important point for me, since there was a lot of rumored ugliness regarding Leno when he was named Johnny Carson's successor rather than David Letterman. Many believed Leno weaseled his way into the job. (Truth be told, including me.)
If Leno voluntarily retired, and is now trying to worm his way back, he looks like a snake at this point. However, if he was forced out in 2004, maybe he does have a leg to stand on after all.
Either way, I'll continue to watch Dave.
I'm one who only became a fan of Dave after I had to choose between him and Conan at 11:35. Since you also like Dave, you may be interested in reading an interview of Dave in Rolling Stone magazine in 2008 or thereabouts, when he said he still couldn't quite believe that Leno would be replaced by Conan in 2009, considering all that Jay had done for NBC.
It's also interesting to read an interview of Leno in the same magazine (not the same issue, of course). You'll see that Jay and Dave both actually made it a point to say that they appreciated the other's talents and accomplishments. There's really no sense making this a battle with Team Jay or Team Conan. The conflict is not between the two men; it was created by the network.
Yes. Absolutely. TV viewers - especially older viewers - are in fact shepherded into complacency. The DVR and Internet culture will shift the balance in time, but network schedules are designed tediously to keep people away from their remotes. Like other comments point out, the impetus behind the late night shuffle was due to the correlation between the decline in local affiliate ratings and Jay's lackluster draw. Does it entirely account for Conan's slow start? Probably not. But lead ins do matter. Conan's reference to the lead-in was more a pot shot at Leno than an excuse.
Also, Russnow seems baffled by the notion that television audiences are mindless. Has he seen some of the most popular programs weighing down primetime for the past decade? Their very existence and commercial success proves the innate mindlessness of American audiences.
Like Russnow says, if people wanted to watch Conan, they know how to use the remote.
I personally stopped watching late night shows a long time ago because they became repetitive. Production teams are afraid to try new things and it shows. Even Leno's new show was nothing new. Obviously viewers come and go so it hasn't hurt them overall, but that's the reason I left.
As far as ratings, I don't think the movement would help the Tonight Show at all. It is not the same to have a main show like the Tonight Show with two shows that follow as having four shows in the same night. People don't want to see as many talk shows! That, and you would have to share guests.
NBC needs to have a long term plan instead of a month to month or even yearly plan. I think that back in the 90s, they had more of an idea of what they were doing. Even when they were unsure that Leno would outperform Letterman, they stuck to their guns, they didn't give Letterman a primetime show. That would have been ridiculous. They also gave Leno much better promotion than they're giving Conan now. I watched some games on Sunday Night Football and remember seeing more Leno promos than Conan's and they would have shared promos between Fallon and Conan. They never gave their 100% to the Tonight Show as they had done in the past.
I find it surprising then for Seinfeld to say that you should work with what you have. If TV really worked that way, NBC would have told the local TV stations to improve their news programs and work with Leno's lead in, instead of giving in and move late night shows around.
Conan and NBC had an agreement that he would get the Tonight Show and Leno was going to leave. NBC wanted Leno to work for NBC and no one else so they moved their programming around for him. It was an awful decision that everybody that watched their primetime shows would have been able to tell them not to take. They let Medium and Southland go and cancelled others. Now, without giving Conan a true chance and giving him the lead in of Leno and the news, they want to move things around. The Tonight Show is an institution, you can't move it around or change hosts so much!
Say what you will, but Conan raises the same valid point as the local markets, and when the local markets brought it up, it wasn't any kind of lame excuse then.
Who even remembers what Carson's late night competition was? I can't remember a single other comedy talk show that was on opposite his. The TV landscape today is COMPLETELY different. There was no competition in Carson's era and there is a ton of it now.
If Carson had to compete against Letterman, Leno, O'Brien, Kimmel or Ferguson, he'd likely still win cause of the old folks crowd, but he would've also lost a sizable portion of his younger audience to one of his competitors.
Comedy Central should be going after Conan BIG TIME!!! And not to replace the Daily Show or the Colbert Report.
Instead, Conan at 10 p.m. Yes, that's right. I wrote it. 10 freakin' p freakin m. 10 p.m.
"Oh, but he can't do risque stuff at 10 p.m.!!" Oh, yes he can, b's. It's basic cable.
He could have Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on every night.
"Oh, what about South Park?" South Park rocks. What would happen with South Park is new episodes would air at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesdays.
That's a stong lead-in to Conan.
As it is, South Park's current re-runs air at 9:30 p.m. so it's not like their audience would have to go far to search to find the new episodes.
The South Park re-run could air at 9 p.m. We would just have to wave goodbye to Futurama. Such a loss.
This all works on so many levels. Hey, I should be a network programmer.
Jay Leno's career will die on the vine. Why? Because he's not freakin' funny and has not been since 1989, when he was last seen at the bottom of a Dorito's bag of potato chips.