I've just read Conan O'Brien's letter to the People of Earth about the Tonight Show mess, and I think he has a point. The implication of his letter is that there is only one Tonight Show, and NBC should just decide who will host it. That sounds right.
Hopefully, Conan's hard-hitting letter will bring NBC to its senses, and the network will make the difficult but obviously correct decision about who is most qualified to host the Tonight Show, and give the job to Tina Fey.
But unless that happens, nothing about this controversy will make any sense to me.
First, there is the matter of what, exactly, is at stake. You might think Conan and Leno are fighting over the right to host the late-night talk show known as The Tonight Show.
But there are so many late-night talk shows, all of them with the same format, and only slight variations on the same name, and none of them starring Johnny Carson, that it's hard to tell what makes the Tonight Show the Tonight Show anymore. From what I can tell, the two things that make The Tonight Show The Tonight Show are that it is called The Tonight Show (well, that seems obvious) and that it airs at 11:30 eastern time on NBC.
This theory fits with what NBC has done, which is take the only two essential qualities of The Tonight Show and split them, giving one to each of the show's two potential hosts, thereby destroying whatever was actually left of The Tonight Show, and, as Letterman said, making The Tonight Show The Tomorrow Show, which was a real show, actually, hosted by Tom Snyder.
All of which leaves us with a show called The Tonight Show, which airs at midnight, and therefore cannot be The Tonight Show, and another show, in the time slot of The Tonight Show, with The Tonight Show's format, and even its former host, but that is not called the Tonight Show, and therefore ALSO cannot be The Tonight Show.
You can see how confusing all of this is, and how, the more you think about it, the harder it becomes to care too much about it.
Why not let them both call their show The Tonight Show? Who says there can be only one Tonight Show? If you can have more than one Tonight Show in a week, why can't you have more than one in a night?
I mean, let's say NBC airs The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at 10:30, and, at 11:35 The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. Is anyone really going to notice? Or even care?
I suspect Conan and Leno are really fighting over the 11:30 time slot. But that is even more confusing, because it suggests that any late-night talk show, no matter how good, can only get a decent audience in that one hour. Which means that viewers won't make time to watch their favorite talk show, they will just tune into the best talk show that happens to air at 11:30.
In other words, there's a one-hour window in our biological clocks, from 11:30 to 12:30 at night, when our body wants a talk show. Move our favorite show from that one hour, and we won't watch it. It isn't television that's programmed, it's us! Television programming is only accommodating itself to our schedule.
This whole Leno / Conan thing gets creepy and strange when you dive into it.
Think about the implications: at 11 pm our bodies must crave bad local news. In the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, what we want most is dramatic shows on cheap sets with broken families fighting over nonsense. At 8pm, we crave structured narrative, preferably a show in which a group of friends gather in an office or a coffee shop. At least once a week, we have to have a cop show.
I'm willing to bet, though, that there is no time of the day when our bodies actually want reality television. I'm pretty sure of that.
One last thing I don't understand: Conan said in his letter that since 2004 he has spent "literally hundreds of hours" thinking of ways to extend The Tonight Show's legacy. Um, hundreds of hours? Since 2004? That has to be a mistake. "Hundreds" of hours in five years works out to maybe 100 hours a year, which is, like, two hours a week. It has to have been more than that. I think Conan meant "countless hours," which literally means we don't know how many, but that it was a LOT.
Conan, if you're reading this, at your press conference it's "countless." Countless hours devoted to the Tonight Show. Countless.
Follow Sean Carman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/seancarman
Keeping the flame for the Tonight Show seems like a worthy thing to aspire to and to be crushed not to keep. Your cavalier dismissal seems tone deaf.
BUT Tiny Fey just might be the best talk show host since JC!
All "hosts" of Yankee Stadium.
Institutions survive their legends!
I've never believed any of us viewers really true know/care about who/what/where these Leno/Conan/Letterman shows are shown - I couldn't even tell you what channel they are broadcasted and I watch TV. A lot of TV.
What a huge palaver about nothing!
It is possible that Carson didn't really care about the "Tonight" show's future as much as people think he did. No crime there. His work was done. As for now, Carson is gone, and whether his fans like it or not, his opinion, whatever it was, no longer counts.
Personally, I like Conan, but I think his quirky style worked better in a New York setting at a later time. Still, NBC gave Conan the keys to the "Tonight" show, and if he is really committed to making it work, he should be given a fair chance. The NBC 10:00 Leno cock-up is not Conan's fault--and he shouldn't be punished for it.
making up stuff like this does nothing but hurt conan's overall argument. at least come up something concrete.
When networks start messing with programming and changing times after a few mere months, they risk losing even more of their audience in the process. And don't think they won't blame Conan when even more of his audience is siphoned off as a result of the confusion. Leno chose to go along with this experiment, one that has hurt the entertainment industry's creative community (something both heads of ABC & CBS have pointed out). And now that he and this experiment have failed, he needs to do the right thing, step down, and go do something else. Oh, and Zucker and Gaspin needs to be fired.
This is about dollars, millions and millions of dollars!
THEY WEREN'T (thinking) ... beyond their bottom line (it's cheaper to produce Jay's show than REAL ENTERTAINMENT -- Medium, Southland, etc). Besides, NBC hasn't had a great programming chief since Brian Tartakoff (sadly, deceased some years ago).
GE ran NBC like part of its corporate structure -- NOT as a broadcasting operation that had to answer to VIEWERS. We the People (the public) ... viewers OWN THE AIRWAVES -- not NBC (or Comcast).
NBC wasn't bright enough to let Jay walk out the door - WHEN HE RETIRED (as they should have). So, NBC RE-INVENTED the wheel for Jay -- screwing COUNTLESS MILLIONS OF LOYAL VIEWERS IN THE PROCESS. Now, we the VIEWERS see NBC screwing ANOTHER nice man & good talent: CONAN.
Less than three million people want to see Jay Leno -- at any time period. Conan deserves the 11:35pm time slot as he labored FOR 16-YRS as a "second fiddle" when he COULD HAVE gone elsewhere (like Letterman did, when NBC screwed HIM).
Jay got the Tonight Show by playing under-handed (listening in on confidential NBC execs conference calls, etc. THEN PRETENDING he was getting "inside info" from higher-ups). NBC caved to Jay's shenanigans before & LOST LETTERMAN.
All NBC is doing NOW is: creating an ugly BOYCOTT for itself by the MILLIONS of 10pm drama viewers, Conan's fans, and the general public of America WHO HATES "dirty pool" ... the kind NBC has been playing for years!
there are so many fallacies in that one statement that it is ridiculous. first, many more people watched leno at 11:30 than watch conan, so your first sentence is asinine. i don't care if you believe you have better taste than the average viewer, but you don't speak for every viewer out there- certainly not the millions more who watched leno than obrien.
he played "second fiddle" for 16 years? really, i thought it was called building a resume, as he had no prior late night talk experience. and you make it sound like he toiled in a coal mine or something.
But instead they choose to ACCOMMODATE Leno, and his show. Cause god forbid Leno's last days on TV are remembered as him FAILING.
Joel Santos
Author of the blog Re:Wind - Love, Sex, And Family
http://joelsantos.wordpress.com/
Conan has delivered to NBC 1/2 of Jay Leno's Tonight Show audience.
Jay's 10PM show has about the same ratings as his old Tonight Show. Not good enough for 10PM and the lead-in for local news but clearly not a "failure" and double Conan.
Now, you are the newly promoted programming VP for NBC and your phone is ringing off the hook from TV stations all over the country that are losing millions in local news ad dollars because their news ratings are down 30 to 50 per cent. If you do not do something immediately they will withdraw 10P-11PM from NBC ad run local news at 10.
What would do?
Thus, Leno cannot succeed at the 11:30 timeslot on NBC.