As an entertainment blogger, I would be remiss not to comment on the civil war currently winding down over at NBC. I've been waiting for the dust to settle before weighing in on this debacle, which threatens to disrupt, if not destroy, the network's late night line-up. At this point, I've read, heard and seen enough to reach the following conclusion: Conan got a raw deal.
Last year, when the network first announced its plans to broadcast
The Jay Leno Show five nights a week at 10 p.m., I was skeptical to say the least. At the outset, many pundits hailed NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker's decision to devote the network's entire 10 o'clock hour to a glorified talk show as a bold attempt to remake the face of network television. To me, however, it always seemed like an epic blunder. And while the show's low production value did cut overhead costs (compared to the scripted dramas traditionally aired during that time slot) its ratings were abysmal, night after night, week in, week out.
The weak lead-in Leno's show provided resulted in lower ratings for the 11 p.m. newscasts of NBC affiliates across the nation, who threatened to revolt if the network didn't make a change. Zucker's grand experiment turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
Since I vehemently opposed Zucker's move from day one, I'm enjoying some quality schadenfreude at his expense now that he's taken the plunge from industry wonder boy to corporate pariah. My smug sense of self-satisfaction is dampened, however, by the revelation that Conan O'Brien will no longer host the
Tonight Show.
I've admired Conan's work since his days as a writer/producer during the early years of
The Simpsons. Over the years, I've eagerly anticipated the day when he'd step up to take the
Tonight Show reigns from Leno, who I never found particularly funny. O'Brien did things the right way, paying his dues and focusing on his
Late Night program while patiently waiting in the wings for Leno to relinquish the spotlight. Then, after finally earning the opportunity to sit behind the
Tonight Show desk, NBC unceremoniously pulled the plug on him after less than eight months. That's a bush-league move by Zucker & Co.
The network's original solution called for Leno to return to the
Tonight Show at 11:35 p.m. and Conan to be bumped to 12:05 a.m with Jimmy Fallon bringing up the rear at 1:05. However, due to his reverence for the
Tonight Show as an institution, O'Brien took a principled stand by refusing to accept that proposal. As he put it in
his prepared statement regarding the issue, "the
Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't the
Tonight Show."
One could argue, as Zucker recently did, that Conan brought this upon himself by underperforming in the ratings department. While that seems like a reasonable argument, it fails to account for the
dreadfully weak lead-in Conan's
Tonight Show received from the affiliates' local newscasts which, in turn, suffered from Leno's dismal ratings during the 10 o'clock hour.
And, as Jay himself admitted in
an interview with Tavis Smiley last August, "Whoever has the job goes through this...It's all part of the growing pains. [Ratings go] down for a while and then [they come] back up again. And I don't think it's fair to judge Conan on what's happened....I got beat up for four or five months." Leno should try explaining that to Zucker.
As far as I can tell, the big winner in all of this is CBS's David Letterman, who's been cleaning up in the ratings since the disaster at NBC began unfolding early last week. In my opinion, Letterman has always been the undisputed King of Late Night Comedy, regardless of what the Nielsen numbers say. Considering NBC spurned him for Leno back in 1993, the network's current calamity must provide a certain degree of satisfaction for Letterman, in addition to the aforementioned ratings bump.
Several years from now, when Conan hosts a thriving late night show on Fox that dominates the coveted 18-49 year old demographic, I suspect NBC will regret its decision to let him go. Meanwhile, after Leno finally retires, the network will be be faced with an awkward decision about whether to promote current
Late Night host Jimmy Fallon to the
Tonight Show desk or hire outside the company, once an unthinkable option. If these predictions hold true, it shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, long-term planning for his network's future clearly isn't Zucker's
forte.
Every Thursday, I recommend a movie that I missed in the theater but ended up being worth a spot in my Netflix® queue.
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