Much as I am enjoying casually watching the NBC late night TV debacle, I would like to take a moment to clear up a few things. Before doing so, I offer the following disclaimers:
I have not seen Jay Leno’s current show, and do not plan to do so.
I have only seen Conan’s Tonight Show twice, and it was fine. No better, no worse.
I have not regularly watched late night TV in years, and when I did it was via DVR the next day, and it was Letterman.
So, all that being said, let’s get a few things straight:
First, if you got a promotion you were promised, and proceeded to generate roughly half the revenue of your predecessor, your ass would get fired, too.
Second, I have long thought Conan was pretty funny and Jay Leno was not, but the reality is Jay plays to the Heartland and Conan plays to the coasts (where the brain is), and the coasts watch TV on DVR or online. Conan is nowhere as accessible (read: bland) a comic as Jay and really has to dull down his act for Tonight. Really, this was never going to work.
Third, after watching a number of online Conan “support” groups pop up, I arrived at the following question: Seriously, who gives a shit? Conan brings in roughly 3 million viewers a night. I have no idea what that comes out to in terms of ratings points or ad rates, but I do know it is less than 1% of the U.S. population, so it ain’t like he’s setting the world on fire.
Fourth, go back to my first point and then understand this, if you failed at your job and were being pushed out, Conan wouldn’t give a shit about you.
Five, don’t hand me this “sanctity of The Tonight Show” crap (based on the show’s ratings even when Leno was the host, the vast majority of people do not watch it). I’ve long been a believer that sanctity and tradition are a fancy way of saying you are too lazy to change something. And let’s not go applying sanctity to this. It’s a fucking TV show, not Parliament. It’s a long running TV show, even an occasionally amusing TV show, but at the end of the day it’s still just a fucking TV show.
Maintain perspective. If you are upset Conan may not be on at 11:35 PM because you like watching Conan at 11:35 PM, so be it, but be upset because it screws with your schedule (and watching Conan at 11:35 PM is actually part of your schedule). Don’t be upset because you think Jay Leno is a dick (if you’re reading this odds are you’ve never met the man), or because think you could run NBC better than Jeff Zucker (you could not, specifically because you know nothing about the actual business of TV).
Conan will be fine. Before this (and after) he will still be rich and talented. You, the TV viewer, will also be fine. The only people who will not be fine are people who have shares of GE, NBC’s parent company (which will soon become Comcast), and they only until NBC either starts putting on better shows or finds a way to bring in a bigger audience for the good shows it has.
What happens between Jay and Conan’s shows will be a business decision, and much as we all like to anonymously post and tout ourselves as experts, it is not a business decision we are qualified to judge.
