What exactly was the point of him leaving if they were just gonna end up giving him another show anyway?
I would post my opinion of Jay Leno, but this is a family friendly board, so I won't.
Yeah, this whole Tonight Show thing is a bit confusing...
Jay Leno announced about 2 years ago that he was going to retire at the end of the 2009 season and return to touring and probably do a show on another network about classic cars or something. Well 2009 came long pretty quickly and Leno started to have second thoughts about giving up his desk but NBC already signed O'Brien to a 2 year contract for taking over the show. Leno did his final farewell show but when it was announced that O'Brien was taking over the fans went crazy sending letters and petitions to the network because they believed O'Brien's college age humor was hardly the ratings grabber they would need (especially since any Tonight Show host will always have Carson's shoes to step into). NBC came to the realization that Leno leaving them would be a bad idea and since a talk show was cheaper then a series giving him his own show was a perfect deal.
The bitter end of the stick was that Leno's show was crushing O'Brien's Tonight Show in ratings but was still not holding up against other 10 PM shows which split the audience which Leno had while on the Tonight Show. NBC studio executives decided recently that since Olympic Event coverage was going to be a huge ratings boost they would put Leno's new show back into it's original time slot and push O'Brien back to his old slot. Think about this.. both of them felt they got a promotion from their original deal and now they have been demoted back into their old jobs. The cutting blow for O'Brien and Leno was that NBC announced to be fair to Jimmy Fallon they would cut their shows to a half hour. O'Brien and Leno are furious over this change in contract all of a sudden because rumor was that these changes would remain permanent once the Olympics were over. Leno has filed a breach of contract with NBC and O'Brien is already in talks with FOX to move his show over there.
That's pretty much the scoop of what is happening...
- CQ
Mostly, but not quite. NBC says that the Jay Leno Show ratings are plenty high enough to justify their little experiment, but they didn't factor in its impact on the local 11 o' clock news programs, which local affiliates depend on for a good portion of their income. Without a stronger lead-in, those news shows were absolutely destroyed and it was killing all the local affiliates. The outcry again the main NBC office made them realize that they were putting their entire network in danger, as the local station could literally not afford to do this any longer.
crimsonquill, you've got a lot of facts wrong, but here are the two most important:
1. Conan was promised the Tonight Show as far back as 5 years ago.
2. Leno was given 2 years as host of the Tonight Show to garner decent ratings. Conan has barely been given 7 months. So rather than doing the honorable thing - which would be to just tell Leno to buzz off, or give him a series of specials instead of a regular show - NBC is trying to punish Conan because of Leno hurting the affiliates' news ratings.
And, this is an important fact, as well:
3. Leno wasn't even the `chosen one' to host the Tonight Show; David Letterman was Carson's handpicked successor, but Leno got the job because of his manager campaigning for it and Leno kissing a lot of rear. Letterman thought he would be seen as the second choice - even though he was not - if he took the job, which is why he went to CBS instead. Heck, Carson even made a quick appearance on Letterman's CBS show once.
Conan wrote a letter to the public, which is up on the New York Times website, where he's stated he won't do the Tonight Show if its moved to 12:05am, and I think everyone should read it:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/conan-obrien-says-he-wont-do-tonight-show-following-leno/
Jay Leno can go jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned. I have no respect left for the man.
I really like Conan this makes me sad
Damn. Looks like everybody is getting screwed in some way. I do agree that Leno should be the bigger man and just step down and do stand up or something.
Um, Leno WAS given a two year contract, so he's not exactly being treated all that fairly himself. If you want someone to blame, blame NBC for not thinking things through and for making commitments they had no right to expect to keep. Everyone else called this an experiment and predicted this sort of disaster, but no, NBC had to draw up long term contracts.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on January 13, 2010, 11:17:47 AM
Um, Leno WAS given a two year contract, so he's not exactly being treated all that fairly himself. If you want someone to blame, blame NBC for not thinking things through and for making commitments they had no right to expect to keep. Everyone else called this an experiment and predicted this sort of disaster, but no, NBC had to draw up long term contracts.
If someone is given a contract and bombs (or kills the ratings of the show following it), they generally are fired. Not given a show that's existence would punish someone who doesn't have anything to do with it.
Jay was given 18 months to build an audience when he first started hosting the Tonight Show. Conan has barely been given 7 before NBC decided to screw over Conan by moving Jay instead of telling him to take a hike like someone with common sense would do. I really doubt Leno on another network would be much of a threat, and he skews more toward an older audience than what FOX targets so I doubt they'd even go after him. ABC isn't willing to drop Nightline and would have to screw over Jimmy Kimmel to pick him up.
The best solution if NBC has its heart set on keeping Leno would be to give him either a once a week show or a series of specials, and NOT hose Conan.
Again, Jay didn't bomb, at least not compared to what NBC wasn't expecting. They've said repeatedly that he's met their expectations in ratings. The problem is the local news coming right after this show.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on January 13, 2010, 09:26:38 PM
Again, Jay didn't bomb, at least not compared to what NBC wasn't expecting. They've said repeatedly that he's met their expectations in ratings. The problem is the local news coming right after this show.
Which is why I said
Quote(or kills the ratings of the show following it)
.
Leno has been putting a hurting on the local news, and they shouldn't punish Conan because of it. I believe NBC should do one of three things with Leno:
1. Give him a once a week show instead of a nightly one.
2. Give him a series of specials rather than a regular show.
3. Tell him to take a hike. He doesn't fit the type of audience FOX is trying to appeal to (Conan does, though), and him going to ABC would be a problem. ABC won't cancel Nightline, and they'd have to mess with Jimmy Kimmel if they took Leno. Leno would look like even more of a jerk if he went to ABC under that circumstance.
So, rumor has it that Jay Leno has his old time slot back and Conan is without a job. Nice way to support your talents, NBC. I can't imagine how this will backfire on you at all. *sarcasm*
This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNmWFD4oWg) was pretty damn funny.
---RT
I saw that the night it premiered. Talk about awkward.
---
The current news is that Jay is back as "The Tonight Show" host and Conan/NBC will be announcing their decision to split sometime later today. The worse thing about this isn't so much that Conan lost his job to Jay, but the fact that hundreds of people that moved across the country are now out of a job (abruptly, I might add) during economical trying times in an expensive state. If the top dogs weren't so intent on "punishing" Conan for his presumed failures, they might have realized that all their shady dealings were affecting more than two people. Tis unfortunate.
Quote from: Previsionary on January 16, 2010, 03:01:06 PM
I saw that the night it premiered. Talk about awkward.
---
The current news is that Jay is back as "The Tonight Show" host and Conan/NBC will be announcing their decision to split sometime later today. The worse thing about this isn't so much that Conan lost his job to Jay, but the fact that hundreds of people that moved across the country are now out of a job (abruptly, I might add) during economical trying times in an expensive state. If the top dogs weren't so intent on "punishing" Conan for his presumed failures, they might have realized that all their shady dealings were affecting more than two people. Tis unfortunate.
Emphasis added. My thoughts as well, Prev. That's really rough on his crew. He may be able to hire most of them back if he lands another gig right away, but there are certainly no guarantees about that.
That's the thing, Conan didn't fail. He wasn't doing as well as Jay did, but that was to be expected. It took him years to build up an audience and find the right tone and humor in his first show, but even so his ratings weren't that bad. NBC failed by setting up a risky experiment that didn't work. Again, I blame them for handing out promises that they had no right to expect to keep. They should have build in a contingency plan into Jay and Conan's contracts, because it seemed likely to everyone else that this sort of thing might just happen.
That's the reason I used the terminology that I did ("presumed"). No one should have expected Conan to best Letterman right out the gate. Jay didn't even do that. The only thing Conan could do was put on a show and learn how to better reach new audiences as he gained the experience. HOWEVER, the heads of NBC programming came out and publicly blamed this whole thing on Conan, which is doing no one any favors. Of course, "when they make a mistake, they own up to it like adults" (paraphrased from Zucker).
Sorry, I didn't read you as carefully as I should have, although the remainder of my post stands, and pretty much fits in with what you are saying. NBC handled the whole thing badly, that's for sure. Conan and Jay both did what they thought was expected of them. Hopefully Conan shows them all when he goes over to Fox (which seems the likely outcome at this point.)
If Jeff Zucker or Dick Ebersol ever come down with cancer, we know it won't be brain cancer.
Leno can drop dead as far as I'm concerned. He's got more money than he'll ever be able to spend and doesn't seem to care about how other people are being affected. And his playing the victim just pisses me off.
Maybe I haven't followed it closely enough, but I'm not sure exactly how this current mess is really Leno's fault. I see this as poor planning on NBC's part. Putting a late night comedy talk show on before the news is a disastrous idea because the audience isn't going to want to yuck it up and then watch a half hour's worth of local news anchors airing police press statements and interviewing victims of local crimes and accidents right before going to bed. Part of the magic of the late night comedy / celebrity interview show is that it's light fare before bedtime. It's doesn't work well as a news lead-in.
And, of course, I think Conan gets hosed in the bargain because people aren't especially looking to watch two talk shows in one night, on top of the fact that fewer people watching the NBC affiliates' local news means fewer people will be around to watch whatever comes after them. When I first heard that Leno was doing a nightly prime-time comedy talk show in the news lead-in slot, my reaction was 1) NBC are idiots and 2) Conan must be furious.
Anyway, maybe Leno had regrets about giving up the big chair and maybe he was dumb for taking a talk show slot before the news, but NBC was even dumber for giving him that slot. The reality is that Leno has done pretty well with that slot; it's the issues with other shows that made the network cancel it. As others have said, they would have been smarter to give Leno a series of specials, rather than a poorly slotted prime-time show that weakens affiliate news and Conan.
Meanwhile, I have a some respect for Leno not spending the years after the Leno-Letterman kerfuffle taking bitter pot shots at "the other guy". Of course, some would say it's easy to be magnanimous when you won, but he easily could have gloated that his show largely validated NBC's decision by beating the competition in the ratings week after week for the last fifteen years. Leno didn't do that and he never showed any resentment toward Johnny Carson, even though Carson made no secret of his preference for Letterman. When Carson died, Leno was a class act.
1. When it was announced, Leno's show was supposed to be a variety show, ala Ed Sullivan. NOT a watered down version of the Tonight Show with a different set and no desk. If people had known what it was going to be, I'd argue that TJLS's ratings would have been in the situation they're in now almost immediately.
2. NBC has been favoring Leno even before all this talk started, whether they realize it or not. After the whole Taylor Swift incident, Kanye West was supposed to be on the Tonight Show but ended up on TJLS instead. Hard to improve the ratings of your late night show when you put their planned guests on a prime time show instead.
3. Leno knew for FIVE YEARS that he would handing the Tonight Show over to Conan. If he didn't fully intend to leave it for good when the time was up, he should have said something back then. And if he did intend to but changed his mind, he should have just sucked it up and gone somewhere else.
4. Leno has been playing the victim, which makes him look like an arse. It was okay when his show was the only one in jeopardy, but once the talk turned to Conan being removed from the Tonight Show, he should have shut up. Jay's got more money than he'll ever be able to spend, and apparently doesn't care that Conan leaving the Tonight Show will leave a lot of people - a lot of whom relocated from the East Coast - out of work. Leno is by no means a victim in all this by any means - EVERYONE working on the Tonight Show, not just Conan, are the real victims in this, no matter who you blame.
5. NBC is too stupid to realize that the reason Conan's ratings aren't what they expected is the same reason that affiliates are complaining about their news ratings. By giving Leno the Tonight Show back, they're rewarding the cause of their problem and punishing a victim!
6. NBC has said they're trying to attract a younger audience. Got news for them; Leno appeals to older viewers than Conan does. I really hope they enjoy having to replace some advertisers when Conan eventually pops up on another channel.
7. Leno's ratings as the Tonight Show host stunk when he first started hosting; they didn't go up until they scored the interview with Hugh Grant after the Divine Brown incident...almost a year and half into Jay's run. Conan's being axed after less than half a year. So don't tell me they're not screwing over Conan and bending over backwards for Leno.
And no matter how you slice it or whose side you're on in all this, you'd better hope and pray that Jeff Zucker isn't still in charge of NBC when Leno does retire for good. Because if he is, they might as well cancel the Tonight Show and put on informercials. (Personally, I'm hoping this all backfires and ends up costing Zucker his job; how the heck he hasn't been fired after running NBC into the ground is beyond me...)
Well, I just read the announcement that Conan's ratings have been increasing dramatically as a result of all this drama. They think that, with so many people being laid off these days, that makes them naturally sympathetic to Conan. In any case, his ratings may end so high that he makes NBC look like real idiots and may even be set to trounce Jay if he does go over to Fox as rumored.
I just find it interesting that Fallon's ratings were never brought into the equation at all. If Conan would have went with the original plan to move his show 30 minutes later into the night, I can only imagine how negatively that would have affected everyone except Jay. Carson and his non-talkshow (it's more like a talent highlight show now) would have been gone, me thinks, and I can't imagine that Jimmy is bringing the ratings Conan was, especially with his awkward monologues and mostly silent audiences.
NBC just needs to own up to the fact that they were trying to accommodate Leno who stated five years ago that he wanted to retire to spend more time with his wife. Obviously, he changed his mind, and now they have one of the biggest blunders in recent media history when their line-up, in general, was already experiencing problems in the ratings department. Though, they've now created a situation where no one under their wing will be 100% trustful of them, and anyone picked to replace Jay the next time will probably worry themselves into a stupor because of the precedent they're setting. It's a nice job all around, really. ^_^
Maybe it's all a publicity stunt!
Anyway....I wish I could get laid-off and get nearly 30million dollars.
I cant believe that they are adding it into the contract that conan cant use things such as his string dance. They are screwing a whole bunch of people with this. I truly feel sorry for the crew of the conan obrien show
By stipulating that Conan can't use the "string dance" they are screwing a whole bunch of people? How so?
sorry I didnt mean that by just the string dance they are screwing people but in general the whole situation is screwing the crew of that show over.
*nods*
I don't speak a word of Mandarin, but I thought the Chinese television explanation of the dust up was both amusing and informative. (No link provided, but search youtube for NMA 2010.01.19 leno conan.)
Heh...hulking Conan was funneh :P
Last I heard, Conan got paid. $32 million for him, $20 million severance for the staff. All he has to do is not criticize NBC, and vice versa. Awww, so many good jokes are now lost :(
What I find funny about this whole debacle is that, even as a US show, it's been getting press coverage over here...where it affects approximately bupkiss % of the population :lol:
I saw the Hulking Conan thing too. I think the Tiger stuff was funnier though
Quote from: Sevenforce on January 22, 2010, 12:35:57 PM
Heh...hulking Conan was funneh :P
Last I heard, Conan got paid. $32 million for him, $20 million severance for the staff. All he has to do is not criticize NBC, and vice versa. Awww, so many good jokes are now lost :(
What I find funny about this whole debacle is that, even as a US show, it's been getting press coverage over here...where it affects approximately bupkiss % of the population :lol:
20 million severance for the staff? Okay, I don't feel too bad for them now. How many ways does that get split? I don't think I'd mind getting fired if I got a quarter of a million or so.....
So, in essence, NBC completely CF'd themselves and their employees. And most importantly, their audience. I loved Jay Leno's comedy skits on the Tonight Show. Conan's great, too, but I started off with him at about 15 and then upgraded to Leno after a year. After all this time, it was a sad farewell when he left...until I saw him again with his show. Now with all this confusion about who's host what and when and on what channel and what's not happening and virtually no clarification on what IS happening...
Quote from: darkphoenixII on January 22, 2010, 10:15:19 PM
So, in essence, NBC completely CF'd themselves and their employees. And most importantly, their audience. I loved Jay Leno's comedy skits on the Tonight Show. Conan's great, too, but I started off with him at about 15 and then upgraded to Leno after a year. After all this time, it was a sad farewell when he left...until I saw him again with his show. Now with all this confusion about who's host what and when and on what channel and what's not happening and virtually no clarification on what IS happening...
Leno announced that he will be returning to The Tonight Show and Conan got his severance package with the conditions that he can't do a "talk show" until September (yeah right.. another network will find a way to work around this). Jimmy Fallon got news that he will be bumped forward into Conan's original spot with a whole new studio and a much bigger budget. Best thing to do is watch Leno and Canon's shows tonight to see what chaos unfolds as they close up their run before the "relaunch".
- CQ
QuoteHow many ways does that get split
over 200 ways, which adds up to an average of 100 grand. Reportedly, NBC didn't want to even do that, but Conan refused to sign until they agreed to it.
I think the real problem will be once Leno does retire. I like Fallon o.k. but there is no way he could take the tonight show. They will have to bring someone in new. Leno is also like 59/60 so how much longer does he have?
anyone catch the last episode? I saw it on Hulu. Such a bittersweet ending, and you could tell Conan was holding back tears. :(