LENO NBC Primetime - 10:00pm MON-FRI*

It's a classic!
The great thing about that McCartney/O'Brien 1997 interview is how funny McCartney is----you witness firsthand how McCartney's brain works in a collaboration-----in this case it was trading wits----It took place in Paul's London office----it feels like a writing session------jokes instead of music.
Great interview.

 

Boy, Kimmel's impersonation of Jay was brutal. The lisp, the sycophantic bandleader, the repeated "Did you hear about this?". The parody of Jay's "Headlines" segment was even more devastating, if possible.

 

Well, I doubt it first of all because no one has cited any evidence it's true, other than "Jay's a sneaky bastard so of course he must have been sabotaging poor Conan." Neither Conan nor anyone in a capacity to know has made the claim Leno was doing that. Given all that's going down now, certainly one of Conan's people would be talking about this guest-stealing policy if it were true.

When Leno was doing this on the Tonight Show, word about the policy got out quickly, and the negative publicity forced him to stop. I doubt he would re-institute such a policy and risk the negative publicity again. And given his show is hardly a huge ratings draw it would be a foolish policy because it might lead people to just decide not to appear on Leno's show.

It's one thing to try to sabotage shows on another network, but it's another to sabotage shows on your own network. That makes no sense whatsoever. What would Leno's motivation be? That he knew his 10 pm show was going to fail, so he deliberately wanted Conan to do badly so he could take his old job back? That's just silly. Next people will be saying Jay deliberately made his 10 pm show as bad as possible to sabotage Conan's ratings by giving him a poor lead-in.

 

I'm over 40 and I think Conan is great. I don't think age has so much to do with it as whether you like his style of humor or not. Conan took a year or two to really get his footing when he was starting, but he's been great since. Shame NBC wouldn't give him that same time (like they did Leno) to grow on the earlier audience.

I think this is true.

 

I thought it was brilliant. I was switching between him and Fallon. I have never done that before!

 

Time had pretty much healed the wounds of the Leno/Letterman fight from '92 or whenever it was. But now that Jay has pulled the same stunt again, I think he has irreparably damaged his reputation.

 

lol that parody never gets old for me. This line really cracked me up-

"If conan was ****ing jay, he would finally have a funny bone in his body"

 

I don't get Jay. I don't understand the people who like him. It's a red state/blue state thing or something. I couldn't fathom how Letterman lost to him in the ratings all those years. I could never watch Leno. He sickens me. Everything about his show sickens me. And now....matters are worse.

In my book, Leno should be a man and step aside. He made the announcement he was leaving the show. He passed the baton. He posed with the children of his staff. It was a fine farewell. Now go away. To stand by and allow NBC to screw Conan is the act of a no-class low-life. If he takes the show back I hope Letterman buries him.

 

I used to like Leno, but he's well past his sell-by date IMHO. His quirks have calcified and the jokes and bits aren't all that funny anymore. But, it's easy to see how he'd get more of an audience than Letterman, who is more caustic and less easygoing than Leno, and thus of more narrow appeal.

 

This was all I could find regarding the Jonathan Harris(Lost in Space) appearance. Keep in mind that he was almost 85 years old.

"During the months leading up to the film's release, the Sci-Fi Channel aired Lost In Space marathons in many markets, in which each of the actors were interviewed. On April 9, 1998, Harris appeared as a guest on the talk show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where Harris fondly reminisced about his Lost In Space days, admitting he would stay up nights thinking of new insults for The Robot ("bellicose bumpkin", "bubble-headed booby") because he enjoyed the interaction so much. Host O'Brien brought one of his characters, Pimp-Bot 5000 (a "robot pimp"), onto the set, and Harris went into character as Dr. Smith and proceeded to insult Pimp-Bot. Shying away from his usual dry, sarcastic, and often self-deprecating style, Conan confessed to Harris that he brought him on the show just to have him insult Pimp-Bot, and that the moment made his day."

 

people watch Fallon?

 

I like Conan because he doesn't have an obvious "I'm God" ego like Letterman and Leno do. He's more down to earth. Letterman and Leno are both sleazy old dudes.

 

The top 5 stories on the entertainment section of msn.com are:
**Kate Gosselin to get new reality show
**Montag's plastic surgery obsession & more
**"Chuck" actor Levi & girlfriend call it quits
**Hugh Hefner & Shannon twins split up
**"Bachelor" Pavelka on looking for love

Talk about non-news. Conan/Leno is a LOT more interesting than that stuff. It's a public daily feud.

 

Indeed. The business and financial implications for NBC/Comcast make it huge news.

 

Gee, I dont think NBC WANTS "Calm and soothing" to be the tamber of the Tonight Show.

I think they want "edgy", "hip", "controversial without offense" and most of all they want a younger demo so they can get more $$$ from ad spots. They want people to be talking about the show the next morning at work.

Personally, I wish Jerry Seinfeld would be the host of the Tonight show. he has that special appreciation of early TV and I think HE would be the closest thing to Johnny Carson possible. I will always compare every host to Carson, who was the absolute master, and no one has even come close to the way he controlled the show. Carson could make ANY minute funny and you felt like you were visiting with an old friend. Not so with the other guys.

 

Younger people do not watch the Tonight Show. If NBC had the most remote interest in edgy or hip, they wouldn't have put a talk show on during primetime. They want to generate profits, and they thought they could do it with a modest show that had a low cost to produce. They indicate they were right on that count, and I don't doubt it. It's just that the affiliates were getting screwed -- for them the lead-in is everything! They make their profits on local news and they aren't getting eyeballs with Jay setting the table.

But "edgy"? "Hip"? NBC execs want to run commercials for cars, frozen dinners and deodorant. Jay's as good as anybody to host a show with that goal in mind. That having been said, I think they made their bed when he "retired." The big problem now is one of credibility - the whole thing has a bad stink now. NBC has shown very little regard when it comes to preserving the importance of their "legacy." They made a big deal of creating a highly publicized transition and now they're scuttling their ship!

Everybody loses this time - both hosts, the network, and the audience.

 

Disagree. The whole point of Jay ay 10:00 was to grab the older viewers who no longer stay up till 11:30, especially these days with everyone working longer hours.

Why do you think they even retired Jay and put Conan in the 11:30 chair? To attract younger viewers!!!

 

NBC owned some of those affiliated. NBC was losing more money than it was saving at 10pm one way or another.

18-48 is a bankable demographic used by advertisers. Remember that while some don't watch it on TVs live they have it TIVO'd, or somehow watch it online.

 

There's a lot I love about my parents' generation, but their apparent unwillingness (culturally speaking) to ride off into the sunset is getting to be a little much. I most definitely think there's some of this attitude mixed in to the whole story here...maybe not even from Jay himself, but certainly the folks at NBC who may still not be comfortable with the old way of doing things (and a person's entertainment choices in the evening at home) becoming so scattered that a common gathering place (or highly-rated late night talk show) just isn't going to be as possible/profitable as it once was.

 

As I said a few days ago, NBC should be protecting the FRANCHISE of "The Tonight Show" before worrying about the personalities, and having a host crash and burn after 7 months is horribly embarrassing for the franchise. If they had any long-range vision at all, they'd understand that Conan would take awhile to settle in, but Letterman would probably retire sometime in Conan's first few years, leaving the field wide open for Tonight to dominate for at least a decade.

That's why they tried to phase Jay out in the first place! He was having a great run, but nothing lasts forever, and if Conan was going to bolt in 2004 he'd have no credible successor. So they set this up WAAY in advance to avoid the ugliness of 1992; the only thing that could torpedo the smooth transition would be if Jay decided NOT to retire from TV. Oops. Now, with Jay a villain and Conan possibly as an adversary, the Tonight "brand" will be terribly damaged.

NBC tried to put franchise above personalities and ego (and even ratings) by signing Conan to replace Jay. It was a risky move, but it showed that NBC was thinking of "Tonight" 10 or 20 years down the line, and not just five. Now, though, they are panicking, and only thinking about what will save their asses THIS WEEK. It's almost tragic they way they are screwing this up.

I hope this is over soon too, but of COURSE it's "news"! There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, not to mention hundreds of jobs.

 

Fans should send in cans of cocoa to NBC.

 

My father is 83 and half years old. He and I have disagreed on late night TV for years. He enjoyed Jay Leno at 10.30pm (Central) on weeknights. And before that he was a big Johnny fan. (I'm a Letterman fan from back in the day.)

My dad followed Jay to 9 pm Central. He's not a big fan of Conan or Dave. They're more edgy, and not his demographic.

BTW, CITY TV Canada runs Leno at the same time, 10pm Eastern, 9 Central and here in Calgary (Mountain) we get the show at 8pm. That's too early for me.

 

Although I too doubt that Jay was deliberately trying to sabotage Conan's show by being at 10:00, he certainly KNEW that he was competing for the same audience, and he KNEW that could affect Conan's show. Here's what Jay himself said in December 2008 (as reported in a 2/19/09 NYT article):

 

"Do the right thing?" Some of you think there are rules in this business?

A lot of narrow-minded views and ignorant statements in this thread. You think it's just about Conan and Jay and one back-stabbing the other? As others have posted, yes, Jay was effectively "fired" from the Tonight Show when NBC promised it to Conan five years ago. But I don't see anyone blaming Conan for "demanding" Jay's job during his negotiations. And why blame Jay for wanting to stay on at 11:35? I didn't care for his show but it brought in the ratings and Conan is a poorer fit for that earlier time slot. Jay's now on at 10 for two reasons: one, NBC is cheap and wanted to save money, and two, they didn't want Jay to go to a rival network and compete with Conan. Tell me, if you were competing with someone else for a job, would you simply shrug and step down? How 'bout if there were a couple hundred other employees that you'd be forcing to "step aside" with you?

Face it, NBC screwed up five years ago and they're only making it worse now. Jay and Conan are both victims, but they're also responsible for their own fates and their own current predicaments. Lots of blame to go around...