Leno not doing any better Conan did...

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

2. Bumping the Tonight Show back an hour no longer makes it the Tonight Show, but the Tomorrow Show or the Really Early Today Show, which trumps 50 years of tradition and format (imagine if the 35 yr old SNL was taped on a Tuesday, shown on a Wednesday).

That's such a ridiculously nitpicky thing. Nobody cares if the Tonight Show airs before midnight, nobody cares if the show they watch at 11:35 is called the Tonight Show or the Tomorrow Show or the Jay Leno Show or whatever.

And to use your example, Saturday Night Live has been airing special Thursday episodes for the past couple of seasons and doing pretty well in that timeslot. Nobody cares that a show called Saturday Night Live is airing on a Thursday, they just care if it's funny or not.

Sure, they could have renamed the Tonight Show when Jay took it back, but what would be the point? NBC wanted everything back the way it was. I'm assuming the mantra now at NBC is that if it's not broke, don't fix it.

 

[Sci]

2. Bumping the Tonight Show back an hour no longer makes it the Tonight Show, but the Tomorrow Show or the Really Early Today Show, which trumps 50 years of tradition and format (imagine if the 35 yr old SNL was taped on a Tuesday, shown on a Wednesday).

That's such a ridiculously nitpicky thing. Nobody cares if the Tonight Show airs before midnight, nobody cares if the show they watch at 11:35 is called the Tonight Show or the Tomorrow Show or the Jay Leno Show or whatever.

Of course they care. You're talking about a program that's lasted for fifty years. It's huge, making sure it's the last show of the night and keeping the Tonight Show brand name. There's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Jay Leno when Leno took over from Johnny Carson rather than calling it The Jay Leno Show in '91. And there's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien rather than The Conan O'Brien Show when he took over. The name of the show matters.

And it especially matters to comedians. Becoming the host of The Tonight Show is to comedians the equivalent of becoming President of the United States to politicians -- if you do that, you've reached the pinnacle of professional success. You're the King.

Now, it may not matter to you, but it does matter to the world of showbiz.

And to use your example, Saturday Night Live has been airing special Thursday episodes for the past couple of seasons and doing pretty well in that timeslot. Nobody cares that a show called Saturday Night Live is airing on a Thursday, they just care if it's funny or not.

But they didn't call it the Thursday stuff Saturday Night Live. They called it Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday, to indicate that this was not SNL, it was an SNL spin-off of its "Weekend Update" fake news sketch.

 

[Cyke101]

Let's not call the franchise Star Trek anymore, let's call it Space Travelers. And let's set it only on Earth with no starships or space travel whatsoever. The name and premise don't matter to a legendary franchise, because no one cares!

(You can hear the Enterprise folk saying, "No, no! We NEED Star Trek in the title!")

 

[JacksonArcher]

Conan looks like an alien in that Time photo. Damn, that dude is tall!

 

[Admiral_Young]

This is amazing how this still sparks so much passion from fans. I'm personally a Letterman and Conan fan. I don't mind Jay...when he's on he can be really funny but when he's off he's horrid...Letterman is a genius, the way he handles awkwardness from his guests is just terrific. Conan is awesome too...I pretty much watched "The Late Show With Conan O'Brien" since it's inception in 93 I wanna say?

This whole mess could have been avoided had NBC not offered Jay a prime time slot and a contract worth 60 million or whatever the amount was and then when they saw Conan's ratings on "The Tonight Show" start to plummet decide they wanted Jay back...I don't blame Jay for taking the show and the money...or wanting the show back when NBC offered it back to him...I blame NBC for this whole mess.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Conan: "I wouldn't have taken the show from Jay Leno if the roles were reversed".

 

[Trekker4747]

Ummm... The point is that Conan was fired because he was getting poor ratings.

Conan was forced out because Leno was getting shit ratings.

Leno was getting poor ratings which caused the local news to get poor ratings which further caused TTS to get poor ratings. Conan wasn't doing as well as Leno, which shouldn't be a big deal Leno wasn't doing as well as Carson and never did but his ratings improved following the Hugh Grant interview.

NBC simply didn't give Conan a chance to rebuild his audience and NBC ended up being more worried about losing Leno than they were on losing Conan.

Now, true, Conan didn't get pushed out so much as he quit for the "integrity" of The Tonight Show as they simply wanted to pretty much bump him back to his old timeslot and and put Leno's show in the Tonight Show slot, Conan quit on principle.

The point is, NBC dicked around pretty much for no reason as the problem seems to have not been with Conan, but more likely with the lead-in programing and railroading Conan likely didn't do them any favors either.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Of course they care. You're talking about a program that's lasted for fifty years. It's huge, making sure it's the last show of the night and keeping the Tonight Show brand name. There's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Jay Leno when Leno took over from Johnny Carson rather than calling it The Jay Leno Show in '91. And there's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien rather than The Conan O'Brien Show when he took over. The name of the show matters.

And it especially matters to comedians. Becoming the host of The Tonight Show is to comedians the equivalent of becoming President of the United States to politicians -- if you do that, you've reached the pinnacle of professional success. You're the King.

Now, it may not matter to you, but it does matter to the world of showbiz.

I agree the name "Tonight Show" has meaning to late night talk show hosts and showbiz insiders, but it means virtually nothing to the average viewer. Do you really think the "Tonight Show" name helped Conan, especially when Letterman was regularly beating him in the ratings?

Okay, it might have some slight, barely perceptible impact on the average viewer, but people watch a talk show for the host, the guest, the musical act, the sketches, the monologue.... On the list of what makes people watch a talk show, the title is way, way down there.

 

[Ward Fowler]

What is bewildering to me is that Carson was the consummate performer and Conan was inventive and entertaining, and yet NBC screwed them both over in favor of JAY LENO. The most bland person on tv. And let's not even go into the whole Letterman thing. Crazy.

And by the way, while Carson, Letterman, and Conan had very different comedic styles, they had one thing in common, class. It should be obvious by now that Leno has none.

 

[sidious618]

I agree on 3 out of the 4. Carson beat his wife so I can't get much respect for him.

 

[Ward Fowler]

^^ I've seen those claims about Carson as well, and I hope that they aren't true. Being a bit older, I grew up with Carson and publicly at least, he never conducted himself with anything less than wit, charm, and class. That's very rare these days. Just ask Mr. Leno.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Well, if we're going down that road, I can't say it was all that classy for Letterman to cheat on his wife, either.

 

[Ward Fowler]

Things are seldom black and white when it comes to the human condition.

 

[Sci]

Of course they care. You're talking about a program that's lasted for fifty years. It's huge, making sure it's the last show of the night and keeping the Tonight Show brand name. There's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Jay Leno when Leno took over from Johnny Carson rather than calling it The Jay Leno Show in '91. And there's a reason they called it The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien rather than The Conan O'Brien Show when he took over. The name of the show matters.

And it especially matters to comedians. Becoming the host of The Tonight Show is to comedians the equivalent of becoming President of the United States to politicians -- if you do that, you've reached the pinnacle of professional success. You're the King.

Now, it may not matter to you, but it does matter to the world of showbiz.

I agree the name "Tonight Show" has meaning to late night talk show hosts and showbiz insiders, but it means virtually nothing to the average viewer.

And the average viewer doesn't matter in terms of determining whether or not changing The Tonight Show's timeslot undermines the concept behind the show and disrespects its history and prestige, which was the original context in which you claimed that the prestige of The Tonight Show is irrelevant.

What is bewildering to me is that Carson was the consummate performer and Conan was inventive and entertaining, and yet NBC screwed them both over in favor of JAY LENO. The most bland person on tv.

They didn't really screw Carson over, though -- they screwed Letterman over, as he really should have been Carson's heir apparent between his hosting The Late Show and Carson's desire for him to be his successor at The Tonight Show. Carson was the one who initiated his own retirement.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Things are seldom black and white when it comes to the human condition.

You have to admit, it is pretty funny that the internet blogosphere is treating Jay Leno like Satan incarnate for taking over a stupid little comedy show that none of them were watching anyway, while Dave cheats on the woman who just gave birth to his son and the collective response is "meh".

 

[Sci]

Things are seldom black and white when it comes to the human condition.

You have to admit, it is pretty funny that the internet blogosphere is treating Jay Leno like Satan incarnate for taking over a stupid little comedy show that none of them were watching anyway, while Dave cheats on the woman who just gave birth to his son and the collective response is "meh".

I for one am more than willing to write off both Leno and Letterman as assholes. Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon, and Craig Ferguson all seem like they're much nicer fellows.

 

[Yoda]

The ratings article is definitely a bit skewed. The ratings involve some really stupid shit, Leno couldn't beat Letterman until Hugh fucking Grant of all people, embarrassed himself and let Jay use his own humiliation for The Chin's gain.

Did Letterman even start beating Conan before he started a feud with Sarah Palin, or got blackmailed by way of his own disgusting behavior? Ratings aren't synonymous with quality, as anyone posting on a sci-fi board should understand. Personally when Conan got the Tonight Show, and they put Jay at 9, I was pretty worried for Conan. Leno is definitely the asset with more proven value, and I didn't like the options that might present themselves when Jay's show inevitably didn't live up to NBC's ratings fantasy.

I don't even really blame Leno that much for what he did. He didn't have to do it. I don't think Conan would have done the same thing to him, but whatever. To me it's water under the bridge, Leno can entertain just whoever the hell finds him funny, and I can ignore him. Conan will be on TBS, where he can entertain us without the worst executives in the business hovering over him.

More importantly Conan got to take his show to San Diego tonight and rock my world for hours. If he was still doing the Tonight Show, I could take a field trip up to LA, get 20 minutes of Conan, and another 20 of him and random actors shilling their crap. There's a silver lining I can get behind.

 

[Ward Fowler]

They didn't really screw Carson over, though -- they screwed Letterman over, as he really should have been Carson's heir apparent between his hosting The Late Show and Carson's desire for him to be his successor at The Tonight Show. Carson was the one who initiated his own retirement.

Carson did get screwed over. I read The Late Shift way back when it first came out and Bill Carter made it quite clear that some NBC executives wanted Carson to leave due to pressure being exerted by Leno and his manager Helen Kushnik. While it's true that Johnny's retirement announcement was a surprise to network executives, he only did it because he saw the writing on the wall. Even if Carson wasn't actually pushed out, he felt like he was, and that's why he never had any use for Leno after that.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Max Weinberg won't return as Conan's bandleader.

 

[Cyke101]

I hate to cause a ruckus, but discuss amongst yourselves:

Leno's Ratings Fall Behind Conan's Ratings