outcastja

The show is now taking ticket requests:

http://www.teamcoco.com/tickets/

Mike86

I wish I lived closer to the Los Angeles area. I'm definitely gonna have to make a trip out there someday to see Conan and Craig Ferguson (and all the other cool stuff in California ha).

Rypro 525

Amazon has the book The War For Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television went crazy, written by Bill Carter, the same man who wrote the Late Shift book, up for preorder
Also here's an excerpt from vanity fair
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/fe...urrentPage=all

TruGator

Good stuff.

devilshalo

Jay Leno's 'Tonight Show' Now Draws as Many Young Viewers as it Did With Conan O'Brien
9:50 AM 1/5/2011 by Georg Szalai

The show also handily outperforms ‘Conan’ on TBS.

NEW YORK - For the first time since reclaiming The Tonight Show hosting duties from Conan O’Brien last winter, Jay Leno is attracting as many young viewers as O’Brien did as the host of the NBC show, the New York Post reported Wednesday.

It cited Nielsen figures for the fourth quarter of 2010 that show that Leno averaged a 1.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demo, pulling even with O’Brien’s performance a year ago. Leno also averaged nearly 4 million total viewers a night, compared to O’Brien’s 2.5 million average during the same period in 2009.

The next test comes this month as O’Brien’s final week of his NBC run a year ago drew about 5 million viewers a night, the Post said.

O’Brien’s new show, Conan, averaged about 1.3 million viewers a night in the most recent weekly Nielsen ratings, nearly 3 million less than Leno, the Post said.
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I think this is a little misleading, only because I want to know how many of these Nielsen families have satellite service where Conan is not running head to head with Leno? And how many do not have basic cable? And how that would factor in?

nightwing82

I don't get why everyone is still comparing. People should focus on if Conan is getting enough ratings on TBS to sustain his show if they are fans of him. Comparing to Leno at this point is pretty moot.

As for satellite/basic cable -- why someone would not have at least one of these in this day and age is beyond me. They probably just watch very little tv (as in just the news) or live so far out in the boonies that trees surround their cabin that the satellite can't break through

wearetheborg

Dam, Leno is doing better than Conan did...

MJG87

Leno is more average Joe geared. I'm not surprised, I know many people that absolutely hate Conan.

wz42

Or they just don't think it's worth it for what it costs and what you get. I'll admit that cable is crappier in Canada than America (by far) but I found my media dollar was much better spent with OTA and TV on DVD purchuses.

If they want to offer ala cart for services like HBO or online viewing for shows like Conan or whatever that doesn't work for the disc format that's fine but if not I'd be cool with just watching Letterman or whatever.

Match

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Troy Stiffler

The good thing is that it's over. Conan gets less money and more control at another network. TBS probably doesn't get the 'channel surfers' that NBC gets. But people who like him know where to find him. The show hasn't really done anything outside of the norm. But it doesn't need to. I think it's pretty much as good as it could get for Conan.

slop101

Not necessarily; Conan actually owns this show and all intellectual properties contained therein.

Truffaut Fan

Look, Conan is better, funnier, edgier, hipper, etc. But he is not nor will he ever be more popular than Leno. Why can't people just enjoy the new Conan show instead of trying to construct some sort of scenario how they really think more people are watching Conan but the ratings are skewed somehow. No need to make excuses. I can enjoy Conan every night without worrying about the fact that more people are watching Leno. I could care less. People act as if these are sports teams and they watch the ratings like they are box scores. For me the ratings aren't the final score. The final score is how many times I laugh every night.

devilshalo

Because the media keeps trying to compare the two?

Sonic

One Year Later, Conan O'Brien is Now the King of Late Night (Sort Of)

TBS has crunched the numbers for the last quarter of '10, and turns out Conan is winning the late night game in all the ways that count. (Take that, Jay Leno!)

TBS announced last night that when DVR viewers are counted, Conan's TBS show comes in at #1 in both the 18-34 and 18-49 demographics, the group of folks that matters most to the advertisers who pay for the show. It's a big win for the basic cable show, which was considered a somewhat risky and experimental move when it premiered in November.

One reason Conan's 18-49 numbers are higher seems to be the big boost it gets from DVR, or "time-shifted," viewing. The TBS press release notes this, saying "'Conan' receives a far bigger lift from time-shifted viewing than broadcast shows, which is a reflection of the young fan base that O'Brien attracts." Younger people are more likely to use DVR to keep up with their favorite shows — a fact that is working in Conan's favor.

While Conan's winning margins are still pretty small even in the key 18-49 demographic (his show averaged 1.4 million of these viewers to Leno's 1.3 million, 1.1 million for Letterman, and 1 million for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."), it's still a sign that his TBS gamble is paying off.

The timing on TBS's announcement could be a coincidence, but it must be a satisfying one for the host. Conan essentially quit his job at NBC a year ago today by announcing he would not cooperate with moving "The Tonight Show" to midnight; soon after the network reversed itself and gave "Tonight" back to Jay Leno during a weeks-long media circus known as "The Late Night Wars."

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/one-year-la...-sort-of--2091

pinata242

I hope they're counting those of us that watch the next day on TBS.com.

notkevinbacon

Not to completely echo the argument posted above, but I think this is the key. We watch TV differently now and a majority of the people that do that are the younger generations.

Here, Leno seems to symbolize the "old" way of doing things. Tried and true, but rusting, clinging to life... I bet a lot of Leno's fanbase are habitual TV viewers. Used to turning on a TV at the same time every night and watching the scheduled programming, passive TV viewing. I also agree that there are more "J6P" watching Leno.

Conan, represents the other side of the spectrum and probably has more active TV viewers, fans of new media. Watching what they want, when they want to... on the net, DVR and through other legal and illegal means. Conan doesn't have the mainstream appeal of Leno, but that doesn't mean much to me.

It's the content that matters to me as a viewer, but to the networks the content is just a means to deliver commercials/make money. Which is perfectly understandable and acceptable; this is a business and without the ads there is no money for content. Heck, there was a time when commercials actually introduced us to new products or were entertaining on their own and (pop)culturally significant, but since the internet has come about there is more information at consumer's fingertips. We can be shown and discover products and services in new (and in a lot of cases, IMHO better) ways.

Anyway, I am one of those people that does not have cable/satellite in this day in age... I'm not a big TV fan. But I watch a lot of TV content, I have a big screen HD TV etc. I watch a lot of current TV shows legally and have no interest in having a cable box. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, BD/DVD all provide me with more than I can consume. News and weather I get from the net as well.

Sports? Ok, I really only watch football, but for sports fans... you probably need to get at the very least an antenna. I only saw 1.5 games this year, but I'd have seen more if I had an antenna or cable. I will admit to that, but again... I didn't care. The bar still plays the games and my friends still pay the cable bills at their homes if I'm desperate.

Wait, I am rambling.

The point is Jay Leno is a total fuckbag.

Though I don't watch Conan's new show regularly, I've been a huge fan of his since his first show and believe he is smart, hilarious and want to see him succeed not only because of his talent but also because in many ways he embraces new media and is not fighting against it.

devilshalo

And I think that those with satellite on the west coast are more often recording Conan because his show comes on at a time of night when the local nets start their primetime programming.

fujishig

I thought people usually don't take ratings from DVR viewers into account because the ratings are mainly to set ad rates, and the assumption (probably true) is that many DVR viewers skip over ads. Of course, even though I understand that it's sound statistically, I never really like the concept that it doesn't really matter what I watch, since I'm not a Nielson household...

wearetheborg

This doesnt sound quite right. It was pointed out in thus thread that TBS viewership was way smaller than NBC, being a cable network.
If this is so, and Conan's ratings were not stellar on NBC, how can he be beating Leno etc now on TBS?


On a different not, I never like Andy on the tonight show, but on TBS I like him, it seems he has been given a more prominent role.
The increased interaction with the audience on TBS is also working out well. A couple of episodes back, Conan was trying to set up a joke on how video games might worsen depression, and the audience said no, and there was a back and forth of "yes-no-yes" that was hilarious.

Conan's interviews suck though. Cameron Diaz said she got punched twice and kneed once, and Conan cut her off after she mentioned hwo she got punched the first time; and got back on the predecided interview outline.

Jay G.

It's all about the demographics. Leno has more viewers overall, by a lot, but advertisers care mainly about viewers between the ages of 18-49. For viewers of that particular age range, Conan is winning.

And the overall percentage is really small. It's 1.4 million in that demographic, which compared to the 310 million people in the US, is only 0.4% of the population, or about one in 225 people.

wearetheborg

But still, was Conan killing in the 18-49 demo when on NBC as NBC has a much larger viewership?

devilshalo

IIRC, he was bringing in that demographic, but not the overall numbers that Leno was.

Deftones

Yes, he was. But NBC got greedy and wanted Leno's overall viewers and Conan's 18-49 demo.

Jay G.

He was typically doing better than anyone else in that demo, although Letterman beat him in overall viewers most of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ton...7Brien#Ratings
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...g-second-week/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/bu...late.html?_r=1