RoyalTea

yup. And I just find it odd that the guy who brags about not having an agent, not having a manager, thinks he's so great because he'll make "handshake deals" is the guy with the contract that would cost so much more to break. Everybody should trust him, because he's a handshake deal kinda guy. But he doesn't act like he trusts anybody else.

Nefarious

Wouldn't Fox potentially be able to charge more for advertising if they had a show like Conan's on than they can for a syndicated show?

Michael Corvin

That would be nearly impossible to do. The thing is, with no Leno show, I'd imagine a large majority of Tonight Show viewers continue to watch the Tonight Show instead of moving with Jay. In that scenario, he certainly wouldn't have dropped 50% of the audience. Which leads to
He may not have maintained #1 but he would have been a very strong (and young)#2 against an aging Letterman. All that potential is thrown out the window with Jay on at 10.

Speaking of, I wonder how much of a drop off there was between Carson and Leno in the first six months.

RoyalTea

Yeah.

But the affiliates have to think about what they'd rather have: all of the revenue generated from a syndicated program, or only a portion of the revenue generated from a network program.

Nefarious

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...ight_bloodbath

Rollingstone.com

Back to Late-Night Bloodbath
Late-Night Bloodbath
Forget "Lost" — Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno's battle over "The Tonight Show" is the best and bloodiest drama on television

ROB SHEFFIELD

Posted Jan 19, 2010 7:50 AM





Jay Leno — he played this one beautifully. Five years ago, when NBC turned Leno into a time bomb by promising his job to Conan O'Brien, he ticked quietly, keeping his rage to himself — but, oh, how it must have burned. Now he gets to taste the sweet nectar of vengeance. By sucking so bad that NBC could no longer tolerate him in prime time, he sucked his way right back into his old job. The tragedy of all this is that NBC has somehow turned two winning hands into a lose-the-farm fold.

We've never seen Conan pissed off before, and it suits him. Now that he's showing his claws, he's finally proving himself fit for the job just as he walks away from it. His charm has always been his refusal to act like we owe him anything; he doesn't have the angst or neurosis that drives Jay and Dave. If he did, he'd be unbearable. (Actually, he'd be Norm MacDonald — same thing.) Early in his career, he got lucky breaks because people liked him. Nobody wants to see a lucky guy get mad — it's bad manners, and for Conan, bad manners is bad comedy.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770622/jay_leno_the_rolling_stone_interview

In rage mode, Conan is funnier than he's been since moving to 11:35. But it's strange to see him tangle with Jay. We're used to seeing Letterman rage at NBC, CBS and Sarah Palin. Dave thrives on conflict — as he joked, he's the product of "Lutheran Midwestern guilt." Leno and O'Brien seem like nice Catholic boys, most comfortable when everyone's getting along. Yet behind Leno's Guy Smiley-Muppet mask, he's a killing machine — the Terminator of late-night comedians.

Conan's a writer and Jay's a performer, and you can't overstate how different those mentalities are. Jay got The Tonight Show after getting up in front of hostile drunks in countless shitty late-night dives around the country, year in and year out, and making those assholes laugh. Conan got the job by being funny in a room full of other writers. This isn't to slight either of them — but Jay has always been tougher and darker than people realize.

Leno doesn't need TV. He could just go to Vegas and make more money doing what he loves best, which is stand-up. Last year he told Rolling Stone he banked his Tonight Show money and lived on his stand-up earnings.


So why did he hang around NBC long enough to bring the whole network down in flames? Maybe he just felt pushed around. Leno's got the stomach for fights. Like Paul McCartney, another nice guy wrongly dismissed as a cream puff, Jay made his bones in the sleaziest, nastiest showbiz shark pools on earth. He plays nice for the old ladies, but his street-fighting instincts are off the charts. He's left plenty of carrion on the late-night highway. Arsenio Hall, Chevy Chase, Magic Johnson — Jay knocked them all off the air, and you can bet he still savors the memory of their death cries.

But it's tempting for any late-night host to believe he's the star, rather than the show: Medically, this is known as Arsenio Syndrome. But people watch The Tonight Show because it's on, not because they like it. Conan and Jay respect this — they knew that once they're off the air, people might miss them for a few nights, but then they'll watch whoever the next guy is. (Who weeps for Craig Kilborn now?) Conan has shown he's shrewd and confident enough to move on, and wherever he goes, he'll be funnier than he was on NBC. Jay could have walked away from the whole brawl before it began — but then, he's in it for the fight, not the funny.

One of the reasons late-night shows go so horribly wrong so often is that the physical toll of the job is different from other gigs. It requires stamina, psychic isolation and an inability to get bored. As late-night failure Dennis Miller said years ago to the ultimate late-night ironman, Tom Snyder, "You guys are resilient. You come out here every night, you look interested. Me, by Wednesday, I'd be so disinterested, I'd look like I'd been shot with Thorazine." (If you ever watched Miller's show, you probably felt like you'd been shot with Thorazine yourself.)

Jay and Conan both have this stamina, and it's extraordinarily rare. There are only a few guys alive who have the freakazoid DNA to do the job. Yet NBC has lost Conan with nothing to show for it except for more Jay, whose prime-time flameout leaves him smelling like a week-old Happy Meal. It's one of the most horrific network fuckups in history, and at this point, nobody knows how gory the endgame will look. But one thing is for sure: We'll never have to see Jay Leno at 10:00 again. Hey, anybody know if Arsenio is busy?

[From Issue 1097 — February 4, 2010]

MasterCXtreme

I guess our emails didn't sway their decision. I always loved him on late night and thought he was still stellar at 11:35 so it's an unfortunate situation but at least he's turning his last week into some hilarious television and going out at the top of his game. It's unfortunate he won't be with the franchise of The Tonight Show any longer, but I think his time there will be remembered much more fondly than Jay's. And I'd be surprised if Conan and his team don't move on to bigger and better things.

Disregarding Jay and his 10 o'clock show as well as the incompetent decision-making at the 'cock, if the problem started with the ratings... I think the deeper problem lies in the ratings system itself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen...atings_systems . And it seems ridiculous to me that decisions are formulated around this system. Not only is it an inaccurate representation of the country, but the majority of TV watched by myself and those I know is done online after the fact, including Conan (numbers that, from what I understand, are not accounted for). Nielsen is outdated, they need a new system. In 5 years all TV's are going to be connected to the internet. In 10 years, I doubt there will be any cable/satellite signals still being sent. You always hear that advertisers are targeting a younger market, but I think they're missing it completely. I can't say I know for sure what's going to happen in the next 10 years... but I feel like NBC doesn't even have a clue.

It's insanely frustrating when a smarter, funnier show falls by the wayside. But I have faith that the red hair will live on.

Franchot

Reminds me of the bygone days when SNL sucked terrifically (maybe worse than it is today) and "Second City Television" came to NBC. NBC did everything it could to sabotage SCTV so it had an excuse to take it off the air.

Double_Oh_7

So now the question is... who gets the Tonight Show when they finally pry it from Jay's cold, dead hands. To say NBC's bench is weak is an understatement. I don't see Fallon in position for it, and forget about Carson Daly. Will they go for an unknown like they did when Conan got Late Night? Don't see that happening either.

Chew

Conan's FOX contract will be up by then.

RoyalTea

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jpb07

This may be out there but I'll call it now...Chelsea Handler.

Darknite39

I think in some ways Fallon is the right person for the job. He likely wouldn't hesitate to take network "notes" and would therefore be malleable enough for the network to create a Jay 2.0.

Jay G.

Internet views are accounted for, just not in the standard Nielsen rating. They have a separate Nielsen Netratings service for that:
http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product...sen_netratings

Nielsen also added a "Live+SD (Same Day)" rating for TV viewing, which replace their Live rating. "Same Day" is for DVR viewers that watch the recording the same day the show aired (e.g. time shifting the show an hour, or even a few minutes).
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/09...-markets/26618

So Nielsen is constantly updating its rating process to make sure it's accurately metering how people watch TV at home.

Drexl

Jon Stewart might be a possibility, if he doesn't take over Letterman's spot at CBS.

Deftones

Isn't Jon Stewart about Conan's age? Like late 40's, right? i just checked, Jon is a year older, born in 1962. So if Jay retires in 5 years, that'll make Jon about 54 or so. then NBC is going to run into the same problem. old guy taking over a show. they want an institutional franchise. not having a replace a guy ever 7 years. it wouldn't be a wise move, imho, to go with someone that old.

Fist of Doom

I mentioned this in the other thread...Fallon has been doing well in his time slot. He may not be popular among internet forum folks, but in a few years I think he'll be a good replacement for Leno. (Especially if he can keep The Roots).

Drexl

Yeah, I understand.

What about Joel McHale?

Tommy Ceez

OK

Colbert then

slop101

No way in hell Stewart or Colbert would take anything from the major networks, unless it's completely their own thing.

They get paid plenty already and they enjoy the freedoms they have at CC far too much to give up for a little more cash.

Double_Oh_7

It's a flawed system, but it's flawed for everyone.

JasonF

Yes, but the flaws don't afect everyone the same way. If you made up a system that cuts the ratings of everyone by 10% for every letter in the host's name, it would be a flawed system and it would be flawed for everyone, but it would affect Jay Leno less than it would affect Conan O'Brien, let alone Craig Ferguson or David Letterman.

sjrab16

Jay just loves scandal I guess. There were problems when he first took over the tonight show, and there are problems when he is taking it back. Such an ass. He is not funny anyway So it is easy for me to say I will not be watching him, have not really watched him in the past

RoyalTea

I don't see why internet views or DVR should be factored into Nielsen ratings.

Suppose 15 million people watch a show live on TV, 10 million people watch on DVR and 5 million people watch on hulu.

If I'm an advertiser and I want to buy an ad during one of the commercial breaks on the TV broadcast, I don't care about the 30 million people who will watch the program, I care about the ~15* million people who will see my ad.

* assuming that the number of people who don't leave the room or switch the channel during the commerical break is roughly the same as the number of people who don't fast forward on the DVR

Jay G.

Your math is wrong. If you assume that half the Live TV + DVR viewers watch the commercial, then that's half of 25 million, or ~12.5 million people.

DVR does matter to TV advertisers, since it's been pointed out that about 1/2 of DVR viewers watch commericals.

Internet ratings don't matter to the TV advertisers, but they do matter to the advertisers on the internet. So they ultimately matter to the network, but the internet ratings should stay separate from TV ratings, as they are now.

RoyalTea

my math is not wrong. my assumption may be wrong.

but my point is that it's meaningless to brag about how many total viewers there are (unless you're paying for product placement during the broadcast).