we all know the story, right? 5 years ago in an attempt to keep conan o'brien on their network, in their 12:35 time slot, nbc promised mr. o'brien that he would be the host of the tonight show when they kicked jay leno off of it.
fast forward to now, nbc has decided that since jay leno's show sucks at 10pm and david letterman is kicking conan's ass at 11:35, they're going to go ahead and move leno's show to 11:35. doing that would push conan back to 12:05 making the "tonight show" actually the "very early tomorrow show." this of course has made conan a very unhappy camper.
i don't blame him. that said, when it comes down to it (to steal liberally from vince mcmahon), "conan screwed conan."
why? how? simple.
1. 5 years ago conan had a chance to leave nbc. he likely would have gone to fox where he would have gotten his 11:35 slot. hell, he probably would have gotten an 11:00 slot as most fox affiliate run their news at 10. instead he chose to ignore what happened to the last guy nbc promised "the tonight show" and wait it out. why? because he was gonna make $40 million if he didn't get it. also maybe because it was his dream.
2. 5 years passed and jay leno was still the king of late night. i'm guessing no one foresaw this. clearly at some point david letterman (who is about 100 times funnier and more interesting than leno) would have overtaken him in the rating right? well, he didn't. leno was still killing him. instead of seeing this and allowing nbc to ignore the promise for the time being, conan went ahead and took command of the ship that was doing just fine without him. the ensuing shitstorm of basically kicking jay leno off the show was sure to endear leno's fans and make them watch conan, right?
3. conan then went on to not be funny. even andy richter, who was awesome on "late night", was less interesting. the dynamic of "late night" was lost. to appeal to a hopefully larger, definitely more main stream audience, conan had to be more mainstream himself. he had to give up his more edgy material. he had to be less quirky. those two facts made him less funny.
4. conan is very hit or miss. when he hits, it's hilarious. when he misses it can also be hilarious when he rips on himself. unfortunately the older audience at 11:45 doesn't really want to see some young guy not be funny and then pick on himself. i can appreciate it and so can many of my peers, but the larger more, mainstream, older folks can't. not yet at least. probably not ever.
5. about that audience. i'm willing to bet when the promise was made to give him the show, both he and the network assumed he would bring with him the younger audience he had enjoyed at 12:35. unfortunately that didn't happen. why? because he wasn't the same conan they were watching at 12:35. same guy? yes. same act? no. besides, most of his younger audience isn't even home at 11:35, they're still out drinking and now that he's not on at 12:35 they have no reason to be home till 1 now.
6. conan looks creepy in hd. i'm not sure why i never noticed it, perhaps the lighting is better on the new show than the old show or maybe it's because he's irish and getting too much sun in los angeles, but he's scary looking. from the red hair that is thinning so much they have to poof it up more than usual to his starting to get old irish person features (especially the sinking darkening shadows under the eyes), conan is just not easy to look at on today's high definition televisions. he's just about in the "frighten small children" zone.
don't get me wrong, i like conan. i found late night hilarious when i got around to watching it. i did check out his tonight show a few times and often found it lackluster. so i stopped caring. he has been awesome this last week. it's almost as if after seeing the writing on the wall, he said screw it and went back to being old conan. funny conan. though andy is still not the same. maybe he's staying quiet to avoid burning a bridge.
wow, so i just realized i wrote a thesis on why conan failed (and how it's his fault) instead of going with my original point of making fun of people who are "with coco."
the "i'm with coco" and "team conan" stuff is fairly amusing. between twitter and facebook and all the wonderful social networking sites i've seen people i know, people i follow, and people i couldn't give a shit less about but people i know or follow do are all on team conan! there are so many members of team conan you'd almost think he didn't have ratings so shitty that nbc (a network full of shows with shitty ratings) can't wait to get rid of him.
people are flocking to conan's cause faster than they do to the natural disaster of the week (haiti…thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers). everyone just loves conan! he's the best! the funniest! no show is better than his! except for letterman which they're all watching at 11:30 if they're watching at all. oh…
so what i'm wondering is if everyone who is "with coco" now was WATCHING coco then, would we even be discussing this? i submit that we would not.
moving on…
sadly for conan, once he gets out of his contract, sits a brief "no compete," and winds up on fox around the start of next football season, everyone who's on team conan will have forgotten they were enraged that nbc booted him. he'll have a strong debut week, his first half hour numbers will be great with adults 18-35 for a month, and he won't matter at 11:35. just like he doesn't now.
that is, unless fox lets him be real conan instead of dumbed down for the masses conan. even then his big ratings will come from tivo instead of nielson. unfortunately, all the tivo numbers tell advertisers is how many people aren't the ads they're paying for.
i'll be one of those guys.
go conan go!
I’ve actually really enjoyed Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show. Then again, I’ve also developed a strong appreciation for Jimmy Fallon on Late Night, so I’m not sure that my opinion means anything.
I agree that Letterman is clearly the best host, but I haven’t enjoyed his show as much in recent years. I need more of the completely brainless segments after a long day of work, and the show hasn’t been coming through. All I ask is a weekly experiment to determine the buoyancy of a strange object. Is that too much? Meanwhile, I actually think Conan’s improving.
I don’t know why NBC is too stupid to realize the actual problem with Leno’s new show. It has nothing to do with the timeslot. It sucks because of the guests. Obviously, guests are important, but Leno just turns the show over to guests until you forget what you’re watching. It’s 5 minutes of Leno, 20 minutes of some unfunny comedian talking to people in a hair salon, and…well, I don’t honestly know. I don’t have those 20 minutes to waste. It’s not always the unfunny comedian (although she has been on far too often), but the fact remains that Jay Leno is completely absent from the show for 20 minutes while someone far less entertaining essentially takes over as host. That format was doomed for failure from Week 1.
Since Leno took over the tonight show I haven’t watched it much. I did at first, just to see, but he drives his jokes into the ground. I get them, he doesn’t need to explain them and I found it insulting. Conan I get a kick out of and this past week or so he has been fantastic. And I love that his guests are all in it with him. Half of them don’t even think it’s airing so they let loose. I’d watch it if they kept it like it is now. Letterman…meh.