Tonight Show Feud
Ooh and now the drama get ratcheted up!
But I’ve learned O’Brien’s reps now believe that Zucker wants to jettison Conan altogether and put Jay back at The Tonight Show at its usual starting time. So, to prevent O’Brien competing at NBC or elsewhere with Leno’s attempt to lure back his late night audience, NBCU’s Zucker has come up with this plot to “ice” Conan for the length of his NBC Tonight Show contract. It’s dastardly, it’s cowardly, and it could be damn effective. But there’s no way Team Conan says they’re going to let that happen. Bad enough NBCU horribly humiliated Conan and, as he so rightly pointed out in his statement, will damage The Tonight Show by moving it down a half-hour. With the 12:05 AM start, its ratings will never recover. After NBC made that decision, the phones at his WME agency rang off the hook with calls from every network, cable, and pay channel looking to hire O’Brien. And there’s every reason for him to flee. But, if Conan exits voluntarily or involuntarily, it will take at least a year before a new show is readied and on the air. He risks losing his fan base during that time. And he’ll be forever tagged by the failure. So now it’s open warfare between NBC and O’Brien’s reps.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Did you see that Keifer Sutherland was wearing a dress last night on David Letterman? He lost a bet when the Patriots didn’t win on Sunday.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Grrr. No. I did not. In other news, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Not on team Leno. He’s just not funny. Seems like a nice guy, love to have him over for cake sometime, but I’d rather watch a south park rerun.
Conan is hit or miss funny, but when he hits, it’s really really good.
And then there’s this sense of (in speaking about Leno), dude, you had your chance with the Tonight Show, you had a good run, if you wanted to move on and do something different, do something different. Like Seinfeld going back to stand up. If you wanted to do the exact same thing, just in a different time slot with a new set, that’s stupid. It’s unsettling for your fans to have to decide all over again if they like you or not.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Oh, I see how it is, Leno gets the cake? Hmph.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I can’t watch Leno. He gives me the creeps. And anyway, I think he should step down. No takebacks.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I don’t think he *wanted* to step down. They made him. And gave him a 10 pm show to stop him from jumping to Fox and competing with Conan.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
He may not have wanted to, but he did. This was a deal made years ago. He knew it was coming.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I don’t think there IS a team Leno outside of Zucker and Eubanks (who I think has his lips surgically attached to Jay’s ass). From what I’ve heard, the guy is a real ass, and the reaction from everyone who would be in the know (late night hosts, comedians, and most of Hollywood), it looks like he doesn’t have too many friends.
Plus, he’s lame and unfunny.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Sorry… the late show ended when Johnny Carson retired. Leno is a fraud.
the best thing to ever come out of the whole post Carson Late show franchise (feuds, hosts, shows, etc…) was the movie late night. You know, the one with Kathy Bates as Leno’s psycho agent??
January 14th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
The movie was made for HBO and it was called The Late Shift and it was AWESOME. Kathy Bates in, quite possibly, the performance of her career. And I always heard that Leno was a *super* nice guy. Unfunny, yes, but that vanilla blandness is exactly what made him so attractive to the networks.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
David Letterman was really abusing Zucker last night – even bordering on defamation of character IMHO. Sounds like the other late night hosts are in support of Conan. And yeah, Leno should take the high road (a la Better Off Ted) and bow out. He can go and host the American version of Top Gear (um, gag).
January 14th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
“But the high road’s high! We could fall off.”
January 14th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
If Conan really does not have a time-slot clause in his contract (legal malpractice) and instead has a show called “the tonight show clause,” i suspect nbc is going to be better off dumping conan, enforcing whatever non-competition rights nbc has and re-installing leno at 11:35 for the ratings — personally though, i love the return of late night conan without the l.a. polish nbc asked him to put on the tonight show — just a funnier show all around
January 14th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Would he move back to New York to do it? And no way is failure to include a time-slot clause malprctice. Who the hell saw this coming?? What if they put him on at 11:35 on Telemundo and switch the show to Spanish? Is failure to have a language/channel clause malpractice?
January 14th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Except Letterman is already known to have a time-slot clause to prevent this sort of thing from happening. (And yes, if conan’s contract somehow gave nbc universal the right to move his show off of nbc onto another network within the company, that’s malpractice.)
I honestly have no idea if he would return to New York if he were to do fox at 11. he made a lot of his staff pick up and leave last year, but i suppose if fox is willing to pay for it, then why wouldn’t they move?
January 14th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Hmm. Well, I guess if time slot clause are done in the industry…
January 14th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
TMZ (and several outher outlets) are reporting that Conan is out and Leno has the Tonight Show. Now, it’s a question of whether zucker will have to keep paying conan to keep him off the air for the rest of his contract…
January 14th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
(Last episode set for next Friday…)
January 14th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
What a disaster for NBC.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
NBC stupid. Here the whole TV watching world (ok, me) is saying, “hmm, I haven’t caught Conan in a while, but I admire his balls — maybe I’ll make a point of catching his show. And also, I guess Leno sucks as much as I always thought he did, since he couldn’t make a go of a show that didn’t fall in a timeslot when people are just killing time before they go to sleep.” And who do they go with? Leno.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Conan has definitely received a big bounce in the ratings from the dispute (particularly among 18-45). The thing about the 10pm show was not the ratings for NBC though (Leno delivered as promised and the show was making money for the network) — it was the drop in 10pm lead-in ratings resulted in drops across the country for the affiliates’ local news (which is where local stations make their money and also means than conan was getting a lead-in with lower ratings).
With real programming at 10, I would expect the ratings for the local news and the tongight show to go up (regardless of host) — of course, nbc will be able to point to the rise in ratings and attribute them to leno.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Btw, I disagree with this line:
“And he’ll be forever tagged by the failure.”
Seems to me that it’s NBC that will be seen as a failure, not Conan. No one could possibly expect his show to have great ratings out of the gate, and no one can deny that Leno’s new show has shitty ratings.
Hmm. Why do I care about this?
January 14th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Cross posted with Alceste. Why does he always know more than I do? Grr.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Welcome to my world. That Alceste, just can’t beat him.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Not even with a bag of doorknobs?
January 14th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Nope. He’s a lot faster than he looks.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:35 am
If any of this late night nonsense results in anything that could be construed as a promotion for Jimmy Fallon, I will exact a great and terrible vengeance on NBC.