The latest on Conan, Leno and NBC

Conan is great, but he's not a great fit for the Tonight Show format. It's tamer and more partitioned than late night. He's also never really had the chance to do the Tonight Show properly, because Leno poached all of the A-list guests for his show. Besides, this decision is all about Leno's failure at 10 -- not Conan's performance at 11:35. Conan didn't perform like Leno with the Tonight Show, but he was solid enough with the advertiser-friendly demographics that NBC would have been satisfied. The problem is that Leno was killing the 10:00 hour, and the 11 PM news but he's still too popular to dump; if they did, he'd go to ABC and further split the 11:30 pie.

Jimmy Fallon's abysmal performance at Late Night has pretty might handed the 12:30 slot to Craig Ferguson. I'm not sure Conan's audience would drift back if they shoehorned him back to there.

Maybe this is 100% correct news but I don't put alot of stock in stories from a gossip site that has more interest in running a story that will generate more hits than they have in the truth.

This was long rumored to be one of the demands that Comcast had as they buy NBC.   Why is anyone surprised now?

 NBC is denying it:

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2010-1-7-nbc-denies-jay-leno-cancelation-rumors

If they are really interested in fixing the problem, put Conan back at 12:30 and can Fallon who has finally made Craig Ferguson a star.    Almost 8 months into the show and if anything Fallon has gotten worse -- terrible monologues, horrible interview skills, and skits only a 6yo might find amusing for 15 seconds.

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Could they give Conan the 10pm slot? Leno is pretty dull these days; I watch though since there's nothing else to have in the background at 10pm many nights. But while Leno can look terminally bored with his own schtick,  Conan commits 100% to his comedy and interviews.

Maybe they could cancel Leno completely and simply keep Conan?

denying cancellation isn't the same as denying a move, and they don't do either.. they just say "he's a great performer, we're glad to have him.."  a non-answer.  Comcast had previously documented that if they took on NBCU, that they would want schedule changes to increase value.  Jay moving back to 10:30 helps.

The one problem with this is that NBC's development slate is damn near completely bare.  They don't have enough or really any viable mid-season replacements that can fill 5 hours of programming a week.  So, if they do make this change I don't know where they go on the 9PM CST/10 EST time period, because they've got nothing.

Dateline. Lots of Dateline.

Quote: No thanks, I'll take the waterboarding, please.

The last I remember Leno being funny or the least bit entertaining was many, many years ago, when he would read from the TV Guide on David Letterman's show.

Okay, here's some more info from the New York Times:

Apparently after the Olympic coverage, when Late Night programming returns to NBC, it will look like this
 

• 11:35 - 12:05 - Leno
• 12:05-1:05 - Conan
• 1:05-2:05 - Fallon
• Gone? - Daly (I guess no one cares enough to mention him. )

Really, I dunno. To me this just seems like another chapter in the recent history of NBC screwing stuff up.

Rofl, it is one hell of a ball-less compromise. Maybe Conan will loosen his show back up a bit?

I'm going to go ahead a predict Leno doesn't 'recover.'

That's definitely better than dropping Conan. It'll be interesting to see what format of such a line-up would be: at 30 minutes, Leno would have time for his monologue and a couple skits or celebrity interviews, but not both. Since Jay is a terrible interviewer, it'd be better to keep him to monologues and his recurring bits like headlines, jaywalking, etc. That would free Conan up from the necessity of a standard monologue, a format which he has struggled with, and end the competition for guests since they'd be saved for the Tonight Show.

I for one wouldn't mind if they put it all back the way it was....Lots of "Law and orders" for the ten o'clock spot is fine by me...I love them all.

 

I like Jay, but I've hardly seen any of his 10pm shows, especially since He did away with the musical guest segments..

Carson Daly used to do a 30 minutes show, but last season the show left the Studio and he's even "out sourcing" his musical guests now... I Like him (much better interviewer than Jimmy Fallon), but after the drastic budget cut, anyone can tell his show is not doing well.

Actually, that is a good point. It always sort of bugged me that it seemed like some higher profile guests were skipping Conan and going to Leno instead. (I mean, what celebrity wouldn't rather be on a primetime show when they would get potentially more exposure.)

The thing that bugs me is now Conan overlaps with Ferguson. I liked being able to watch both of them.


Yeah, I've watched Daly a few times. I actually prefered the show after the format switch. It usually has more of a music focus to it, which seems to be something Carson really loves (as do I).

I just found it funny that there is no mention of him in this news. Is it safe to assume he'll be gone completely, or are they tagging his 1/2 hour on after Fallon?

What an embarassment for NBC.  Maybe they should just run Supertrain reruns after the local news.

Johnny & Ed must be spinning in their graves.

SVU has turned into crap (IMHO), but I'll say it: make the deal and steal some of your shows they already have licensing for cheap.

 

Available to them through licensing already in place, and how about this for a schedule:

Monday:

Chuck
Heroes
Dateline (or whatever)

Tuesday:

Biggest Loser 2 hour block thing
Law & Order: SVU

Wednesday:

(Total question mark early)
10PM/9PM CST: Law & Order Criminal Intent

Thursday:
 

Comedy Block (30 Rock/Office/Parks & Recreation/whatever)
Law & Order: UK

Friday:  Licensing night!

Friday Night Lights
Merlin S2
Law & Order (Original)

Juts make the 10PM EST slot "Law & Order" in it's many flavors..  BTW: 1/2 hour Jay = total disaster.

well, that new line up is perfect for me See, I record all the musical performances, and now I won't have to chose between Letterman's or Conan's, as they won't overlap   Furguson and Fallon wont overlap either Now, Conan and Jimmy Kimmel, there is a problem .. but it wont be that bad really, most of the time Jimmy Kimmel's guests already appeared in other shows mentioned doing the same number..

I like Carson Daly because of his music inside too, the introductions he's been doing lately for the Bands are great, unfortunately I like the "Studio" performances much better that the Concert shows clips he's been showing lately, both the Video and Audio quality are seriously lacking for my taste..... 

A shame they let Southland go to TNT, it would have plugged one of the 10 p.m. timeslots for them.

Poor Conan.  I like him better than Jay. Conan seems to have more fun and his focus is on getting a laugh, either at his guests expense or his own. Also he's up for doing more "out there" comedy, Jay is more tame and geared toward a slightly older audience.  Man, I hope they don't bump Conan for Leno to come back.

I can't even begin to put into words how much this pisses me off. If NBC sandbags Conan by giving Leno 11:30 back I won't ever watch their network again. Leno should have just gone away like he promised he would when his contract was up and if he still wanted to do a show he should have taken his "talent" to ABC or FOX. While I enjoyed Conan more when he was at 12:30 because he was allowed to be edgier and not forced to appeal so much to the mainstream, the fact is that NBC made their choice giving him The Tonight Show. If I was Conan and they tried to take that away I'd sue their asses back to the stone age.

Does this mean The Masturbating Bear will be returning?

Jay apparently ripped apart in his monologue  (From multiple sources) compiled at DHD...


Word is that if they move Jay, he'd be owed a $100M guaranteed contract they don't want to pay... and Conan has a guaranteed period on the Tonight Show also.. so while NBC may want to reshuffle, it might be out of necessity.  Affiliates want Jay gone.  NBC doesn't want to pay the hundred million, but if Jay moves somewhere else on the schedule they can renegotiate.  They don't want to ax conan either.. too expensive, so move him as well.

This is turning into "change our schedule because we screwed up so bad and can't afford to fix it" plan...

Okay, so it appears TMZ has another bit of information from their source:

So it appears that if Conan decides he doesn't want to continue, Jay will get a full hour show, and persumably the Tonight Show back.


As for the monologue above, as far as I can tell it was recorded early enough in the day where Jay had only heard the "Jay is being cancelled" rumor all over the media from this morning. I bet he would have been in a much happier mood during the taping if he had heard the new developments by then.

This makes total sense as Conan has pretty much run The Tonight Show ratings into the sewer. Total viewers were down 49% from 4th quarter 2009 compared to 2008.  Leno was averaging 5.03 million viewers, Conan is getting 2.55.

Fallon is pretty much holding his own.  He's down about half a million viewers from Conan's 2008 numbers.  Conan was barely beating Ferguson last year at 12:30.  

From TVbythenumbers:

In late night, LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN leads “The Tonight Show” (4.22m vs. 2.55m) compared to trailing by -20% last year (4.00m vs. 5.03m).   

LATE LATE SHOW with CRAIG FERGUSON has a +39% advantage in viewers over “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” (1.95m vs. 1.40m) compared to trailing by  -4% last year (1.91m vs. 1.98m). 

I can't imagine why NBC ever did this to begin with, but one can't argue that something had to be done.  Conan has been a ratings disaster.  

Conan was a ratings disaster when he took over Late Night from Letterman too, but NBC didn't bail on him then. That show just happened to stay on the air for 16 years. I do hope Conan leaves NBC after all this and destroys them with a 11:30 show on ABC or FOX. What a pathetically run network.