The Tonight Show w/Conan O'Brien (1 Viewer)

[Diallo B]

Originally Posted by Pete-D ">[/url]




The term "nerd" is a bit of a dated term these days anyway. I mean Lost is a "nerd" show too. Fringe certainly is as well. You're talking about a time where even something like "Star Trek" is considered moderately hip. By the way, you're just old ;).

[/QUOTE]
i did say geek too.

 

[Pete-D]

Regardless he should've gone edgier and played more to the base that he appeals to (younger kids).

Whether you like it or not, this is the same audience that thinks "Jizz In My Pants" is the hilarious. He needed more things like the Masterbating Bear, not less, actually.

Conan's humor is smarter "college kid" humor, he should've just played to that crowd. Again though there was no real way for him to know the situation would've played out the way it did. Had he known that, I think he would've gone for a more "aggressive" brand of comedy.

 

[Diallo B]

'jizz in my pants' and 'dick in a box' are hilarious.

 

[Pete-D]

And that's more of what he needed to do.

But that's something a 50-60 year old probably won't find funny, and he was trying to appeal to that crowd thinking he had at least 2 years to get something going.

He underestimated what a crappy situation and what crappy management NBC has. I think he also made a big mistake believing Jay Leno and all his talk about "bowing out gracefully" and "passing the torch" and taking that at face value.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

If he had confronted NBC about hanging it up in 2004, the situation could have been avoided. But he chose to smile and nod, waiting for a chance to get TTS back.

So he set up a plan that could have taken years to come to fruition which required Conan tanking, his new show tanking and looking like a creep when he steals The Tonight Show from Conan all instead of saying "Hey, I don't want to retire"? What if Conan had been a hit? What if his show had been a hit? The entire plan would have crumbled because NBC wouldn't have had any reason to move him back.

It seems alot more likely to me that he was told that he was retiring from The Tonight Show whether he wanted to or not. Then when he had the chance to get The Tonight Show back, he happily took it. I'm certainly not saying that Leno is an innocent victim (I'm sure he's ecstatic to have The Tonight Show back even if it booted Conan) but if NBC hadn't fixed what wasn't broken, none of this would have happened.

 

[Hanson]

Originally Posted by TravisR

So he set up a plan that could have taken years to come to fruition which required Conan tanking, his new show tanking and looking like a creep when he steals The Tonight Show from Conan all instead of saying "Hey, I don't want to retire"?

Well, the first two things were foregone conclusions. Conan was never going to retain Jay's ratings and The Jay Leno Show was planned to be a ratings shithole, something the network so much as admitted. Also, he was doing the show the whole time, so it's not like he was waiting on the outside looking to pounce. The plan itself really only took 7 months.

And yes, this was all to avoid having to tell NBC that he didn't want to retire. Because in 2004, Jay would have had to fight for the show to keep it, and he didn't want to look like a bad guy so he went along with it knowing he wasn't going to actually retire in 2009.

BTW, what part of this is sooo unbelievable?

 

[TravisR]

^ Maybe you're right but I just don't believe that. Like I said, it's not because I think Leno is the nice guy he plays on TV but because there's just too many variables in play to have that plan work when it would have been easier to say that he didn't want to leave yet.

 

[Pete-D]

Originally Posted by TravisR



So he set up a plan that could have taken years to come to fruition which required Conan tanking, his new show tanking and looking like a creep when he steals The Tonight Show from Conan all instead of saying "Hey, I don't want to retire"? What if Conan had been a hit? What if his show had been a hit? The entire plan would have crumbled because NBC wouldn't have had any reason to move him back.

It seems alot more likely to me that he was told that he was retiring from The Tonight Show whether he wanted to or not. Then when he had the chance to get The Tonight Show back, he happily took it. I'm certainly not saying that Leno is an innocent victim (I'm sure he's ecstatic to have The Tonight Show back even if it booted Conan) but if NBC hadn't fixed what wasn't broken, none of this would have happened.

I think Leno has known for a while that he was going to try by hook or by crook to get the Tonight Show back.

He innocently floated the idea out there weeks before this whole fiasco even blew up by saying he'd take back the 11:30 time slot.

All this tap dancing around the obvious was done because he wanted to maintain his "Jay's one of the people" nice guy schtick that he hangs his whole persona on.

I think he thought he might do ok at 10PM, but when it became obvious that it wasn't going to work, I think he began a "quiet campaign" to get his old spot back. And really I think the whole half-hour Leno show was just a part of that ... the guy never had any intention of having a 30-minute show for long, he was hoping that eventually he could ease his way back into a full 60-minute show and Conan would go along with getting pushed back over time and there would be no messy PR debacle to tarnish his image.

Unfortunately for him, Conan didn't play ball, and the situation sorta blew up in his face. NBC knows this too ... why else would they have a clause that prohibits Conan from talking about the situation (ie: going on Letterman) for three months? Because they don't want their golden goose who's built his career on being the "nice guy" taking any more of a beating. That's why Leno's off doing Oprah -- damage control.

 

[Hanson]

Originally Posted by TravisR

^ Maybe you're right but I just don't believe that. Like I said, it's not because I think Leno is the nice guy he plays on TV but because there's just too many variables in play to have that plan work when it would have been easier to say that he didn't want to leave yet.

What variables? There was zero chance Conan was going to maintain Leno's ratings, and there was zero chance The Jay Leno Show was going to be a hit. As a matter of fact, the worse TJLS did, the worse Conan did, so that part was self-maintaining. What other variables are there?

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

What variables? There was zero chance Conan was going to maintain Leno's ratings, and there was zero chance The Jay Leno Show was going to be a hit. As a matter of fact, the worse TJLS did, the worse Conan did, so that part was self-maintaining. What other variables are there?

I'm sure everyone involved knew that he wouldn't maintain Leno's numbers but I think he lost about 50% of Leno's audience and he was usually losing to Letterman.

And just so I get this clear, are you saying that Leno was too meek to simply say that he didn't want to retire in 2004 but 5 years later, he was bold enough to start telling NBC brass that they should give him The Tonight Show back? Why even go to the trouble of all that planning and temporarily losing The Tonight Show when he could have just said "I don't want to retire" five years earlier?

 

[Hanson]

Conan didn't have to lose 50% of the audience. He just had to lose a significant portion, and that was almost guaranteed. NBC even expected to lose to Letterman. This did not take a fortune teller to figure. For many viewers, Dave was second choice, and if Jay wasn't there, they would simply walk over to Dave, whom they knew, rather than get to know Conan.

Jay didn't want to get into another fight over TTS in 2004 considering the negative publicity he got over TTS when he took it from Dave. That's why he decided to just bide his time.

He didn't have to ask for TTS -- his $120 million payout guaranteed that they'd take him over Conan's $40 mil. That's the whole thing -- he could stand there and say, "I didn't ask for this, they gave it to me." Yeah, they gave it to you alright, but they had little choice. It's all part of preserving his nice-guy schtick.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Would it be possible to keep all the network/show politics in the other thread? This thread use to be about the show itself and not the surrounding circumstances.

 

[Pete-D]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway

Would it be possible to keep all the network/show politics in the other thread? This thread use to be about the show itself and not the surrounding circumstances.

I guess you could move the posts, but really what's the point? There is no show anymore because of "politics" so what else is left to talk about.