I am sorry I haven’t been writing about the reaction to the Late Night Battle but I thought there was more relevant news in the world . Now that CNN is doing its’ job as a NEWS NETWORK, I felt I can go back to the world of attacking celebrities.
Think back to 2004: out of the blue it was announced that in 5 years Conan would be taking over the Tonight Show duties and Jay Leno would retire. NBC was “forced” to negotiate with O’Brien (his contract was set to expire in January 2006). It was odd and awkward that in 5 years Conan would have a different job.
Imagine if I told you that you would have your boss’ job in 5 years but for the next 5 years you are stuck at the same job, would you take it? Now imagine that your company’s competitors wanted to hire you and your boss assured you he would be leaving the job but you have to wait around for 5 years so you can’t go to his competitors. Would you sign that contract? Well Conan did.
The same scenario occurred back in 1991. Jay Leno was promised the Tonight Show and just as David Letterman’s contract was expiring, Letterman was offered a contact that would keep him hosting his Late Night show until Leno’s contact expired. Letterman figured that the weasels at NBC were going to screw him just like they initially did by giving Leno first dibs on the Tonight Show. So Letterman vaulted to CBS.
The reason I say this is all Conan’s fault is that for the past 5 years Leno has been cultivating his audience and they relied on him. NBC did not want to see Leno’s audience vanish so the figured offering him the 10 PM prime time slot would keep his audience and not risk Leno vaulting to another network. NBC wanted their cake and now it looks like they will get their cake but thrown in their face.
If all is true then it looks like Conan will be bought out of his contract so that Leno could return back to his regular slot and Conan will have to go looking for a new audience. If Conan hasn’t learned by now the only thing that matters to network TV is ratings. NBC wasn’t willing to wait for Conan’s numbers to grow. They figured that Jay at 11:35 will get those numbers again. In 1993 they were willing to wait for Conan to grow his audience at 12:35 since they figured they had nothing to lose…it was not like they had another talk show host with an established audience in the wings.
