Is Jay Leno really this much of an asshole?

BBT is an extremely...okay show. I watch it to pass time, really. The show directly before it (How I Met Your Mother) is vastly superior, and it's not just because of its laugh track.

 

My views on the late-night comedians, from worst to best;

Leno- Painfully unfunny and boring.

Letterman- Arrogant douchebag with half-assed delivery and mediocre jokes. He was probably a lot better back in the day, but is running on fumes now. Better than Leno, but not by much.

Conan- Occasionally funny, but far more often stupid and annoying. I have a hard time sitting through a single one of his shows. He's a real hit with the pseudo-intellectual comedy crowd, though.

Kilborn- Genuinely funny and bawdy, but meanders and goes on tangents just a little too often for my taste.

Kimmel- By far the best. Everything a late night comedian should be. Excellent delivery, calm, enthusiastic, and consistently great guests and segments. It also helps that Adam Carolla, the funniest guest imaginable, visits his show dozens of time.

As for the situation, the reason most people are calling Leno the "bad guy" is because they actually know him, and his comedy sucks, and he's a greedy motherfucker.

That being said, this situation has nothing to do with him. Conan's ratings have sucked hardcore, and the affiliates couldn't take it anymore. Is it "fair" that he only got 7 months? Probably not, but when the fuck is anything in business fair? This has nothing to do with Leno; if he had refused to go back to 11:35 pm, Conan would have been moved regardless.

The only mistake anyone made was promising Conan the 11:35 pm timeslot back in 2004, and thinking Leno could make it at 10 pm.

 

I'm sure most people on here will appreciate this:

 

Anyone who has ever been fired or laid off can appreciate this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118014097.html?categoryId=14&cs=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.variety.com/article/VR111801 ... Id=14&cs=1</a>

I understand that entertainers and actors are some of the hardest working people in the world, but 33 million dollars?
Really? Isn't this kind of excessive? Conan really can't work that fucking hard, can he?

I don't spend a lot of time watching television. When it's on, someone else is clicking the little buttons.
That being said, if I catch any of the late night comedians on, it's a fluke. I really like them all about equally.
I've been caught up in all this because the Tonight show is on after the news.

 

Does Leno suck to our demographic? Hell yes.

But so does Tyler Perry.


Numbers don't lie and America prefers Leno.



Deal with it for now. Conan will go to Fox.

 

What's really unfortunate is to have 2 people with such great retort, and such great camaraderie as Letterman and Leno once had, and to not just run with that instead of pitting the two against each other, and ending in the other climbing over and kicking the other down on the way just to get one decent host. I couldn't imagine how the face of late night comedy would have changed if the two of these hosted a show together to begin with.

 

I don't watch any late night talk shows so I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about which comedian is top. However, from what I do know I don't see NBC coming out of this unscathed.

It has cost them a major PR hit to get Leno back to his original time slot. The same timeslot where his viewership has been steadily falling since 2005. I really don't see the logic in this, then again nobody has fucked up like NBC has in recent history.

 

I saw this on Yahoo this morning and haven't looked too hard for the original quote, but if the context is correct, NBC really is just plain stupid.

I guess some of the audience, especially older viewers, don't have a clue about the behind the scenes, but it seems that anyone who has access to the internet or watches any late night programming knows exactly what is going on. How can these executives be so stupid?

 

Well, I don't know about Leno, but Conan just spent $1.5 million on a 1 minute comedy sketch: http://videos.mediaite.com/video/Conan-OBrien-The-Most-Expensive

 

The car was loaned for free.

The original recording of 'Satisfaction' by the stones, however, was not, and is probably the main reason why NBC pulled that portion of the show from Hulu and NBC.com.

 

NBC (Zucker, specifically) fucked this up royally. I don't begrudge Leno or O'Brien for getting what they're getting--it's the result of a poor programming decision. Personally, I'd cancel the Leno show and keep Conan in place.

As for my favorite, Letterman, hands down. Fast, fast wit. Two quick examples:

The former Gov. of Ill. who's name I can't spell: "I wanted to be on your show in the worst way!"
Letterman: "Well, you've made it in the worst way."

Letterman, to Joquin (probably didn't spell that one, either) Phoenix, after his transformation from actor to rapper: "Well, Joquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight."

 

I have a hard time believing that Leno is the bad guy here based on his behavior to a lot of people in the car community. I've heard numerous stories of him coming up to random people to have a chat about their cars, giving kids (and others) rides in his million dollar supercars - there's even an unemployed dude who is an amateur auto historian on another car message board, and Leno called him up out of the blue and offered him a private tour of his car collection.

Meanwhile Conan is the one publicly behaving like a petulant, obnoxious child.

 

Here is why I dislike Leno:

Back when Carson left The Tonight Show, he wanted to give it to Letterman. NBC said fuck that, and gave it to Leno. Leno and Letterman were friends at the time, and there is no way that Leno didn't know how much Letterman wanted that job, and know that Carson wanted Letterman to have it. Leno, instead, fucked Letterman. This is the first sign that Jay Leno doesn't give a flying fuck about the legacy of The Tonight Show or Carson nearly as much as he says he does.

Fast forward, and NBC wants to avoid all that bullshit again. Conan is being offered 11:30 slots elsewhere, but NBC talks him into taking over the Tonight Show in 5 years. Leno, seemingly, is fine with this, and goes on his show to say as much. When five years pass, Leno realizes he doesn't want to leave. It is classic short-sightedness on his part. He could have told NBC 5 years earlier he didn't want to retire in 5 years, but when he did, they could give the show to Conan. Instead, he agreed. When the time came, he threatened to go to late night for another network (presumably Fox), causing NBC to shit themselves and crawl all over themselves to keep him.

They put him in the 10:00 time slot. Every single person on the face of the planet knew that this would fail. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that even Leno himself didn't think that his show would tank in the ratings. However, NBC didn't care. This is where NBC is at fault. The 10:00 Leno show was a pure money earner. Not only did it cost jack shit to produce, but that was also 5 hours of 'scripted' shows a week that they didn't have to produce. Even if the ratings tanked, they'd still make money on it, hand over fist. They likely told as much to Leno, and told him that ratings for his show were fairly irrelevant, which gave him confidence.

NBC didn't count on the fact that its affiliates were getting fucked in the ass by Leno. Due to the god awful lead in, they were losing ratings left and right for their news shows, which was costing the individual station affiliates a lot of money. In turn, the affiliates threatened to yank the Leno show. Zucker was perfectly content to make money for NBC through the Leno show, despite the bitching of the affiliates, until the threats to yank the show started. NBC was, again, very short sighted.

Meanwhile, Conan has a god awful lead in. A lot of people will turn on a station and just let it go. Sometimes, they fall asleep in front of the TV, but the ratings still come back that the show was being watched. I'll guarantee with a better lead in, Conan's ratings would have gone up and been more respectable for a guy in his first year.

Leno threatens to go to another network again. NBC, again, crawls all over themselves to keep Leno around, by offering him the 11:30 slot for a half hour show.

First of all, this would have failed, miserably. People would've just watched Letterman for his full hour show, which would have fucked over the Tonight Show even more. Second of all, the Tonight Show has been around for fucking years, at the same time slot. Moving it to accomidate Leno's ego would've been sheer bullshit. This was strike two for Leno, for me. Leno, knowing the legacy of the Tonight Show, should've said no to that bullshit proposal. If he had any artistic integrity, or any respect for the Tonight Show and its legacy, he would not have accepted that proposal. Instead, knowing that Conan wouldn't move (and thus, would look like the 'bad guy' to the network), Leno accepted it. Conan, naturally, told the network to go fuck itself, and as a result got fired.

Strike three comes when Leno accepts the Tonight Show back, which he has undoubtedly been angling for since this entire thing began. Leno has acted like a weasel this entire time, and in the process he has completely fucked over Conan. That makes two late night hosts that Leno has fucked to get the Tonight Show gig, and to keep it. My hope is that, this time around, Leno fucking tanks it. The reason I think Leno is coming out of this looking like a dick is that Leno is the one that, repeatedly, told NBC that he was going to jump ship. Every time NBC didn't do what he wanted, he just told them he'd go elsewhere. It is NBC's fault for not simply saying "fine, go." If Leno had even a shred of dignity or class, or if he had ANY respect for the Tonight Show, he would've retired after those 5 years had gone by, and not raised a stink about it. He could still do his side gigs. He didn't have to stop working altogether, just retire from late night.

Now, as for why people are rallying behind Conan, it is this simple: People can relate to a guy that is getting dicked over by a sneaky asshole coworker, and by a retarded boss who doesn't seem to know his ass from a hole in the ground. Its not that they feel bad for him, it is that they can relate to his situation.

At the end of the day, Leno doesn't care about the legacy of Johnny Carson or the Tonight Show, he cares about himself and his own ego. That is why people are burying Leno, and rallying behind Conan.

 

Fox should take Conan, but not to host a late night talk show. They ought to re-hire him as a writer for The Simpsons. Seriously, this guy is responsible (wholly or in part) for some of the best episodes ever. People would start watching it again. The money would roll in and he could get paid handsomely. Everybody wins. You're welcome.

In all honesty, I always really liked Conan, and if I was bored, would watch Leno as a lead in (never really liked Letterman, for some reason). I think Conan would have done very, very well at 12:05 - people have more than 1 fucking channel, and it seems like the folks who watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report are the people that enjoy Conan the most anyway. I understand the principle of why he didn't take the deal, but it's too bad they couldn't make it work.

Craig Ferguson wins!

 

Fuck it. This has been the most entertaining late night segment that I've ever seen in my life. Conan has, if only temporarily, brought back the "I don't give a fuck" entertainment that late night used to be. If only they could keep that going.

 

The farewell at the end with Will Farrell was an absolute shit show. Am I missing some broader pop culture reference, or is Farrell just a (terrible) clown? Sure it was great to see Conan rock out on his guitar and have fun, but watching Will Farrell make out with that pregnant chick over and over, mug for the camera, oh and completely SUCK at singing made me embarrassed.