Late TV hasn’t impressed me in a while – I once was a diehard David Letterman watcher. But then I got bored with Letterman’s political comedic bent and I jumped to Stephen Colbert. After a while, I stopped watching Colbert (no particular reason) and basically stayed away from late night television.
When Conan took over “The Tonight Show,” I watched him every now and then. I do like his humor more than Leno or Letterman. This hoopla about whether Conan will stay at NBC or go following the announcement that Leno is taking over the 11:35pm slot again, thus pushing Conan back to 12:05am, has made me laugh. NBC messed up by trying to keep both Leno and O’Brien under contract with the network. First, they pushed Leno off “The Tonight Show” and installing Conan. Second, they give Leno a 10pm show each night, killing the network and local affiliates looking to make money with local news at 11. And now when the bigwigs at NBC realize their mistake, they think the best thing to do is to push the younger O’Brien out the door and replace him with Leno at 11:35 after the local news.
I side with Conan in this epic NBC mistake battle. NBC messed up years ago when they promised Conan “The Tonight Show” in 2009 without realizing Leno wasn’t in the mood to retire. So when 2009 comes, Leno bows out, but NBC decides to give him a 10pm nightly slot which, of course, would do two things:
1. Destroy NBC’s primetime lineup, (dramas versus Leno? Please) and
2. Build up hostility between NBC and their affiliates.
Maybe Conan will leave NBC for Fox where they will most likely slot him after their local news at 11, giving him a 30 minute head start on Jay and Dave. Personally, I don’t care.
However, Conan’s take on this mess is rather funny.
