Conan Kicks NBC Right Where It Hurts

Conan O'Brien made the best possible move he could make with the current late night debacle at NBC.  First, he released this statement:

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,
Conan

Conan then applied an even more brilliant strategy.  On Tuesday night's Tonight Show, he went into full "David Letterman" mode, taking NBC to task with a series of sharply barbed jokes in his monologue, and constant references to NBC throughout the show.  He also had guests who expressed their solidarity openly, even though they are NBC employees.  He created the strongest episode of The Tonight Show in years, and if he can keep that up over the coming weeks, he'll build an audience that will put NBC in an even more awkward position should they opt to can him.

The fact is, that Conan has managed to swing the public behind him (just search Twitter for "Conan", and you'll see what I mean), has got the entertainment community behind him, and has left the NBC executives twisting in the wind.

I can hardly wait to see where this goes next.

NBC's "Tonight"mare

There's an old saying, "you can't have your cake and eat it too."

NBC should have listened to that sage advice when they decided to put Jay Leno on prime time television.  The network announced this weekend that Jay Leno will be moved back into a late night time slot (11:35PM in most markets) when the Winter Olympics conclude at the end of February.

As a result of this, the status of Conan O'Brien remains in limbo, although his contract (worth a reported $28 Million a year) states that he is to have a talk show that wil start no later than 12:05AM.  This means NBCs choices are:

• give Leno a half hour show, then let Conan on at 12:05AM (presumably as "The Tonight Show").
• give Leno an hour long show, and see if Conan get's p.o.'d and jumps to a competing network.
• put two desks on The Tonight Show, one on either end of a sofa, and let Jay and Conan battle it out.  Two hosts enter, one host leaves.

All of this drama is the result of Conan O'Brien's contract negotiations a few years back, when NBC agreed to give him "The Tonight Show" at the end of his current contract term with NBC for "Late Night".  Unfortunately, since that time, Jay Leno had been doing remarkably well in the ratings as host of "Tonight", regularly beating David Letterman's "Late Show" on CBS.  NBC decided that they couldn't afford to risk Leno leaving their network and setting up shop at Fox or ABC, so in order to try and placate everyone, they gave "Tonight" to O'Brien and gave Leno a prime time talk show five nights a week.  MMMmmm...this cake sure is delicious, I'm glad I'm eating it and saving it for later.

In order to make room for Leno's show, the network pulled all their scripted shows out of the 10:00PM time slot, and ratings went into a free-fall (big winner, CBS).

NBC insists that they have been happy with the ratings of Leno's show, as it is so much cheaper to produce than scripted dramas.  Of course, that doesn't take into account the feelings of the network's affiliates, who's nightly newscasts were getting destroyed by competitors with stronger lead-ins.  Thus we have NBC's obviously hasty decision from this weekend.

The fallout from this could get really interesting over the coming weeks, as the late night television landscape will undoubtedly change.  Letterman's Late Show should have lots of fodder for jokes, and I'm sure the media attention will cause a slight bump in both Leno and O'Brien's ratings, but nobody out there seems to be asking the real question...what about poor Jimmy Fallon and "Late Night"?  Is he about to get bumped into Carson Daly's old dead of the night time slot (and what about Carson, is he fired because he now overlaps with early morning newscasts?).

This whole situation could not have played out much worse for NBC.  They've lost viewers, and potentially at least one high profile talk show host.  Even if they haven't, they've eroded viewer and affiliate trust.  NBC as a network needs to get back to basics, program good shows, give them time slots where they can breathe, and make some real bets instead of constantly trying to hedge everything.  Otherwise, they'll be stuck in fourth place until they finally go broke (or worse, get bought out up Comcast - oh wait...too late).

On the plus side, this is easily the best drama NBC has had on their network in years.  Beats the hell out of "Trauma".