According to TMZ, NBC has returned The Tonight Show to Jay Leno (he'll start hosting again after the Winter Olympics), which officially ousts Conan O'Brien from not only his job hosting the program, but NBC as well. Some in show business may see this as a humiliation for Conan, but I only see it as a humiliation for NBC. It would be great to stage a boycott of NBC for their pathetic, cowardly actions in this drama, but would anyone really notice? They are the network of fourth place, and other than their killer Thursday night comedy line-up, it's a network of nothing.
Hit the jump for why NBC will continue sucking the sour tit of failure from this change-up and how Conan will be better off elsewhere.
Leno may have been king of the Late Night heap before he went to host the awful Jay Leno Show, but is there any guarantee he'll return to that position? Who's to say that the late night viewers who moved to watch Letterman will return to watch Jay do...whatever it is he does. If Jay Leno were such a spectacular host, why was his show absolute poison to NBC affiliates? And why is it that the only time anyone ever talks about Leno, it's only when he has on a major guest, like the President.
The older late night audience is fading and younger viewers are looking for someone who appeals to their comic sensibilities. That's why they're watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report and [adult swim]. They're also watching the Interwebs where great sketches and moments spread like wildfire. I'll wait why you go find me a funny Jay Leno sketch that you sent to your friends because it was so hilarious.
It's ridiculous that NBC expected Conan to build a hit show with a new audience in less than a year and it shows that NBC has no long-term vision, which might help explain the whole "fourth place among the major networks"-thing. NBC President Jeff Zucker has threatened to "ice" Conan for his behavior in this whole mess that Zucker created. It's an empty threat, and Conan will go to another network (most likely Fox), and he'll take his devoted audience with him. And remember that news Fox hands its schedule over to local programming starting at 10, not 11 like on all the other networks. So now you have Conan starting earlier than Jay so he's not in direct competition and staying with his younger audience while Jay Leno broadcasts to millions of viewers who fell asleep during their local news and forgot to turn off their TV.
Congratulations on your new long-term plan by going back to the old, irrelevant guy no one cared about. I'm still with Coco (as long as Max Weinberg comes along). And if you'd like to see Conan's absolute shredding of NBC the past couple of nights, watch the opening monologues from the following shows, plus the interview with Ricky Gervais from last night where they both ripped apart the network:
Altered NBC logo at the top of the article comes from http://cyclelikesedins.blogspot.com