One of the biggest entertainment news items over the last couple of months has been the feud between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien over late night time slots on NBC. You see, Jay Leno flopped so badly at 10 PM and Conan O'Brien flopped so badly at 11:35 that NBC was forced to make a change. Having Jay Leno at 10 PM was absolutely killing the local NBC news broadcasts at 11 PM and local NBC affiliates were crying out for a change. So NBC wanted to move Jay Leno to 11:35 and then have Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show start at 12:05. Jay Leno went for that deal, but Conan O'Brien balked. He felt that moving the Tonight Show to 12:05 would basically kill it.
And Conan was right. But since Conan wouldn't move, NBC has essentially dumped him and now Conan is out of a job.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. All the way back in 2004, Conan O'Brien signed a contract which stated that he would take over the Tonight Show from Jay Leno in 2009. At the time, Jay Leno seemed perfectly fine with this arrangement....
So what happened?
Well, it turns out that Jay Leno was consistently number one in his time slot from 2004 to 2009. So when the time came, NBC has this grand idea that they could move Jay Leno to 10 PM and that viewers would adjust and Conan could have the Tonight Show at 11:35 and everyone would be happy.
But there was only one huge problem.
The whole thing dramatically failed.
So NBC decided that they wanted Leno back at 11:35 and Leno accepted.
But this pissed off Conan O'Brien to no end.
Of course Howard Stern warned Conan that this would happen all the way back in 2006....
So now Conan is gone and Jay Leno is going to be doing the Tonight Show again at 11:35 every night once the Olympics are over. Needless to say, a lot of people are NOT happy about this....
So in an attempt at damage control, Jay Leno went on Oprah to explain his side of the story....
Regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the reality that we all have to adjust to is that Jay Leno is back doing the Tonight Show and Conan O'Brien is off the air.
So what does the future hold for Conan?
Well, Rupert Murdoch has expressed a strong interest in bringing Conan O’Brien over to Fox, but it is being reported that no serious negotiations have taken place yet.
But in a media conference call to discuss News Corp’s second quarter performance, Rupert Murdoch did have something to say about Conan....
"Certainly if the program-people can show us that we could do it, and be fairly confident of making a profit on it, we’d do it in a flash."
So will Conan end up at Fox?
Will he eventually compete head to head with Jay Leno?
That would be a beautiful thing to watch - one can only hope.
In the meanwhile, we are all stuck with watching fossils like Letterman and Leno at 11:30.
Perhaps it is time to pick up a new hobby or something until Conan comes back on the air.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments
both jay leno and conan o’brien need to have a few beers and watch anchormand together then consider themselves lucky for what they have and had.