Jay Leno blows

DARKKNIGHT said:
I really don't understand the Leno hate. TV's a business and a cut-throat one at that. I don't think you should blame him for acting in his own interest throughout all of this. I mean I feel bad for Conan, he did get the shaft, but the way I see it NBC is to blame not Leno.
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My Leno hate stems from the fact that he's not funny yet still (up until the time he left The Tonight Show) got good ratings.

And you're right - I posted the same thing after the Oprah interview. OF COURSE he would go back to the Tonight Show if it's such a dream of his. My problem is that his rationale is that he is saving the show and that Conan didn't get ratings - yet a HUGE part of the reason he didn't is because Leno gave him no lead-in.

Not only that, but it's impossible to like or respect a guy who keeps bending over and taking it from a company like that. They keep screwing him over and he keeps going back for more.
 
E said:
My Leno hate stems from the fact that he's not funny yet still (up until the time he left The Tonight Show) got good ratings.

And you're right - I posted the same thing after the Oprah interview. OF COURSE he would go back to the Tonight Show if it's such a dream of his. My problem is that his rationale is that he is saving the show and that Conan didn't get ratings - yet a HUGE part of the reason he didn't is because Leno gave him no lead-in.
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Exactly. It's important to remember the Leno's show was doing so poorly several local NBC stations were threatening to pull it off because it was ruining ratings for local news. Conan stepped out to preserve the institution of the Tonight Show and instead of standing up with Conan, he stood aside willing to not only screw Conan but have the Tonight Show moved to accommodate him. And what really pisses me off was that he was in the same spot as Conan, his first two years as host had horrible ratings but he had two years to build an auidence, there's footage of him back in 06 where he said to give Conan the chance, he'll back off when his time comes. This shows me he's just a selfish leech.
 
I don't know. I can kind of see your points but the way I see it is that NBC was unhappy with Conan so they were going to make a change no matter what. I don't know how much of it is Leno's fault because I don't know the whole story. Regardless I think this whole thing as gotten blown out of the water. This is show biz. This **** happens all the time. Someone's success is another person's failure.
 
DARKKNIGHT said:
I don't know. I can kind of see your points but the way I see it is that NBC was unhappy with Conan so they were going to make a change no matter what. I don't know how much of it is Leno's fault because I don't know the whole story. Regardless I think this whole thing as gotten blown out of the water. This is show biz. This **** happens all the time. Someone's success is another person's failure.
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Well here's the story, NBC decided to hand the Tonight Show over to Conan. Before leaving Leno work to leave it at number one in the ratings. NBC saw this and wanted to keep Leno so decide to give him his own show at 10pm. And it blowed did very poorly in ratings and everyone assumed it was going to be canceled. Now Conan's show wasn't doing great but that's because he was only there for two months and he was still building his audience. Now a little background there was a lot of fuss when Leno first took over, many people wanted Letterman who would get an offer for another network and it took Leno 2 full years to get up in ratings. But Conan's ratings problem is also attributed to Leno creating a terrible lead in. So to go back to the glory days NBC wanted to move the tonight show a half an hour back to fit Jeno in. Conan has a huge respect for the Tonight Show, one of the longest running tv shows, and since it has always be on after the local news it shouldn't change. So Conan felt he'd rather loose the Tonight Show than to see it change. So really Conan wasn't give a chance, specially comparing Conan's 7 months with Leno's 2 years.

So why everyone hates Leno for this incident is because instead of backing his successor, showing respect for the Tonight Show, and seeing he's the cause of the ratings slump was his fault He decides to let the NBC execs make these bad calls and support their destruction of The Tonight Show's future through in action.
 
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DARKKNIGHT said:
I don't know. I can kind of see your points but the way I see it is that NBC was unhappy with Conan so they were going to make a change no matter what. I don't know how much of it is Leno's fault because I don't know the whole story.
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It's all Leno's fault. It wasn't NBC that was unhappy with Conan (at first) - it was the NBC affiliates unhappy with Leno because his ratings were so bad that there was no lead-in for the 11 PM news. Affiliates don't make a ton of money on network shows because they only get to sell a couple of ad spots in them. But for the news they get to sell ALL of the ads, so they are the cash cows for the stations. And because no one was watching Leno, no one was watching anything that came on after him, including the news which immediately followed, and Conan who followed the news. No viewers for the news means no ratings, which means drastically decreased ad revenue. I read stories of NBC affiliates news stations that were hit so hard that they dropped behind Spanish-speaking stations in markets where the Spanish-speaking population wasn't even close to comparable in terms of the difference in ratings.

The affiliates were pissed but no one was calling for Conan's head. Instead of letting Conan continue to grow, and getting rid of a poor-performing show in The Jay Leno Show (which they could not afford to let grow in the 10 time slot), they panicked and decided to go back to regular comedies and dramas, but they didn't want to get rid of Jay because he had proven himself in the 11:30 time slot. So they wanted to move him there for a 1/2 hr show and push Conan to 12. Conan was rightfully insulted by this and refused.
 
Since this thread slowly kinda sorta morphed into a pseudo "All-About Late Night TV thread" I figured I'd post this here

Craig Ferguson's completely straight faced episode length interview with Stephen Fry (sans-audience even) was one of the most interesting things I've seen done on a Late Night program. Interesting, amusing, and had a certain level of class that hasn't been seen in Late Night in a long time.

It was a great episode
 
Gemini said:
Since this thread slowly kinda sorta morphed into a pseudo "All-About Late Night TV thread" I figured I'd post this here
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I always hoped that would be the case, and that it would remain title "Jay Leno Blows"
 
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I wouldn't expect much. You might get a little story but what don't we know already? He's not going to bash anyone.

Still, I did set the Tivo for it.
 
Venom Melendez said:
You know who i do feel bad for? The camera crew and all the behind the scenes guys. Screw Conan, he can get a job anywhere, but those guys are screwed when he leaves. At least in Andy's case Conan has his back.
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After Conan got the $40 mill exit deal from NBC, he gave all of those guys handsome severance packages from his own pocket. And I'd be very surprised if at least 40% of the guys that have been with him for the past 15 or so years will not still be working with him on TBS.
 
Official logo for Conan's new show:

conan-logo-570x320.jpg
 
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