So about seven months ago, Conan O'Brien inherited The Tonight Show from Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon took over Late Night and Leno got his own prime time talk show. The seasons of television changed, as they often do, and everything settled into this new world order.
Not quite, it turns out. Leno's show has been tanking in ratings, and The Tonight Show had taken a bit of a ratings dive as well, so much so for both shows that NBC has decided to take action. Their response? They've announced recently that they are planning to bump Jay back to the 11:35 time slot, push The Tonight Show up to 12:35, and then Late Night would air at 1:30.
Hearing this, I thought 'What a ridiculous response, it's like pretending nothing happened'! Jay's emotional farewell from The Tonight Show and Conan's boon to begin hosting it wouldn't mean jack squat if they just moved everyone back to their original time slots.
That was my initial reaction. The more I pondered this, the more unjust it seemed to nearly everyone involved, and the more my outrage grew. Bad enough that Jimmy Fallon would be moved to such a late time slot that any chance he would have of building an audience would be slim to none. But the most injured party, however, would have to be Conan himself. This is the guy who was promised The Tonight Show throne six years ago, and who spent those six years preparing himself and his staff to do his predecessors proud and to build a new audience at an earlier time slot. The guy uprooted himself from his beloved New York, moved down to LA to set up shop, and finally had his chance to shine. Seven months later, it could all be taken away from him. And for what? Because Leno has to have a show, and they didn't expect this new one to tank? Because NBC didn't have a contingency plan for when Leno's success grew in those six years leading up to the transition and now they want to keep him but don't know how to do it since they already gave away The Tonight Show? Come on!
Now I am biased here, I admit. I've never been a huge Leno fan (like him fine, but never made time to watch his show), and have been a long time Conan fan (what he did with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert during the writer's strike was pure gold, and the man spent a week doing his show in Toronto!) But even to the casual observer, this would strike some as being an unfair and disappointing move on NBC's part.
Well, Conan spoke out about it, and while remaining respectful and humorous, he did not mince words that he felt that moving the Tonight Show to 12:30 would not only be a blow to him and his staff, but would also be the downfall of the franchise itself, and that he would leave the show if the move was made, despite not having any other offers from other networks. I not only fully support his decision I applaud his response. It takes some cojones to publicly disagree with your network. Way to stick up for your show!
It's hard to tell how this will play out. Some will be behind Leno, other's behind Conan. Perhaps Leno will take some form of action that will help settle things. Otherwise, hopefully, NBC will sort this out promptly and fairly...but I have a feeling they'll end up taking Leno's side (he is the Golden Boy over there). But there's got to be a better way to deal with slipping ratings than screwing everyone over, am I right? To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment