How Jay Leno Screwed Conan O’Brien
The New York Times has a massive piece in this week’s Sunday Magazine by Lynn Hirschberg on Conan O’Brien and the changes taking place at NBC as O’Brien prepares to take over as host of the Tonight Show on June 1, while Leno moves into the nightly 10pm slot.
Of particular interest was this section on how Leno, unwilling to go quietly off to Vegas or Branson to peddle corny jokes to the olds, grew disenchanted over time with the network’s decision to appoint O’Brien as his successor in 2004, eventually forcing NBC head Jeff Zucker into offering him the nightly 10pm slot over fears that Leno might jump to ABC or FOX.
“Five years ago,” Leno continued, “I think they thought we wouldn’t still be on top. Back then, I said, ‘Whatever you want.’ I don’t have an agent. I don’t have a manager. If the girl doesn’t want to sleep with you, that’s O.K. I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘Why don’t you want to sleep with me?’ I say, ‘O.K., great – let’s be friends.’ You want to make a change? That’s great – we’ll make a change.”
As he became increasingly disgruntled, Leno began entertaining offers from other networks. Although viewership on network TV is shrinking and advertising is migrating to cable and (to a lesser degree) to the Web, topical shows with comedy and celebrity guests are inexpensive to produce and maintain a consistent appeal. Leno is a name brand – he could easily move to ABC or Fox and become O’Brien’s competition, which is what NBC feared. “It became clear that Jay wanted to continue telling jokes on television at 11:30,” Zucker said. To entice him to stay at NBC, Zucker offered Leno a daytime show, a cable show, a series of specials. When Leno turned all those down, Zucker proposed a half-hour show, five nights a week at 8 p.m. The idea was that Leno would just do his monologue, riffing off the events of the day. “Eight p.m. doesn’t work,” Leno explained to me. “I never assume anyone is watching because I’m good-looking. You’re selling a product. In my particular instance, the product, hopefully, is jokes. With ‘The Tonight Show,’ you have the jokes plus Angelina Jolie, and that’s a little more enticement. A half-hour monologue every night doesn’t seem like enough enticement.”
Zucker made his final plea: an hourlong show at 10 p.m., five nights a week. To Zucker’s surprise, Leno agreed. “I have believed, for a long time, that there should be a daily prime-time program with a topical format,” Zucker told me. “I’ve never said this publicly before, but I approached Oprah Winfrey about her doing a daily hourlong show in prime time. She turned me down, but I rekindled the idea with Jay. The advantage of a show like that is it’s easy to join, DVR-proof due to its topicality and different. Too much on television is the same show recycled. This will be a show that can provide an answer for the changing times we live in.”
And then this paragraph near the end of the piece where O’Brien reflects back on the early struggles of his Late Night show is just fucking funny.
Critics attacked him (Tom Shales suggested in The Washington Post that “the host resume his previous identity, Conan O’Blivion”), and the NBC executives were anxious to replace him with Greg Kinnear, who was on the network at 1:30 a.m. “One executive,” O’Brien recalled, “particularly despised Andy [Richter]. He told me I’d never succeed until I ‘got rid of that big fat dildo.’ That was the tone of the conversations between us and the network.”
Yes Andy Richter is a big fat dildo, and we can’t wait to see him back on a show with Conan.
Heeere’s…Conan!!! [New York Times]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Conan is a yahoo, and a neurotically fidgety one at that. Jay is boring and cornball, but so is three-quarters of the US. This replacement is going to be like Deborah Whatshername replacing Jane Pauley on the Today Show, like New Coke.....
And Letterman just can't wait.
Swordfish
@WitchfinderGeneral: They'd rather we not watch it at all than watch it later.
What could possibly go wrong?
Pesti-Esti
If it were me I'd just retire with my millions and have fun. Not be duking it out with the network or the girl who doesn't want to sleep with me or Conan or whoever.
Am I missing something? What is so terrible about Jay's life that he doesn't want to live it? Not enough vintage cars and motorcylces? WHAT???????
"DVR-proof due to its topicality..." So that's what has happened to television! They have consciously made the shows irrelevant to discourage veiwing after the slot! This explains so much.
The Photo: "This guy."
"No. This guy."
"Both of us."
@Solomon Grundy: Lolz
I just STILL can't believe that's Demi Moore's daughter. The hair is really working for her, though -- very Agyness Deyn.
and what is wrong with a "big, fat dildo"?
Perhaps it is time to retire the NSF white guys with a funny lady.
losergirl
@kenboy: Leno's 10PM slot is going to be one giant commercial.
@OldTowneTavern: Oprah is just like that, too, with all of her guests, for a similar reason (and she just likes to hear her own voice). It's also why I can't stand to watch either of them.
I think Conan will be great - that show has needed a kick in the ass for a long time and he can do it.
I couldn't get past Jay's sex analogy.
I used to wonder what the hell was wrong with Leno when a comedian or raconteur would come on his show and he'd stop them getting on a roll by butting in every other sentence. He never seemed to learn that some guests just need a set up question and then you step back and get out of their way. Now, I know. He was doing it on purpose. He just couldn't let go.
@BxgrlJeri: I think Leno is no different from any man of his generation--my father (late sixties and still working even though he doesn't need to), my husband's late father (well into his seventies, he dragged his oxygen tank to the salon so that he could cut his customers' hair): his work is the sum total of his identity, and without it he's lost. The next generation of men, who are generally more involved with child rearing and less held hostage by the expectation that they win bread, will hopefully put an end to this sorry mind-set. Oh, and I especially love turning a feminazi lens on Leno knowing that his wife, Mavis (love her!), is a total feminazi just like me, except unlike me, she puts her $ where her mouth is--money that is largely courtesy of her husband's job, now that I think about it. Hey, that was a circular paragraph--how the hell did that happen?!
ginger rant
"he could easily move to ABC or Fox and become O'Brien's competition, which is what NBC feared."
NBC should have been afraid. 90% of O'Brien's shtick is "I'm tall, white, and Irish."
sample032
Jay Leno is great at his job...the job of owning lots and lots of classic automobiles.
I believe Richter's sitcom would have lasted a good 5 years HAD it been titled "Big Fat Dildo".
@Senator Sully: He wrote as a team with Greg Daniels, who's not as cute, but is a helluva lot funnier. That he knows what he's doing remains to be seen, despite how many? years on the air. Failing ever upwards, flies the white guy.
Lulupasternak
@WitchfinderGeneral: Yeah, watching The Daily Show and Colbert Report the next day is totally impossible, because, you know, they are topical and all.
if only cbs and nbc could perfectly time alternating commercial breaks (or in the style of prejean: opposite commercials). then none of us would have to make a decision again.
cocodevaux
@Fry_Bread_Power: Think David Allen Grier would agree to be the Slowly Rotating Black Guy?
@WitchfinderGeneral: I absolutely love where they completely miss the point that a show that's "DVR-proof" is also completely skippable.
kenboy
@Tardy: Word. I'd even watch one of his identical quintuplets.
@Swordfish:
I respectfully disagree. Part of O'Brien's allure is that he's so neurotically fidgety. That, and he's a riot. I mean, he wrote for The Simpsons and SNL, he knows what he's doing, despite seeming not.
Since I don't have DVR, it will be tough for me to decide between O'Brien and Letterman every night. But on the upside, the new timeslot should raise the stakes for both and lead to a lot more interesting guests (and hopefully musical guests as well)
It's going to be so funny when we start reading that Real Housewives, Top Chef and Project Runway are beating Leno in the ratings.
Fox and CW should start putting shows on at 10 too, so they can take their shots.
@BxgrlJeri: Leno doesn't do relaxing, except I guess with his cars. He's always been all about work, and not much else. About 25 years ago, he made fun of Chicago radio host Steve Dahl after Dahl mentioned how much he liked to go to Hawaii. "Hawaii? Why on earth would you ever want to go there? I mean, what do you *do*?"
This was back when Leno was funny. But he was funny only because that's what worked for him at the time, career-wise. When it became more lucrative for him to become much *less* funny, he just became less funny without even thinking about it.
All this makes Leno unique in the universe of standups.
@BxgrlJeri: Jay Leno has deep, deep levels of low self-esteem, and only thinks he is worth the oxygen he breathes when he is working harder than the guy next door. Because if he does, maybe someday, SOMEday, people will like him.
This is why Carson never thought much of him, and why after 17 years of sitting in his chair, people still argue that he isn't/wasn't worthy.
@Solomon Grundy: +1
@ChillbearLatrigue: that made me snuffle
bigstategovernor
i just can't understand what motivation leno finds in continuing his career. i think we have had enough of his shtick.
So, what this article reveals is that Leno is both a mediocre comedian and an egotistical asshole?
Noted.
(Also: I'd watch Andy Richter everyday of the week and twice on Sundays. I love that big fat dildo.)
Tardy
C'mon Jay. You could rake in so much cash in Branson that you could buy the adjacent county to live in. In ten years, you could be the Governor of Missouri.
@ChillbearLatrigue: Awesome. Now we just need a photo of O'Brian, Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, & Ferguson for 'Shoving Buddies.'
@I Love New Jersey: Losing that 10 p.m. slot for "scripted" dramas will hurt. Basic cablers (TNT, AMC, USA, SciFi* and even A&E) are picking up the slack -- offering better shows than the broadcast networks. But sue me for wanting as much to choose from as I can.
*Just not ready to type "Syfy" yet.
@BxgrlJeri: At that point, even for the seemingly humble ones, it's all pathology. They call it being put out to pasture because the only thing that's left is death or the slaughterhouse.
Ed's still hoping Carson comes back, big!
skippywasserman
Basically the only changes with this are that one unfunny guy is being replaced with another one and NBC is screwing itself at 10 pm.
This 10 p.m. experiment is a bad idea and will fail in less than a year. It's just how these things go.
@The Curse of Millhaven: We don't even get them the next day in the UK and I still watch them.
Thinken about stuf - there doin it rong.
applejuice
Leno was always a better guest than host.
Conan unfunny? I'll have you know, sirs, that he's responsible for half of the classic Simpsons lines you still mutter in the shower.
And believe it or not, Leno's stand-up routine -- before the T-Show buffered the man into America's round teddy bear -- was hysterical.
Point is, they were sweet before they got televenated.
WretchedGnu
Just who is getting screwed here? Leno parks his tired, retrograde "humor" on YET ANOTHER talk show, with EVEN MORE boring guests pitching more product. My hunch? Leno breaks the saturation ceiling on celebrity chatter fascination, and bombs.
lrubemp
I missed the part where Leno screwed Conan. Did you leave that out?
Seems to me, Conan would have been screwed if Leno was opposite him on ABC, not an hour and a half earlier on NBC.