NBC May Pull Plug on Disastrous Leno/O’Brien Experiment
by S.T. KarnickPress reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have to accept a diminished role as a consequence of his successful campaign to force Leno out of his 11:30 slot.
The reports are that the Jay Leno Show will stop producing new episodes on February 1 or possibly February 12 when NBC begins broadcasting the Olympics, and will not return thereafter. Leno will go back to 11:35, and O’Brien-well, nobody is quite sure what’s happening with him yet. NBC execs are reportedly considering having a half-hour Leno show at 11:35, the Tonight Show with O’Brien at 12:05, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon at 1:05. Carson Daly will presumably remain the only thing in the world that’s not funny at 2 in the morning (hat tip to my number 2 son for that joke).
Last spring, you may recall, the Peabrain Network announced the big change designed to accommodate O’Brien’s ambitions while giving Leno a good time slot. Most industry analysts questioned the move, wondering how NBC could hope to obtain good enough ratings from the Leno show. Although the show’s low budget (when compared with original programming, especially scripted dramatic or comedic shows) would ensure that NBC would probably turn a profit on the time slot, the affiliate stations were expected to take a beating in the ratings for their local 11:00 news shows, which are a major profit driver for local stations.
That’s exactly what happened. As I noted when the show premiered on September 14, “NBC . . . is placing its fortunes on a very risky move. Running the show every weeknight in the 10 p.m. slot risks destroying the affiliates’ nighttime newscasts if Leno’s ratings are not strong night after night. Last night’s premiere episode provided little reason to expect a large regular audience for the show.” The premiere episode was largely weak and awkward, certainly not the must-see entertainment the network must have expected, and nothing that viewers would see as more important to watch on any particular night than the crime dramas on the other networks.
As I noted at the time, “it’s difficult to imagine that this is going to be must-see TV. Or even bearable.” Leno tried gamely to make it work, and his ratings were enough to keep the network from losing money on the time slot, it appeared, but affilates’ 11 o’clock news shows were indeed taking a beating in the ratings because of the poor audience lead-in.
NBC confirmed this with the following statement last night in support of Leno:
Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance.
Meanwhile, The Tonight Show, with new host O’Brien, was an even worse disaster. As I noted when NBC announced that O’Brien would take over Leno’s show and the 12:35 slot would be hosted by winsome, boyish talk-show neophyte Jimmy Fallon, “It seems likely that Late Night will be less ‘edgy’ and bizarre than it has been during O’Brien’s tenure, and that the Tonight Show will be much more of both than it has been while in Leno’s hands. Given the two programs’ time slots, it seems that the movement of hosts will probably reduce the ratings for NBC’s late-night slate, given that the 11:30 audience has historically been less adventurous than the 12:30 group. NBC is evidently hoping to change either the audience or O’Brien.”
And as I noted when O’Brien took over as Tonight host, the latter was “highly unlikely except through serious shrinkage. And of course that would be a disaster for the Peacock Network.”
That proved to be truer than anyone even imagined. Ratings for the Tonight Show are down a catastrophic 52 percent since O’Brien took over. Reeling in horror at the entirely predictable consequences of their attempt to placate the overly ambitious O’Brien, NBC almost certainly has decided to do at least two things: cancel the 10 p.m. Jay Leno Show and return Leno to 11:35.
Those moves would make perfect sense. As Leno humorously pointed out last night on his show, if NBC lets him go altogether, another network, most likely Fox, will grab him and win the 11:30 slot for themselves:
That would constitute not only losing a big asset for nothing, it would also make a major late-night player out of a competing network that currently has no presence in that time of day and would further cut into O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings. Not smart.
Of course the Peabrain Network hasn’t been smart about any of this. Undoubtedly they’ve been listening to critics over the years, which like O’Brien for his edginess and dismiss Leno as too conventional. They would do much better to trust the audience numbers. Having long ago anointed O’Brien as Leno’s eventual successor, the network created a time bomb as O’Brien naturally kept wondering: When? O’Brien’s understandable desire to get to the big time in the 11:35 slot forced NBC’s hand, but making tough decisions ought to be part of why network bigwigs get paid so much. They should have told O’Brien long ago that he could work at 12:35 and like it or he could try his hand somewheres else.
Had they done that, they would have avoided the comprehensive disaster they created in attempting to satisfy their feverishly admired choice as Leno’s eventual successor, and O’Brien, had he gone to another network, would have tanked in the ratings. NBC would have won big at 11:30, would have had a perfectly competent 12:30 host in Fallon, and could have developed the latter or someone else as Leno’s eventual successor.
Now NBC is stuck with an understandably angry O’Brien who probably will see this all as NBC and Leno both stabbing him in the back. In reality, O’Brien never was a good fit for 11:30, as the ratings clearly show, and he would have been smarter to be satisfied with what he was, a 12:30 personality. People are what they are, however, and you don’t get a star without the ego and ambition that make people stars.
Where NBC really went wrong, however, is quite clear. In thrall to the common belief among U.S. elites that the American public is a mass of ignorant, prejudiced fools who can and should be transformed into European sophisticates through cultural brainwashing imposed by their superiors, the executives at NBC thought that they could change the audience to fit their changing product, and that changing the audience is in fact their real reason for being.
The audiences, derided in Hollywood’s inner sanctums as ignorant boobs all too easily led by mountebanks, are having the last laugh.
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43 Comments
Conan is going to make a fortune if he plays hardball when they try and buy-out his contract.
I don't find either Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien even remotely funny, so I don't care either way, but didn't Leno announce years ago that he planned to retire this year? It made a big splash at the time. From my understanding, it wasn't O'Brien pushing for it, it was Leno who decided that he'd be ready to leave by this point. Then, when the time came, he pulled a Brett Favre and changed his mind, deciding that he wasn't ready to retire after all. Since the network already had legal contracts in place, and had for years, there wasn't much they could do if they wanted to keep both hosts on the network, keep them both happy, and avoid lawsuits. I could easily be wrong about that, especially considering our news media these days, but that's how it always came across in reports. Either way, it was a bad idea and anybody could see that a mile away, except for the network.
Mr. Karnick, did you bother to do ANY research on this topic? Had you done so, you would have discovered that five years ago things were put into motion for O'Brien to supplant Leno as the host of The Tonight Show. This was not O'Brien scheming behind the scenes or pushing Leno from his spot. Now, five years later, Leno is still the #1 talking head and NBC could not afford to let him go to ABC for his own show, which is what would have happened. Thus, The Jay Leno Show was created for the 10 PM slot. I felt that this was a rather ridiculous idea considering the audience cannibalism that would take place before The Tonight Show airs. Still, NBC had to do what they had to do and it has become a mess for them, Leno and O'Brien…but none of this is O'Brien's doing or fault.
NBC has screwed things up big time on this.
They didn't want to lose Conan a few years back, so the promised him the Tonight Show, essentially shafting the one guy (Leno) who has dominated late night for almost two decades.
Then, they didn't want to lose Leno (after they kicked him to the curb) to another network to compete against Conan, so they gave him a 10PM slot, totally screwing up thier prime time.
Now, they want to put Leno back to where he belongs, and they expect Conan and Jimmy to be perfectly happy with this.
Idiots!
I recommend a prime-time Apache knife fight between the two hacks to settle the matter.
I think Conan is a riot. I'd like to see Conan in the prime time slot, because I don't stay up that late during the week. I never watched Leno, before or after his move to prime time.
Its not Conan's fault his ratings suck. Its because Leno is one before him. People wanting late night talk shows aren't gonna watch two in a row. Secondly, Jay is stealing guests that Conan would have otherwise gotten.
If I recall correctly, NBC worked out this deal five years ago after O'Brien started pressuring them about when he would be able to take over the reins from Leno. So yes, O'Brien was the instigator of the move to oust Leno at 11:35. It might have worked, too, if Leno had retired or at least walked away from TV to focus on his stand-up act. But Leno decided to hang around, and so the whole thing has blown up in O'Brien's (and NBC's) face.
That's show biz.
I recall there was a bit of pressure from Conan's camp about making the Tonight Show one of the conditions for him taking the 12:30 slot. So, it could well be that Conan was star-trippin' and making demands threatening to leave NBC in the lurch, after they've "groomed him" to take over The Tonight Show if he didn't get it, NOW! So NBC did the "smart" business thing and acquiesed to the rising star while trying to placate the current star. Bad move on their part, instigated by greed on O'Brien's part.
It's a free economy. Let them earn their audience. Ratings are a good indication of a shows quality. If Conan was more appealing, he'd have bigger numbers.
From Yesterdays' New York Times Article:
"The exact terms of Mr. O’Brien’s contract are not known, but he is rumored to have built into the deal he made five years ago to stay at NBC a guarantee that he would host “The Tonight Show” or NBC would owe a penalty of as much as $45 million."
I've read a few articles that have hinted that Conan put pressure on NBC to give him The Tonight Show or he would go somewhere else.
Leno announced his retirement five years ago. About the time Conan was negotiating a new contract. Did he really want to get the shaft like Letterman did back when Carson retired? Remember how NBC handled that one? I can't blame Conan for having this built into his contract.
Leno has never relinquished anything to Conan O'Brien that he wasn't willing to give. I think, if Conan loses the Tonight Show so Leno can come back, it will just be further evidence that Jay Leno is a back-stabber extraordinaire.
I love how you're so pleased with yourself after calling something as predictable as bad ratings for Conan during his transition. We get it, you don't like him:
"They should have told O’Brien long ago that he could work at 12:35 and like it or he could try his hand somewheres else."
"Meanwhile, The Tonight Show, with new host O’Brien, was an even worse disaster."
"In reality, O’Brien never was a good fit for 11:30, as the ratings clearly show, and he would have been smarter to be satisfied with what he was, a 12:30 personality."
O'brien is a better host than leno, has funnier bits, and gives better interviews. It doesn't take a genius to see that but it will take time for the audience to warm up to him just like they did when he took over late night.
This is all Leno's fault for basically forcing his 11:30 audience to choose between him or Conan which made it so that many of them still haven't given Conan a chance.
With Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman (to name but two), NBC long ago cornered the market on executives who constantly fail up. The network will almost assuredly be fourth in the ratings yet again unless they get astronomical numbers for the olympics. Oh well… the Obama administration may have a few openings sometime soon.
On second thought, make that EVEN if they get astronomical numbers for the olympics.
While I think all three deserve some blame for this mess (Conan should have realized that he fit much better at 12:30 than 11:30), I do tend to agree that the fault is largely Leno's and NBC's. Leno, for waffling on just when he wanted to get out of the game for good; NBC, for stabbing first Leno and then Conan in the back and now trying to please both at once (and almost certainly pleasing neither as a result). I also agree with Karnick that NBC and Leno also should never have set a deadline for the latter's exit from the Tonight Show in the first place; they should have kept Leno there until he was definitely ready to retire and then moved Conan up if he was still around. They were both very good where they were, whether Conan realized it or not; there are so many bits from Late Night that can't air at 11:30. As it is, both hosts have taken a hit in prestige and the ratings, and there's going to be bad blood all around no matter what gets worked out. Thanks a ton, NBC.
Leno must have pictures of NBC executives with goats or something. Leno is the one who walked away, and then Brett Favre'd it back into prime time. Leno is the one who FAILED in prime time, yet somehow O'Brien is to be made to face the consequences for Leno's failures?
Ratings are most assuredly NOT a good indication of a show's quality. Mad Men barely scraped 2 million people an episode. Two and a Half Men gets something like 17 million a show. Does that mean Two and Half Men is 8 times the quality program of Mad Men?
Jay Leno is a decent guy and is pretty funny. NBC doesn't deserve him. I would welcome him to Fox.
Hey, given their recent track record, I'm just surprised NBC hasn't decided to replace Leno's show with the 10 p.m. MSNBC replay of "Countdown".
Yeah, by ISITC's logic, Transformers 2 was the best movie of the year.
All due respect. Leno didn't announce his retirement, he announced his firing.
Speaking of late night, Greg Gutfeld is a giant talent. I wonder if what % of his audience is intoxicated from alcohol, weed, or meth respectively? Greg, thanks for bringing Hayek to an entire generation of loadies and insomniacs.
Zucker's moronic handling of all of this has made Conan's job of establishing an 11:35 foothold virtually impossible. Having a Tonight Show-ish program on @ 10 sullies the brand, and makes the true Tonight Show (with Conan) less of a nightly "event."
That said, Conan will benefit greatly from a three way race at 11:35. Dave and Jay will split the typical (more banal) 11:35 fanbase, (i.e. tired, man on the street tripe) and liberate Conan to get back to his edgier/more surreal comic sensibility. He'll regain his base and then some. Divide and conquer, my friends.
Now if we can only get Gutfeld/Schultz to replace that awkwardly unfunny smirker at 12:30!
Excellent point. Have Conan and Leno trade places. I always struggle to stay up late to watch Leno's fine show and Conan would help me stay awake for 1130pm. Plus he is super funny.
What a ridiculous article. Conan's the instigator? You appear to have a very weird grasp of who holds what cards in this game.
NBC promised Conan the Tonight Show five years ago. They didn't want to lose him, because he's enjoyed by a much younger demographic than Leno (can't stand that guy). And then when it came time to make the change, they inexplicably decided to land-mine their own programming by putting Leno in at 10.
Project failed! Failed failed failed. Leno had 18 months to build up his version of the Tonight Show, and yet you expect miracles from Conan in less than 7 months, while Conan's struggling with Leno killing not just his own timeslot, but bombing the affiliate news broadcasts. Amazing.
Where's your evidence that any of this can be placed on Conan's shoulders? And since when does the late-late night talent somehow trump the network heads and the main late-night guy? He doesn't. Do you even remember all the jokes about how Conan might have the Tonight Show, but he was being hobbled by the Leno-at-10 experiment? Do you think Conan was actually on board for that move?
Choices were made, and Conan's being treated like crap.
O'Brien's perfect for twelve-thirty as was David Letterman when he was at NBC. Leno went behind Letterman's back and buddied up with the execs at NBC in order to get Johnny's eleven-thirty spot even tho Letterman had taken Leno under his wing when they they were both working at the Comedy store. Letterman was like an older brother to Leno and a guest host to Johnny. Johhny groomed Letterman to take his place but Leno went behind Letterman back and buddied up with the bigwigs at NBC who didin't like letterman anyway (he was too sarcastic) so Letterman left NBC for those greener pastures at CBS. I don't know who's idea it was at NBC to pick up O'Brien but whoever it was deserved a raise! Didn't think he'd work out. Never heard of him but he turned out to grow on ya .. at 12:30.. NOT 11:30 ! I don't like Letterman, Jay is boring no mater what time and I'm glad O'Brien moved to 11:30 because if he hadn't I would have not discovered the real diamond in the rough… CRAIG FERGUSON !
I think NBC should move Chrissy Mathews into Leno's spot and Keith "I'm not crazy" Olberman into Conan's spot. Now, that would be some good television right there.
no just 2 and a half times
This is what has happened to Johnny Carson's legacy??? No wonder I dont watch either one of these people anymore.
O'Brien has never, EVER had more power at NBC than Leno. The entire premise of this meme is absurd.
Listening to some industry insiders talk about this yesterday, it was the consensus that Conan has been screwed every which way on this whole thing. But the people most screwed? The writers who came out to LA for the show. They moved their whole families out on the promise of having a job (what job would seem more secure than The Tonight Show?) Nobody in the NBC establishment is going to give a hang about those people.
Leno's a backstabber, that's coming clear. NBC is inept and that's going to continue. It would be funny if there weren't so many decent people getting hurt.
And that automatically translates to 'Conan O'Brien used his incredible muscle with the network to get Leno ousted'? That might come close to being true if Conan ever had incredible muscle with the network, but he didn't and, obviously, doesn't.
wait, your argument is that the masses loving jay leno proves that they aren't ignorant boobs with no taste? you're joking, right?
Leno should do a morning show on Fox! It could be he and Sarah Palin co-hosting ! They could really pull in the Bob Hope demographic with all their timely edgy humor ! Yeahhh! – Jay & Sarah In the Morning !
Yeah, this story has a lot of flaws. I'm sorry, but Conan was not an instigator or plotter to wrangle the Tonight Show. He was simply happy to make his Late Night show as good and inventive as it was under his mentor, David Letterman.
NBC, however, was trying to clean up its own mess from 1993 by being proactive. They didn't want a repeat of the Letterman escape to CBS, so they forced the succession on both Leno and Conan to ensure a smooth transition. Conan really focused his efforts between 2004 and 2009 on making his Late Night show as good as it was instead of getting a case of "senior-itis"- neglecting Late Night while intently focusing on the Tonight Show. Leno, ready to retire in 2004, started to regret his decision and made some waves as 2009 got closer- talking about going to another network. So, NBC, knowing that Conan would get potentially clobbered by Leno competing against him, decided to keep Leno by any means necessary- even if they had to remove 5 additional hours a week of prime-time programming to keep Leno's show.
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Try to remember how "great" Conan and his comedy were 6 months into his Late Night show. He was still kinda awkward (since this was his first on-camera job- not including writer cameos on SNL) and trying to get a feel for what his show would be like- working on a Letterman-like template. Conan was untested, and the network wasn't sure if he would do well, so they had him on 13-week contracts. Slowly but surely, though, Conan proved himself and those contracts got longer and longer once his audience was a lot more congealed. Leno was the same way when he premiered on the Tonight Show- working on a Carson-like template and getting clobbered in the ratings after Letterman premiered on CBS. However, after the infamous Hugh Grant interview (first one after Grant was found with a prostitute), Leno found his groove with the ratings- mind you, that was in 1995… almost 3 YEARS after he took over for Johnny. That and NBC's solid lineup of pre-news dramas (which were all REMOVED when Leno brought his show to prime time- and were losing their luster even before Leno with CBS going all CSI Crazy…) gave Leno the momentum to beat Letterman consistently until he left. Even after the dramas tanked on NBC, Leno became appointment television for a lot of people. To become appointment television without being a procedural drama filled with cliffhangers every episode is extremely difficult to master and maintain, and it sometimes takes a long time.
NBC needs to let Conan get its legs and fully adjust to the new time slot- just like Letterman adjusted to his time slot on CBS, Leno adjusted his humor to the Tonight Show, etc. There will be audience shifting. I can't imagine a lot of Arsenio Hall watchers stayed for Letterman. Carson viewers didn't tune in to Leno initially (myself included- I was always more of a Letterman fan and felt he got shafted by NBC for not getting the Tonight Show). But, there were those who didn't mind the switch and continued to watch. As Leno began to get his bearings, more new people began to watch. That takes a lot more than six months to do so, and I think NBC is really making Conan take it on The Chin for not giving him the chance to let the show evolve naturally (like Leno, Letterman, and even Conan himself on Late Night). It's the 13-week contracts all over again.
More like NBC made a calculated decision. That a older audiance would no longer watch Leno, a younger audiance would follow Conan to the 11:35 (who airs Tonight Show at 11:30 anymore).
I don't think Conan used anything. It was NBC lust for greed combined with it's incredible incompetent managment!
Best solution seems to be Conan goes to Fox and truly develops his own show, not be pigeon-holed into the Tonight Show and not be given time to tweak it to match his style. I do think he should have been content with Late Night but it seems like there was a lot of factors in this that pushed the move to 11:35.
So let him go to Fox. Let NBC fix things with Jay. And then let the viewing public make it's decisions.
I think NBC should move Chrissy Mathews into Leno's spot and Keith "I'm not crazy" Olberman into Conan's spot. Now, that would be some good television right there.
I think too many people frame this as a Leno vs. O'Brien kind of thing. But, they're not the decision makers. So, to a large extent, it doesn't matter who pushed for what, as the ultimate decision will be made by someone else.
The type of decision making that has gone on here is the reason that NBC is now a fourth rate network. I remember the days when NBC was "must-see" TV. These days, the network has very little worth watching. And, judging by their ratings, I'm certainly not alone in that opinion.
If they thought that O'Brien was the future for The Tonight Show, they should have stuck to their decision and let Leno go to another network. Or, if they thought sticking with Leno was a better choice, they should have let O'Brien go to another network. By essentially be indecisive and trying to keep two hosts, they created a situation that is a bigger disaster than if they had simply let either O'Brien or Leno go to another network.
On top of that, they now have to rebuild their 10:00 p.m. and 11:35 p.m. schedules whereas, if they had made a tough decision before, they could have avoided that.
As long as NBC's trend of poor decision-making continues, they will continue to be a fourth-rate network. Maybe Comcast will bring in new leadership, because that is where NBC really needs a shake-up.
Conan used to be my favorite late night TV host by far. I used to record it every night in the easly 2000s. He was hilarious. But he's gotten less funny in the last couple years and his transition to LA and the 11:30 slot just don't fit his persona very. I pretty much stopped watching the show entirely and I've never seen a full episode of leno at 10 pm even though I used to watch him all the time at 11:30. Very bad decision that I didn't understand. I'm shocked to hear that Conan was the main architect behind the change. I thought Jay Leno was semi-retiring.
It doesn't matter who said what, numbers don't lie. O'Brian tanked in that time slot, period. To let him sit there and languish while dragging down the numbers even more would be stupid given the fact that Leno still wants to work. Basically if O'Brian cant produce the heads of the network need to tell him to get a clue or get out.
You are correct, sir. Ratings do not necessarily indicate the quality of a show. But a decent show with a large audience (great ratings) can become quite the powerhouse of an economic engine. Re: Mad Men. I understand that it's perceived as a great show. But the two times I've tried to watch it, I'm bored out of my gourd. If the show got \”better\” somehow so that it would attract me, maybe it would appeal to others like me, then the show would become more popular and ratings would grow. Ratings mean something; just not what most people think they mean. It's more about how economically successful a show is than how well it matches up with a few people's idea of how \”good\” entertainment is defined.
Why would NBC think Leno at 10 was a good idea? His viewers are old people, they used the Tonight Show with leno to help them sleep.
Hmmm, leno was making jokes about NBC while he knew he was coming back to the Tonight show for a full hour? knowing Conan was out? What a rat and a back-stabber he is.
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