Conan O'Brien's classy, funny resignation letter makes me proud to be a redhead.
Conan to NBC: I won't help you ruin "The Tonight Show"
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Conan to NBC: I won't help you ruin "The Tonight Show"
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Leno is comedy Muzak.
On the bright side, Conan moving to FOX would herald the return of Masturbating Bear.
I thought this whole thing was bullshit. "Moving" the Tonight Show to 12:05 and "moving" Leno to 11:35 is the same as moving Leno back into the Tonight Show. They're pretending it isn't so they can keep Conan from going elsewhere. Stupid corporate assholes.
You know who should have written that letter? Jay @#$%ing Leno.
Freaking awesome. Best way ever to handle your bosses essentially giving you the finger. He's making the right call - NBC can suck it!
Yeah! That would have been the right thing to do. Hmm. Is there any historical evidence of Jay Leno ever doing the right thing when it was hard?
Conan: class act and absurdist-American hero. Here's hoping he pulls out all the stops for his remaining shows, and wreaks some real havoc on these bozos. Maybe he'll do that long-threatened all dance party episode? With strobe lights and dynamite? #TEAMCONAN
I just want to how it is that Leno has suddenly amassed the power to the Network is willing to do anything to keep him around. Leno is crap. Comedy Muzak is the perfect term for him. Never takes a risk. Always aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator for sure. Why can't Leno face the music every other talk show host has had to face when their show fails as tremendously as his did? Who put him above cancellation?
Cheers for Conan for telling it like it is.
What a freaking mess! The execs at NBC Universal never cease screwing things up. First, Hey Jay Leno: RETIRE ALREADY! Second, they should never have moved Conan out to LA. What a disaster. Just as Conan's ratings, I too would be seriously depressed if I had to leave NYC for LA. And whatever happened to the magic of television? Wouldn't it have been technologically possible for Conan to tape his show, as is, in NYC, but just aired in time for the Tonight Show PST timeslot? Finally, Jimmy Fallon should have replaced Carson Daly's late late show & not Conan's show. Had he really earned his dues to take over for Conan? Who is driving this bus anyway??
Wow. First Letterman, now O'Brien. Leno really is a monster.
Well played Mr. O'Brien. Now you need to sit back and play the waiting game,... not even NBC can waste talent such as yours. While Mr. Leno has an audience, I would suspect that they are not able to stay up that late and night and are much more likely to be on a cruise ship.
Let me see, ABC said a bachelorette may have screwed a producer so NBC tries to screw an entire show. Seems fair.
My support is for Coco. Leno had his run at 11:35, he's done, now let's move on. And I wouldn't call this a resignation letter. He's making a statement: I'm not agreeing to move to a new time slot, now it's your call, NBC.
Despite the style, I see the hand of an attorney at work here.
The point that Conan emphasizes repeatedly -- "The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show" -- is actually quite significant. Conan's contract with NBC specifies that he will be the host of the Tonight Show, NOT that he will host the show airing on NBC at 11:35.
If the 12:05 show is the Tonight Show then Conan's contract with NBC, however loathsome, is still valid. But by asserting that a later Tonight Show isn't a Tonight Show, Conan is claiming that NBC's moving him back 30 minutes effectively kicks him off of the Tonight Show. And because NBC breached its contract with Conan he's now free to do a show at 11:35 on Fox.
And I think that half-a-century of the Tonight Show at 11:35 on NBC is a strong indication that the show on NBC at 11:35 is the (de facto) Tonight Show.
Patton Oswalt sorts it all out:
http://www.maximumfun.org/2010/01/11/patton-oswalt-conan-jay
I wonder if a significant enough ratings spike to Conan's Tonight Show as a response to this event will change the NBC execs' minds, or if they really are just guys in suits.
I can't decide who's worse: Leno or NBC. They're both just so awful.
I wish they would sell 30 Rock to ABC and then fold the network, but I won't be watching either way.
More like empty suits, I'd imagine.
I see the hand of an attorney at work here.
A successful attorney and a successful stand-up comic have a lot of skills in common.
They're planning to do what with the what now?
I can't watch five minutes of Leno any more. He looked like he was phoning it in for weeks as he wound up the Tonight Show, and the Leno show has been an embarrasing pastelle descent from there.
Jay. It's over. Let it go.
Frankly, I don't understand (*look at camera out of corner of eye, chuckle under my breath*) how Jimmy (*camera glance, laugh*) Fallon ever made it past his first (*glance, laugh*) fourth-wall break (*laugh*) on SNL, let alone (*glance, laugh, laugh*) inherit Conan's show. (*Horatio Sanz laughing in background*)
It's simple demographics, people.
If you're older than 50, you like Leno.
40-ish to 50? You like Conan.
Under 40? Jimmy Fallon is your demographic leader.
And people who like philanderers like Dave Letterman.
Although in all fairness to Fallon, Conan was completely unheard of, a writer for the Simpsons, when he took over for Lettermen.
NBC needs to accept facts, you can't keep the same ratings for leno in his new time slot, that he had on the tonight show, and yes for a time tonight show ratings will dip a little bit with the new host that many aren't used to seeing. If leno can't support his new time slot, its because he isn't funny. Just let leno die, and keep conan.
@MrJM (#13), he said that about the tonight show, because moving the Tonight Show to 12:01 makes it the Tomorrow Show, not the Tonight Show.
Classy, ok. Funny? None of the letter in the article made me laugh. It seemed impassioned and heart-felt, but not comedy.
I used to kinda think Leno was a nice guy who kinda got drug through the mud after the whole Letterman/NBC fallout.
But as far as I'm concerned now, he's a total dick with no respect or concern for anyone but himself. If you're a friend of Conan or at least respect him, you don't go stab him in the back after amicably vacating your slot and then saying you'll take it back 7 months later.
Either way, I'm guessing Conan and Jay will come out okay from this bank account wise. Hard to say career wise. I really feel bad for the rest of the staffers, especially Conan's who pretty much thought their employment would be guaranteed for the next several years. It's unfortunate the people on Jay's show might lose work, but that show didn't have 60 years of history behind it, nor did they relocate a bunch of people to the other side of the country.
It all started when he did the doritos commercial.
Conan *did* go to UMass Cambridge, you know. One might expect him to have a modicum of eloquence.
This isn't a resignation letter, is it? It's a letter saying that he's not moving time slots without an argument. He'll leave or stay, but not move his time slot.
Hold on a minute. I think Jay Leno is getting a bad rap here. It was in 2004 when NBC told him Conan was going to take over the tonight show in 5 years. NBC thought the younger viewers would want that but they were wrong. The younger viewers are'nt even watching the Tonight Show no matter who is hosting. And Jay was #1 when the time came for conan to take over. So that whole thing was the first fiasco and it wasn't Jay's fault. It's not fair to either one of them but I don't think Jay is the bad guy in this. I have always heard he is a really nice guy. And you can all say he should retire but like I said when he left the tonight show last year he was #1 ahead of Letterman!
JImmy Fallon is my demographic leader? Hell, no. This is a Conan household and we're both under 30. Jimmy Fallon's okay, I guess, but Conan has more of the absurdist humor going on, and that's what I like in a late night show.
We tried watching Leno's 10 PM show a couple of times. The first time, he made a dumb racist joke about Hispanics being illegal. The second time, he made a dumb sexist joke about women playing football. At that point we stopped watching him. I guess he decided to branch out from whitebread current-events jokes into whitebread racism and sexism. How ~*edgy*~.
I agree w/ Caroline- Fallon does not represent the under-30 demographic, not even close really. I've gone all throughout middle school, high school, and college watching Conan and so has everyone I know. Mr. Farris- you are out of touch, but way to draw incorrect conclusions.
Won't somebody please think of Andy Richter!
Diabolical! This is by far the simplest and best explanation I've heard/seen so far in re: "moving The Tonight Show to 12:05 destroys the brand" argument. I watched Conan last night, for the first time in quite a while, mainly to see how he addressed the issue, and I was not disappointed. Gotta love the salutation in his letter: "People of Earth"! Leno is not even in the same league.
...As I've said for over 25 years since I first had the misfortune of seeing him do his stand-up live, Jay Leno is *NOT* funny. He's even worse at being a talk show host. If the suits at NBC had a clue, they'd dump Leno, put some decent non-cop drama shows to lead into the local news, and let Conan continue to build his audience.
Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Johnny and Ed are sitting back and laughing their halos off over this mess...
demographics? people over 50 like Leno? Are you kidding? I'm 52. I remember seeing Leno's standup back in the '70s. I remember thinking he had no taste (he wore ugly yellow suits) and his comedy was bland and mediocre. And yet I kept seeing him on more and more shows, while other comics, who I found brilliant, edgy, and with cooler-looking clothes (black narrow-lapel blazer with jeans) faded from view. I remember thinking that network executives must have loved Leno because he was so bland and unthreatening, because he got more and more airtime. Sure enough, he wound up hosting the tonight show.
Speaking of Leno's comedy, lately I've always noticed a cruel, unfunny edge to it. Poking fun at ordinary people's misfortunes. A bland standup comic who earns millions, making fun of working class people who have lost their jobs. Something about him leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
bonnie33: Hold on a minute. I think Jay Leno is getting a bad rap here.
Here's Jay Leno, announcing Conan O'Brien as the new host of the Tonight show:
"When I took this show over, boy there was a lot of animosity between me and Dave, and who’s gonna get it, and quite frankly, a lot of, what I thought, well good friendships were permanently damaged. And I don’t want to see anybody ever have to go through that again. Because, you know this show is like a dynasty, you hold it, and then you hand it off to the next person. And I don’t wanna see all the fighting and all the ‘who’s better’ and nasty things back and forth in the press, so right now, here it is, Conan, it’s yours, see you in 5 years, buddy. Clear enough?"
--Jay Leno, 2004.