The Tonight Show Kerfuffle

Okay, so they've settled the Tonight Show mess at NBC by bringing back Jay Leno. Apparently, Conan O' Brien will be sent packing...

Jay Leno is set to return to "The Tonight Show," unless Conan O'Brien has a last-minute change of heart about hosting the show in a later time period, according to an NBC source.

On Tuesday, Conan announced he would refuse to host "The Tonight Show" at 12:05 a.m., which is where NBC said it's moving the franchise when its coverage of the Olympic Games concludes at the end of February.

NBC now appears willing to let Conan leave the network, said the source, who has knowledge of the situation but was not authorized to speak publicly about the fluid situation. Conan likely will be allowed to develop a show for another network before his NBC contract would have expired, and an agreement is expected to be reached soon.

But it also appears the network intends to kick Conan as he walks out the door. In an interview with the New York Times, NBC Universal Sports chairman Dick Ebersol said Leno was being returned to late night because of "an astounding failure by Conan," ratings-wise, on "The Tonight Show."

However, on Sunday, NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin had told a couple hundred members of the press that the network had to move Leno out of his 10 p.m. time slot after TV station executives started threatening to preempt the show in large numbers. Their rebellion was stoked by the November sweeps ratings, which showed how much damage Leno's show had done to their late local newscasts.

...Conan joked at the top of his Thursday night show: "There's a rumor that NBC is so upset with me, they want to keep me off the air for three years. My response to that is if NBC doesn't want people to see me, just leave me on NBC."
..."I received a letter from the adult-film company Pink Visual offering me a role in one of their porn movies," Conan said Thursday in his opening monologe. "In the movie, I'd be having sex with a beautiful woman and just as we are about to climax, I get replaced by Jay Leno."

The epic failure here is with NBC, not Conan. If those 11 PM newscasts were getting killed, some of the residual effect was impacting Conan as well. More importantly, Conan was apparently winning the 28-49 demographic.

Yeah, I side with Conan here, even though I don't watch the show that often. I didn't watch often with Jay, either, and I don't watch Letterman much. As comedians go, Jay's the best at delivering a monologue, but O'Brien often stretches comedy in ways that (ironically) Letterman used to do, back in the day. NBC needed to have a lot more patience with Conan, mostly because they've now damaged the mothership of late-night TV. I'm not saying Jay is done at The Tonight Show (he's only 60 years old), but they're kidding themselves if they think Jimmy Fallon or Carson Daly will someday take the reins there and do well.

Meanwhile, if I were Conan, I'd check with Letterman and see if he plans on bailing anytime soon. Maybe Dave's show has been promised to Craig Ferguson, but he's terrible. Barring that, Fox should snap up Conan -- even if they can't use him for a while due to a non-compete, he could go back to being a writer on The Simpsons. Yeah, that won't happen, but a guy can hope.