Evaluating the late night landscape

All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism - it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. - Conan O'Brien, courtesy of this site.

Because I need some closure on this whole matter, this will be my last post on the late night fiasco for a while, and as a result, I'm going to try to cover all of my bases on it. Let's start on the micro level with Conan's last episode of The Tonight Show, and work our way to examining the scene as a whole.

In case you missed it, I believe the entire last episode is now available on Hulu, here. It was a bizarre but high note for the show to end on, with a surprise appearance by Steve Carrell, and other guests, including Will Ferrell, Tom Hanks, Neil Young and Beck. The best singular moment was an oddly-touching montage of the show's short seven months, set to, of all things, "Surrender" by Cheap Trick.

The episode got a 4.8, according to the article I cited above for the video clip, which was about quadruple his normal rating, and a really high number for a late night show. Frankly, I wasn't surprised it was so high, since plenty of people were leaving comments on my Facebook status as I was watching the show. And, the final episode has gotten near universal praise, both from the Internetz and from my friends I've talked to about it. Throughout the episode, at least in my opinion, there was a feeling that something "special" was happening. The only other times I have gotten that same feeling have been from live sporting events - Game Seven of the 2004 ALDS (Red Sox crush the Yankees and complete the biggest comeback in sports history), Game Four of the 2004 World Series, and Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals, when LeBron James willed his team to victory.

Because of the feeling I got from Conan's final show, I think he's going to be OK regardless of whether he ends up. I outlined some of the options the other day, and I still think that FOX is the most likely destination. They're the only major network that 1) would have the proper time slot open and 2) could meet his salary demands. If he's willing to take a major pay cut, then I could see him sneak on to FX or Comedy Central or USA. I frankly don't think he will end up on HBO, Showtime or Cinemax, simply because the exposure would be so much smaller. Yeah, The Larry Sanders Show was great, and nobody ever effing saw it. The premium cable outlets would just have to blow him away with cash.

Let's turn our focus now to the real villains of our story - NBC. They just completely mismanaged the entire situation, from start to finish. The original sin was essentially forcing Jay Leno in 2004 to agree to vacate The Tonight Show in 2009. Although there is no way for me to validate this, at the time I thought, "There is no way in Hell that Leno will give up his show."

At the crux of this thought was my knowledge of how he had originally gotten the job - by busting his ass. I don't think anyone questions that Leno is one of the hardest working men in show business, and he got The Tonight Show from under Letterman by 1) having an aggressive, hard-nosed business manager and 2) working much, much harder than Letterman behind the scenes to get the job.

Unfortunately though, this doesn't change the fact that Leno isn't a great late night host, and he won't ever be, not even if he works at it for another 22 years. Leno is a C- student who, because of his work ethic, grades out at about B+. Regardless of how hard he tries, and I do think he tries very hard, he will never be known as a legendary performer. If Carson is the gold standard, and I do consider him as such, Letterman and O'Brien and Stewart and Colbert at least echo him from time to time. Leno is a straight derivative, a TV dinner version of a great meal, similar but completely unsatisfying when compared to the original.

I don't believe that Leno is completely innocent in all of this. He knew how much Conan wanted The Tonight Show, and Leno agreeing to go back to 11:35 after he failed at 10 is why this whole ball got rolling. If Leno instead said, "No, I can't do that to Conan," then I wouldn't be typing this blog post. I would instead be typing about how Leno was going to some cable network to finish his washed-up career, similar to how Willie Mays finished with the Mets and Muhammad Ali got his brains knocked out by Larry Holmes. It's great to talk about how Leno had some great value to other networks, but his show at 10 was doing ridiculously bad ratings in the 1s and 2s. If NBC just straight fired him, he was so devalued from his brief foray into 10 p.m. that I'm not sure who picks him up. His type of humor is wrong for everything but TBS.

Therefore, it's puzzling to me why NBC bent over backwards to accommodate Leno. Yes, he will be back on in the fall, and the ratings will probably be passable, because he won't have himself as a lead-in, like Conan did. By the way, need proof that lead-ins matter? In Rhode Island, WJAR led the nightly news ratings for 16 years. It finally lost the title this year, as local rival WPRI saw a surge of 20 percent, and WJAR saw a fall of 35 percent. The change was from actual programming at 10 to Leno, which has a carryover effect for the news, and no doubt has an effect on Letterman and Conan's ratings. Was it the sole thing responsible for the change? Probably not, but NBC Corporate is completely unwilling to even acknowledge that this would affect the ratings of The Tonight Show, because doing so would be acknowledging that they fucked up every single aspect of their late night programming.

Part two, where I look at other late night hosts, coming later...