Surveying the Scene (It Landscape)

I’m pretty tough to play trivia games against. By that, I mean that my friends tend to get frustrated, since I continually answer obscure and random questions. Back when one of my friends had a Trivial Pursuit 1990s edition, I had to answer all the questions on a single card in order to get a pie piece.

I attribute my success to a past drenched in pop culture and reading when I should have been accumulating actual knowledge. Instead of learning things like Biology and Chemistry, I was normally more interested in reading books about the fight for late night between Leno and Letterman after Carson, or about how Miramax rose from a seedy re-cutter of films to an actual Hollywood powerhouse. When it comes to games like Trivial Pursuit, this knowledge is useful, but I tend to be an iffy Jeopardy! player.

My supernatural skills raised their head again this past week, when I was dominating a game of Scene It Second Edition trivia. Sure, I had never played before, but why should that stop me from doing really, really well?

The rules of the game help a player of my talents. Because a good portion of the questions are free-for-alls, I was able to out-answer a couple of the other players. It also helped that I was the oldest person playing, at 27. (That still doesn’t explain why I was able to answer questions about “Fast Eddie” Felson, since that movie came out in 1961.)

In contrast, I really struggled when we played Pass The Popcorn. It’s essentially Trivial Pursuit with just movie questions, but you can really minimize a better player because of the categories. (Basically, you’re allowed to swap category cards each time it’s your turn. This meant that people would just keep swapping until they didn’t have a card that matched mine or my friend Lisa’s, the other strong player in the game.)

Also, this whole post reminds me that I still haven't found anyone to play Scene It SNL or Simpsons against me. I have both games, but challengers have been tough to come by. Curses.

Surveying the late night scene

Continuing from part one of my look at late night. Where does this leave everyone in the grand scheme of late night? Looking at everyone else, by network...

- At NBC, you have Leno, who I suppose will be his solid and unspectacular self. He is almost 60, so you have to think he has a decade left, at most, and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt that he will stay as relevant and "culturally hip" as he is now. Which is to say, a net zero, as opposed to someone derided for being tragically unhip. And, in light of his failure at 10 and the orchestration of Conan out of NBC, I think there is a great chance that Leno to 11:30 backfires completely on NBC.

One aspect of this whole equation that I think goes unreported is the strength of Conan at 12:30, which no doubt helped Leno maintain hit ratings during his last half hour. I actually like Jimmy Fallon at 12:30 - his show has some creative ideas, like the Wheel of Carpet Samples and his writing of "thank you" notes on Fridays. He also somehow got The Roots as his house band and uses them well, and he's also had some legitimate guests. However, he definitely doesn't have the cachet of Conan yet.

And although I don't wish any ill-will toward him, if something did suddenly have a problem with Leno, they have no clear in-house replacement. They would either 1) have to patch things up very, very nicely with Conan and pay him out the ass to come back or 2) pay someone else a ton of money to fill the void, who probably doesn't have any late night experience. Fallon simply isn't ready, so I think you might see an "established" name like Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin or Martin Short (to pluck some names out of the air) lured to NBC with an insane amount of money.

- At CBS, Letterman will probably be largely unchanged, although maybe more venomous toward Leno. He was the cranky old man in this whole drama, throwing stones at NBC and Leno from his perch atop the ratings at CBS. He seemed simultaneously pissed off at NBC, for doing the same thing to Conan as they did to him, and gleeful, for them wallowing in such misery.

If Leno has a problem with age and a sudden health deterioration, well, I guess CBS has the same problem with Letterman and a proper succession plan. They're in a kind of “strong” position if something catastrophic happens to him in the next couple of months, since Conan is a free agent and out on the market. But assuming that Conan does get snapped up by someone, then Craig Ferguson isn't a clear guy to step up into the 11:30 spot. To me, Ferguson follows more in the footsteps of past CBS 11:30 hosts like Tom Snyder and Craig Kilbourn - I liked both, but they have a niche appeal.

However, luckily for CBS, they have a natural promotion to make - Jon Stewart is just sitting there at Comedy Central at 11, ripe for the taking. Yes, Viacom technically no longer owns CBS, but they still have so many business dealings together that I think an ascension by Stewart after Letterman leaves is only natural. I also don't think that you'd have the bumpy issue of intellectual property if Stewart went from Comedy Central to CBS, and I think The Daily Show would transport pretty well to a major network, even if Stewart doesn't want to do a monologue. As is, it feels cramped at times with just 30 minutes, and adding another interview and/or a musical act each night would easily get you to an hour.

- At ABC, they seem pretty content with their current lineup of Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live. I love Jimmy Kimmel - I think he consistently does the best show, with weird, quirky bits like having his Uncle Frank and Security Guard Guillermo in skits, but his ratings have stayed pretty level after a slow start. Of the current Big Four late night hosts, I think he gets the best out of his interview segments, with a nod toward Colbert and Stewart on cable as being as his level.

Nightline is what it is: great counter programming to all of the late night yuk-yuks. Any time there is a major news event, its ratings swell. I'm sure it makes Kimmel's life more difficult, but the night as a whole is a critical success for ABC because of Nightline, and probably a commercial success as well. I don't think Kimmel or the rotating hosts of Nightline make anywhere near the salaries of Leno, Letterman and Conan. I also think there is little chance that Conan ends up at ABC, just because they'd have to essentially scrap two in-house programs that are average to above-average successes for them.

- Finally, I think Comedy Central deserves to be in this conversation, because The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both siphoning off the younger viewers that would formerly watch Letterman and Leno. Part of this is because those two hosts are getting old, but the other aspect is the brilliance of Stewart and Colbert.

I previously mentioned that Stewart seems destined for CBS at some point, and I imagine that when that happens, Colbert moves up to 11. I'm still not sure what they used to replace Colbert at that point, though. As much as I've railed against Comedy Central for no longer doing original programming, a slew of their shows have just been bad - Carlos Mencia, The Chocolate News, that debate show with Lewis Black, etc. I think there best option is to either just have another Daily Show, with John Oliver or another correspondent as the new host, or to spin something off from The Colbert Report. People seem to respond well to that format at night, and presumably, their new show could be different enough from Stewart to still succeed.

The NBC fart logo is from here. Colbert is from here. Letterman's photo is on about 500 different sites as a stock image, and Kimmel and Affleck comes from some weird photo index site that I'm not going to link to.

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...

A Twitter Poll: Wither Conan?

Unsurprisingly, Saturday Night Live opened up with a skit on the whole Conan and Leno late night divide. The opening sketch was only so-so to me, since Hammond doesn't really do a good Leno, and the Conan impersonation was even worse. The saving graces of the sketch were Larry King and Letterman, which were both spot-on. There was a much better take on it by Seth Meyers during Weekend Update, but they didn't release that clip on Hulu, unfortunately. (They did post the bits with Larry the Goose and Laser Cats though, both of which were great, and Sigourney Weaver did a nice job hosting.)

The latest news has Conan getting a settlement in the range of $30 million, with permission to having a new show on another network within a year. However, it seems like a deal hasn't been finalized. This whole drama is familiar to me, since I wrote a research paper on the whole transition from Carson to Leno and Letterman, and to an author on Slate - Their awesome television reporter, Troy Patterson, notes that The Late Shift is eerily similar to the Conan-Leno drama.

With all of this in mind, I asked people on Twitter last night what they thought was next for Conan. The most popular option out there in the public was that he'd end up on FOX, with Eddie and Dadkins guessing that as well.

If FOX ever wants to move into the late night weekday world, with a show at 11 or 11:30 or 11:35, then now is the moment to do so. Conan's annual salary is allegedly in the $20 million range, and of all the players for him, FOX no doubt has the deepest pockets. I also like FOX's attitude on this - In the past, they haven't been shy about sticking a thumb in the eyes of the networks, and this would be a pretty strong thumb. I don't think Conan would be a consistent ratings winner, but he would be competitive enough to hurt NBC, CBS and ABC.

The biggest impediment to a Conan show would be the current lack of FOX infrastructure in late night. I'm not sure what their affliates would think of a Conan show - FOX doesn't run programming at 10 or 10:30 right now, so Conan's lead-in would probably be weak. In the best case scenario, you might have a strong one-hour nightly news broadcast. In Rhode Island and most markets, you have a 30-minute newscast and then a syndicated show like Seinfeld. Neither is a great lead-in considering that the Big Three networks all run relatively-fresh programming at 10.

Miss Movies suggested that Conan would be good to takeover The Soup, and I agree with that. However, E! isn't going to shell out that kind of cash for Conan, which is the biggest problem I see with him going to a cable network. If Comedy Central didn't already have The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, then they might be interested. But with Stewart and Colbert in the fold, O'Brien probably costs too much to be a viable option for them at 10 or 12.

If Conan is willing to take a lot less money, then the artistic options open to him are great. For example, I could see a network like Comedy Central or TNT picking him up if his annual salary was, say, in the $1 million to $5 million range. TNT makes a lot of sense to me in that it is not owned by one of the Big Three - no way does Conan pop up on USA - and because they have been emphasizing their original program lately. They do run some NBC syndicated programming, which might upset the Peacock come renewal time, but losing Law and Order would not be an insurmountable loss, given that it has been repeated so many times now.

Regardless of where Conan ends up, I agree with Shelley - Conan's population has exploded with this whole drama, and he actually beat Letterman on Friday night, despite the weakness of the Leno lead-in. I think the whole fiasco will mean the end of NBC network head Jeff Zucker eventually, who frankly doesn't have much success to point to now as a reason for his continued employment.

Conan tells NBC to eff off

Ah, Conan. I heart you even more after learning that you told NBC to go screw with its wacky plan to restore Jay Leno to 11:30. Although Conan doesn't have wording in his contract that says The Tonight Show has to start at 11:30, I think NBC will have to pay him the balance of his contract regardless.

So really, good on Conan. I'm glad he has drawn a line in the sand and threatened to quit if he's forced to air The Tonight Show / his show from a midnight time slot. I'm hopeful that he ends up on FOX, or even eventually as Letterman's successor on CBS. Either network would probably let him go back to the more juvenile, randy and fun behavior he exhibited at 12:30. You know, like my included picture of the masturbating bear.

I got the sweet picture, and some of the Conan news, from this good entertainment blog.

Conan deserves better, as NBC goes back to Leno

The latest late night television rumor has been that The Jay Leno Show is finally, mercifully, dead.

If you ask me, it's about four months too late. From its inception, Leno's show was just a stale rehash of what he did on The Tonight Show, which mostly benefited from the fact that Leno was against Letterman. I've always liked Letterman more, but I realize his kind-of-wacky behavior rubbed audiences the wrong way, as well as guests, who normally preferred the canned bits and skits they could do on Leno's show. Letterman will always be cooler than Leno, who gets credit for being workmanlike but unremarkable, at least to me. The contrast between the two allowed for better ratings for both of them.

With Leno's 10 p.m. show getting sacked, the loser in all of this seems to be Conan. Contractually, I believe he has to be the host of The Tonight Show for a certain period of time, which means NBC will be doing some bizarre shell game where they push Conan's show back 30 minutes and run Leno at 11:30 for 30 minutes. I don't think this has the slightest chance at all of working, as NBC doesn't seem to realize that Leno isn't really a talent worth keeping. Conan's ratings have sucked because Leno has sucked. As proof, I'd offer the evidence that Rhode Island's flagship news station, WJAR-10, slipped out of first in the local ratings for the first time in forever this past year, probably because of how weak a lead-in Leno is.

It wouldn't surprise me if Conan's lawyers began looking for ways to break his contract the second NBC came to him with this wacky plan, and it also wouldn't surprise me if he bolted the second his contract expired if he can't break it beforehand. While CBS is seemingly set, ABC might want to make a big splash and go after Conan. Personally, I'd love to see Jimmy Kimmel get a shot at 11:30, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards with the recent reemergence of Nightline.

As far as what happens to the other NBC performers, does anyone care? I don't mind Jimmy Fallon - his show is surprisingly watchable, between The Roots band and odd, quirky bits like "Guess That Carpet Sample." However, he's not unquestionably great, and I haven't seen a ton of growth from him. If Leno does move back to 11:30, it definitely seems like the end of Carson Daly's miserable show, which is one of the few positive side effects of such a movie.

The picture of Conan with his monkey is from this site.