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.

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.