How did NBC manage to screw up its late night?

[Actuary321]

Originally Posted by keyser soze

I think it would be great if Conan could have Letterman be his final Tonight Show guest.

How about get Dave, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Craig Ferguson and Carson Daily all together to bash Jay? For good measure bring along their band directors to trash Kevin.

Maybe Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daily might have to bow out to keep their jobs.

[Barney Fife]

Originally Posted by Pseudolus

Well, he's certainly much livelier.

Well he's still alive.

[The Arbitrary]

Jay Leno should come out with a "I'm F*cking Conan O'Brien" song, although I think the spirit of the song will have to change dramatically.

[Meshuga]

Originally Posted by ElDucky

I heard the buyout was $20 million and another source said $80 million. At first they threatened to keep him on the contract for years so he couldn't go anywhere else. Problem with that is they couldn't give Jay the Tonight Show, or something like that.

good morning america said somewhere between 25 and 40 million

[Patrick Bauer]

The only just reward for Leno and NBC would be the rating death of the Tonight Show. Having the Tonight Show canceled with Leno riding it into the ground would make me smile.

[glassjaws the t-shirt]

NBC's late night sucked anyway.

[Ginormous76]

Originally Posted by Jay Leno

This is all business. If you don't get the ratings, they take you off the air.

Unless you're Jay Leno, then they just screw over the guy that everyone loves.

[mlschop]

Originally Posted by Ginormous76

Unless you're Jay Leno, then they just screw over the guy that everyone loves.

Maybe I'm not getting what you're saying, but it doesn't appear that viewers loved Conan as much as they loved Leno.

Leno was pulling 5M viewers on "Tonight," which Conan wasn't hitting 3M. That's a huge difference IMO.

That coupled with the disaster at prime time makes booting Conan for Leno kind of a no brainer.

[Saint Kepler]

Originally Posted by Ginormous76

Unless you're Jay Leno, then they just screw over the guy that everyone loves.

Conan was offerred acshow at 12:05. He turned it down.

[Smurf]

Originally Posted by mlschop

Maybe I'm not getting what you're saying, but it doesn't appear that viewers loved Conan as much as they loved Leno.

Leno was pulling 5M viewers on "Tonight," which Conan wasn't hitting 3M. That's a huge difference IMO.

That coupled with the disaster at prime time makes booting Conan for Leno kind of a no brainer.

I agree. Leno's show is being blamed for Conan's bad ratings because of bad lead-in. But Conan started in June, at least 3 months before Jay started in prime time, and yet he lost a lot of Jay's Tonight show audience.

Conan has the young audience, same audience as Stewart and Colbert. Conan did well in his Late Night show because it was after Colbert. He is not right for the Tonight show, which has the older audience. I can't take more than 5 or 10 minutes of him. He seems jumpy and anxious all the time.

So I switched to Lettermen when Jay left. Dave is funny but he can be mean and repetitive. Boy, can he beat a dead horse. I'm switching back to Leno when he goes back to the Tonight show. I can watch Stewart and Colbert the next day during re-run.