Jay's In. Conan's Out. But NBC's Nightmare is Far From Over - By Ed Martin

What a month NBC is having I can39t remember a time when a broadcast network has been so thoroughly trashed by its own talent in primetime and in late night on its own air During the last two weeks Conan O39Brien and Jay Leno seized every opportunity to belittle their employer Throughout NBC39s recent telecast of the Golden Globe Awards and its redcarpet arrivals past and present NBC primetime stars Julianna Margulies and Tina Fey among them got their digs in tooNBC one of the mightiest communications companies in the world is currently a laughingstock The situation is much worse than the late Seventies and early Eighties when the network was burdened with so many primetime misfires that classact Johnny Carson dubbed it quotthe House of Hitsquot Indeed in terms of public perception NBC now finds itself in worse shape than did CBS twenty years ago when the median age of its audience kept moving in the wrong direction and the network was often spoken of in the same breath as adult diapers and denture cream It took CBS years to get past that How long will it take for NBC to move past the mammoth mess it has madeThe root cause of this crisis has been marginalized amid all the malicious merriment in the media The facts are these When rising to an exciting new challenge O39Brien and Leno proved equally ineffectiveO39Brien did a lousy job of hosting The Tonight Show beginning with his first few shows back in June and continuing right up until two weeks ago when he finally caught fire and transformed Tonight into a platform from which to hilariously vent against his employers at least through last Friday after which he joined the swelling ranks of America39s unemployed albeit with a comfy 32 million cushion for his troubles Had O39Brien lived up to the expectations of the executive team NBC had in place five years ago when it made the decision to jettison Jay Leno in 2009 and give him the Tonight show much of the recent drama would never have occurred NBC39s only problem would have been Leno39s failure to live up to the expectations of the executive team NBC had in place one year ago when it made the decision to strip a Tonightlike show starring Leno each week night at 10 pmSo what went wrongTeam O39Brien didn39t so much take on Tonight as take it over turning it into Late Night with Conan O39Brien 20 Situated in a gigantic state of the art studio O39Brien39s Tonight played like an unnecessarily overproduced version of Late Night one utterly devoid of the hip latenight intimacy that had made O39Brien so appealing since he entered the arena way back in 1993Meanwhile Team Leno slapped together The Jay Leno Show a lifeless comedyvariety program for its new 10 pm home They turned over entirely too much time to prerecorded bits by comedians of marginal talent not to mention the ridiculously repetitive Green Car Challenge segment in which celebrities tried to drive fuel efficient cars around a track in less time than had previous celebrity drivers This was the stuff of bad basic cable programming Leno and his instudio guests were made to sit and squirm in boxy blue chairs that made even the most attractive people look lumpy rumpled and generally uncomfortable The set was a study in sterility it had all the charm of a midrange hotel lobby filled with potted shrubs from a nearby Home Depot Even Leno39s monologues sucked until the shit hit the fan Like O39Brien he kicked ass these last two weeksAs I39ve said before if NBC had to move Leno into primetime he should have been slotted at 8 pm a time period NBC executives had previously spent a lot of time telling us was largely dead to them Remember the network has a long history of providing outstanding quality dramas at 10 They got it bassackwards with the Leno experiment They chose to play to their weaknesses at 8 and against their strengths at 10 No wonder it all went to piecesSo what happens in the months and years to come The questions are certainly exciting The big one concerns Conan39s future Where will he end up There was much talk about Fox until word spread that its affiliates are feeling fat and happy with their current latenight syndicated fare Why mess with success Comedy Central and FX have both come up amid the rampant speculation but isn39t O39Brien too expensive for basic cableI39d like to see him land at ABC the network that wanted to snatch up Leno before NBC offered him a shot at primetime glory Imagine the possibilities inherent in a latenight block consisting of Conan O39Brien and Jimmy KimmelSomeone asked me if I thought CBS might cast off the likeable Craig Ferguson and slot O39Brien after Late Show with David Letterman the logic being that Dave is getting old Ferguson isn39t strong enough to one day move into Letterman39s spot and wouldn39t it be grand to have Conan on deck I would love to one day see O39Brien hold court in the legendary Ed Sullivan Theater but I don39t see this happeningMeanwhile with Leno back at 1135 pm and Conan out of the picture does this mean Jimmy Fallon is now the Tonight Show39s man on deck the heir to the throne when Jay calls it quits or is quotfiredquot for a third time by NBC as Leno himself might put it I think Fallon is just fine on Late Night but I think he would have a harder time with Tonight than O39Brien

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Jay's In. Conan's Out. But NBC's Nightmare is Far From Over - By Ed Martin

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