Late night TV has not been this entertaining for me in a long time. It’s comedy gold at NBC’s expense. I’ve never much of a fan of late night talk shows, especially since getting a DVR, but I’ve enjoyed the last week quite a bit. I’ve never been a fan of Conan, but he’s doing a great job considering his situation. The jokes are hilarious, mocking NBC over and over, reminding me of when Howard Stern worked for WNBC.
I think that NBC caused this problem from the start. After David Letterman’s defection back when Leno took the helm of the Tonight Show, NBC became very paranoid that it would happen again. They decided to retire Jay Leno while he was on top, and didn’t want to retire. All because they were afraid of Conan leaving and becoming the competition. While I liked Leno a lot more than Conan at the time, I believe that Conan should get to keep the Tonight Show as is, in its current timeslot.
It is ridiculous to blame Conan for NBC’s woes, considering the ratings failure of NBC as a whole. Late night TV is dependent on people watching the news, which is dependent on the prime time schedule. As has been publicized for the past months, the poor primetime performance of NBC (including the Jay Leno Show) has been hurting local evening news. NBC is acting like changing the late night lineup will somehow save the network, but they should be looking to primetime first. NBC has cancelled good show after good show, and even the good shows that they keep seem to barely get renewed.
They say that any publicity is good publicity, proven as I’m watching late night TV when I haven’t in years, but this publicity is going to be a problem down the road. It’s polarizing NBC’s audience, suggesting that they choose between Conan and Leno (perhaps permanently). I’m not going to solve the problem, NBC hasn’t called yet, but however it turns out it has been great TV (especially because it’s at NBC’s expense)!
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