Last Word on Late Night

I'm not telling anyone who watches late night TV anything they don't already know or anything they haven't already been told, but I do write about broadcasting and maybe that gives me a right. (OK, I write about sports broadcasting, but this is only a blog; lighten up.) 

Late night TV has been important to NBC for almost 60 years. From Steve Allen to Jack Paar to Johnny Carson to Jay Leno to Conan O'Brien. All of them were broadcasters of the highest order and understood the importance of hosting live television 5 nights a week (or in Carson's case 4). 

The last 5 years, however, NBC has done all it could to completely ruin one of the medium's biggest franchises. No, this didn't start in the last month; this started when NBC executives decided Conan should succeed Jay. For some reason, Jay agreed to it. Conan's run on "Late Night" was ended and the nearly talented Jimmy Fallon took his place. 

Unfortunately, 5 years is a long time and by the time we actually got to it, Jay's ratings were still good and he decided leaving really wasn't something he wanted to do. 

Also by this time, Conan was thinking this 11:30 gig was going to be really cool. NBC was right there with him. They moved his people to L.A. and built a enormous, cavernous studio for him, not in Burbank but at Universal City. 

But Jay's griping about leaving -- and possibly going to another network -- scared NBC and started making the execs think of ways they could have their cake and eat it too. 

At the same time, NBC, and its parent company GE, was slogging through a really bad time in prime-time ratings and, in this economy, losing money. It didn't matter that the amount of money NBC was losing was a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money GE makes every year; losing money was losing money. 

Somebody thought of a solution to solve both problems: Put Jay on at 10 p.m. 5 nights a week instead of those really expensive prime-time dramas. 

At first glance, I liked this idea, primarily I have decried the elimination of the network variety show, such as "The Carol Burnett Show." "American Idol" is as close as we come these days, and it's not close to being as good as the old shows were. Show business is on the decline and the end of the variety show a big reason why. 

But it didn't work. Jay's show was awful. I have no idea why, but it was incredibly worse than his "Tonight Show." It was like taking a 1-man show that plays pretty well in a coffee house and putting it on Broadway. Exposed to the light, every flaw showed. 

In time it might have done better. Meanwhile, Conan did OK. It was much better than the ratings showed, but I admit it: I was watching David Letterman more than I was Conan. Conan would've gotten more viewers as time went on. Jay had the same early growing pains that Conan was going through before he overtook Dave. Seven months was not long enough to evaluate what Conan's performance. 

The thing that really forced NBC's hand, however, were the local stations. They had no problem with Conan; their problem was with Jay. Jay historically had done everything he could to boost affiliates; whenever he did club gigs in their towns, he'd go and meet the station GM and do some promotional work for them. But he was killing them now. The ratings for his 10 p.m. show were so much worse than what the prime-time dramas were getting, the local newscasts weren't getting any kind of carryover in the ratings. Some stations that were No. 1 in news at 11 p.m. were now No. 3. The affiliates were up in arms and some were threatening to put other programming on in place of Jay. 

NBC decided they needed to pull the plug on "The Jay Leno Show." but once again, instead of just canceling the show and being done with it, it tried to keep everything: the dramas, Jay and Conan. And for some reason, Jimmy. 

The execs’ solution was to put Jay’s show on for just a half-hour at 11:35, put Conan on at 12:05 and start Jimmy at 1:05. Jay bought into it like a good trouper, but Conan decided that to move “The Tonight Show” to 12:05 would really ruin everything the show has been since it started, i.e., the First Show of Late Night. Instead of moving the show, Conan decided he would move. 

That has led us to the incredible amount of snippiness in the media we’ve all been a witness to and to the cancellation on Conan’s show, which ended Friday night. 

OK, so let’s evaluate: 

Jay? Good broadcaster (something I deem important), good guy, has only tried to do what the company wanted him to do. The easiest, and maybe classiest thing would’ve been for Jay to bow out gracefully, but he didn’t and really can’t be blamed for not doing it. 

Conan? Also a good broadcaster, good guy, was promoted by the network with hype that no one probably could fulfill (how many people get a whole studio built for them?), and saw himself as custodian of an American treasure, even more than his employer did. Conan is the most talented member of this cast and NBC will regret getting rid of him. 

NBC executives? While I had no problem with them taking the prime-time dramas off at 10 p.m., a lot of people did (especially the producers of prime-time dramas). Like I said, putting Jay on at 10 didn’t seem that bad to me, but it turned out horribly. Of course, once a show gets an reputation, it’s hard to break it. What NBC did was the stuff of clichés: They were guilty of wanting to have their cake it and eat it too and of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

It’s a mess. We don’t know if Jay’s “new” “Tonight Show” will be as good as it used to be, now that his 10 p.m. has been so bad and we don’t know if he’ll get back to his Dave-beating days again. We don’t know what Conan’s next move will be. We only know he can’t say anything about NBC or give any interviews for a few months or start a new show on another network until September. Somehow, Jimmy survives, although I can’t figure out why. Dave enjoys higher ratings, but who knows for how long? Fortunately for NBC, the Winter Olympics will provide a literal cooling-off period. 

But as I heard a TV critic say on the radio the other day: More people have been talking about all of this than have been watching it.