The Tonight Show Debacle
My thoughts on the Tonight Show debacle:
1. It’s a mess.
2. NBC is a disaster and Jeff Zucker needs to be fired. He should have been fired years ago. As you can tell from two posts ago, I don’t like him very much (to put it mildly) and I blame him over the years for the demise of NBC and sitcoms in general. (And in fact it’s personal for me in the sense that he was there decimating sitcom jobs at the very time I was trying to break into the industry.) He is very much at fault in this late-night debacle as well.
3. Conan and fans have every right to rail at NBC, demand the firing of Jeff Zucker, and rally NBC to keep Conan as host of The Tonight Show starting at 11:35 pm.
4. However, where Conan fans have crossed the line for me is their recent shifting of gears to focus on Jay Leno, as if he did something wrong here. They are now in petty territory, and they are dead wrong, not realizing that they are the ones being hypocrites if they go down this road.
People have every right to hate Jay in terms of personal comedic preference, just as they have the right to like or dislike any performer in terms of individual tastes. I personally like both Jay and Conan and think both have their strengths and weaknesses. Jay is a monologue master. No one comes close. Conan is pretty weak on monologue but is great with wacky sketch and taking more risks. I have no problem with people saying “I like Conan and hate Jay” or “I like Jay and hate Conan” because that’s a statement of personal preference.
What I have a problem with are statements like “Jay is a total hypocrite for not retiring,” “Jay is a backstabber who screwed over Conan,” “Jay showed his true colors,” and the like. Not only is it not true, but in fact if you really want to proceed down this path then someone like me will be forced to point out that actually the reverse is more true.
About six years ago, Conan got antsy to move to the 11:30 spot and threatened to leave NBC. NBC’s solution was to screw over Jay and force his retirement in five years time. So right there we have the seeds for this mess because Conan acted like a total douche by going after The Tonight Show without letting Jay retire on his own time.*
[*Now it certainly is possible that Conan innocently was just trying to get more money and it was totally on NBC to retire Jay in five years and they convinced Conan that Jay suggested it himself. That seems far-fetched to me, but even in that scenario the bad guy is still NBC, not Jay. So we have a scenario where both Conan and NBC acted like douches and a scenario where just NBC did, but there is NO scenario where Jay did.]
What Conan should have done back then is either decide to move or decide to wait until Jay retired on his own time. If anything, this debacle points to how greediness can sometimes come back and bite you in the butt. Jay never said he would be leaving showbiz (only the show — which he did) and he is free to do his own show. And even if he outright lied about the situation it wouldn’t matter because he had just been forced to put a positive spin on being royally screwed over. He owes the guy who screwed him over nothing and once Conan decides to leave the show rather than move to 12, that opens the door for Jay to go back without breaching his word.
Hate NBC. Rally them for CoCo. Hate Jay because of personal taste. Wish Jay had completely retired. But expect and demand his complete retirement? Seriously? Is that the way it works — demand someone you dislike to stop working? Man, if it worked that way, there would be a whole lot more unemployed people in this world. I understand you’re not happy not getting your way, but this particular path of pouting is not the right one to go down because it forces us to examine the complete history of douchery in the matter and Conan comes up short there.
Bottom-line: If you are a Conan fan, I understand your pain. It absolutely sucks what’s going on. However, if you want to remain on the right side of the truth, I would suggest sticking to railing against NBC (or Leno in terms of your personal preference if you have to), rather than proceeding down the demonizing “Leno is a hypocrite” route. Because that path only makes you a hypocrite for accepting Conan’s behavior six years ago. And while I like both Jay and Conan, I’m just not prepared to selectively rewrite history to get the outcome I want.
If you want a much more in-depth and insightful history of this whole debacle, check out Mark Evanier’s blog post.
At this point in the game, I think it’s fair to demonize and blame both NBC and Jay.
Jay may have been forced out, but once that happened he did not have to hang around the network that you argue dealt him a raw deal. He could have saved some face and made a move to another network. Instead, Jay went along with NBC’s destructive plans, which not only included eliminating 5 hours of scripted drama each week, but created a show which stripped The Tonight Show of its legacy and appeal, by stealing A-list celebs, tackling monologue material first and simply throwing off the whole balance of late night television.
And now, when NBC tries to destroy The Tonight Show legacy just that much more, Jay again doesn’t step up. Conan comes out as the only guy with any integrity and respect for the job, the show and the business of late night.
As for Conan’s douchery, it’s speculation, which you admit, but then base nearly your entire defense of Leno on that speculation. I’m not saying it didn’t happen that way, I’m just saying that neither you nor I know how it went down. What I do know is that both NBC and Leno are treating the most storied late night show in history as if it was some old piece of furniture in a storage unit, just trying to make space for all of their new crap.
So, I, for one, will continue to place at least some of the blame on Jay. And is he a hypocrite? If the link below is any indication, then yes, he is among the most hypocritical of all the hypcrites.
http://showhype.com/video/jay-s-2004-announcement-1/
Thanks for your opinion, Shawn, but it seems to me you are making the same errors in thought that many Conan fans are making, where everything up for interpretation is taken as fact to demonize their opponent and everything possibly going against their conclusions is ignored or explained away. Let’s look at the actual indisputable facts here.
INDISPUTABLE FACT 1: Six years ago, when Conan’s contract came up for renewal and he threatened to leave the network if he didn’t get the 11:30 slot, NBC made the decision to replace Jay with Conan in five years time.
INDISPUTABLE FACT 2: When that happened, Jay responded with the now infamous clip.
INDISPUTABLE FACT 3: After the NBC affiliates threatened action, NBC made the decision now to cancel The Jay Leno Show and move him back to late night. After Conan refused to go along with their idea of bumping him a half-hour back to make room for a half-hour Jay Leno show to proceed him, NBC then decided to replace Conan with Jay as host of The Tonight Show.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
IF1: You either misread me earlier or I didn’t explain myself well enough. I am not saying that this point is speculation. It is fact. A clip doesn’t exist of it because these were business dealings that took place behind closed doors, but it was covered in all the Hollywood trade papers at the time and was known. I was here in Hollywood at the time. I read and heard about it. So we have an initial douche move by Conan to go after The Tonight Show before Jay had decided to retire. Back in the Carson days, Jay went after a guarantee to be Carson’s replacement when Carson chose to retire. That’s exactly what Conan should have done — get a guarantee that he’d be the new host whenever Jay retires. But I guess he didn’t want to wait that long.
[The part I was speculating about was what if we were trying to give Conan the greatest benefit of the doubt here that really he wasn't expecting NBC to choose between him and Jay, but it was just a ploy to get NBC to give him more money, and then NBC surprised him by actually agreeing to replace Jay in five years time. I don't believe this for a second, but even in that far-fetched scenario, I was just pointing out that NBC is still the bad guy. (And in that far-fetched scenario, while Conan had better motives, it is still a douchey move on his part that causes Jay to get kicked out before he was ready to retire.)]
The only way Jay is at fault here is if it was purely Jay’s suggestion to retire without Conan even forcing the issue. NO ONE is claiming that’s what happened. However, there is this clip, which brings us to IF2.
IF2: Okay, so Jay gets shoved aside in five years for Conan and he has to decide how he’ll react. One suggestion from Leno-bashers is to leave NBC at that point. Only one problem. He’s under contract for another five years (actually 5+ because there’s still time left on his current contract). Conan had a hand to play now because of a breach of contract by NBC, but there was no breach of contract by NBC back then. Jay would be out of luck for 5+ years. He can’t go to another network for 5+ years. He’s screwed and he knows it.
So he decides he’ll be gracious in his public statement on his show. Perfectly understandable in my opinion. And I certainly wouldn’t hold someone to anything they said at that moment because I know they’re just trying to put a positive spin on something they’re not happy about — just as Conan last year spoke of knowing about Jay’s move to 10pm and spoke highly of Jay continuing to be his lead-in for years to come, which I know was garbage Conan just said to put a positive spin on something he wasn’t happy about, and I wouldn’t call him a liar or hypocrite over it.
But let’s actually examine Jay’s statements on the clip anyway.
- First, he makes it clear that six months earlier his contract had already been renewed for five years but then recently Conan threatened to move so NBC came to Jay and told him they didn’t want to lose Conan. [Thus alluding to IF1.]
- He then talks as if he thought about it and happily mutually agreed to retiring from The Tonight Show. [And if you believe that, I have a bridge you may be interested in purchasing. Do you really think he had the option to say no and then NBC would have told Conan to walk? He was screwed and had no other options at that moment and was just putting a positive spin on it all.]
- He then makes it clear that he’s not leaving showbiz, but just The Tonight Show. [And in fact he followed through on this exactly.]
- Finally he then speaks about not wanting to see a nasty transition and that it played a part in his thinking. [This again is pure spin because he had no other options at this point. Of course, although nastiness was indeed avoided at the time he left the show, that clearly isn't at all the case anymore to put it mildly.]
So my take on the clip is this:
a) I wouldn’t expect to hold a person to what I know is just spin they are saying only because they are in a powerless position at that moment. But the Leno-bashers instead take this clip as the gospel truth without acknowledging any of the backstory in the matter. You can maybe say, well why did you put this spin on it; why didn’t you just say you really don’t want to go but you’re being forced out? But think about it. That would have led to an untenable hostile work environment with NBC for the next five years. So he sucked it up and spun it positively.
b) He didn’t even end up outright lying — he basically followed the letter of what he said rather than the spirit. The vast majority of us would act the very same way if we had gotten screwed over in the past. You’d have to be Mother Theresa to go out of your way for someone who had caused you to be screwed over in the past. I understand Conan fans *wishing* that Jay wasn’t around anymore, but it is unreasonable to *expect* it from him and to vilify him for merely existing. He has the right to pursue his own career. It would be different if he had decided on his own to retire entirely like Carson, but Jay was never given that chance. He was screwed over in the past through the actions of Conan. Can you not see that it is therefore unreasonable to expect him to bend over backwards for Conan now? It doesn’t make him a bad person; it just makes him not Mother Theresa.
IF3: So that brings us to this past year. Jay decides to do a 10pm show rather than leave NBC. That’s his right. Jay claims that given his contract he would have had to wait 12-18 months if he moved somewhere else. Now some Leno-bashers suggest he did a bad show on purpose as part of his master plan. The notion that he intentionally did a bad show to ruin Conan is insane. While we all agree that the 10pm experiment was a bad one, it did have a small chance of succeeding, which would have made Jay look fantastic. Didn’t work out. Jay is cancelled. This is finally a breach of contract by NBC so this is the only time you can suggest he stand up to NBC to save Conan’s job. But lawsuits are a tricky thing; there is no given that things would work out for Jay. And we’re also back to asking him to bend over backwards for someone who had caused him to be screwed over in the past. Why should he? Okay, so he’s not Mother Theresa. You’re basically saying, “He is a vile human being and I will never forgive him for putting his own needs above Conan’s and not being Mother Theresa.”
My response has gone on way longer than I intended, but the bottom line I am getting at is this:
1. It is hypocritical to expect complete sainthood from Jay, vilify him for not placing Conan above himself, and yet never acknowledge Conan’s historical role in this mess.
2. NBC is the one making business decisions all along the way that are screwing both Jay and then Conan. Yet Conan fans have turned into a seething ball of hatred for Jay, putting their hatred of him even above NBC. It’s pure mob mentality and totally ridiculous. Whereas Conan fans had the high moral ground to begin with, they lost it when they morphed into a shameful Destroy Leno mob.
Conan himself has only continued to attack NBC and hasn’t gone down the Leno path. His fans should really take a cue from that.