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.

The LA Times wrote an article yesterday about freelance late-night joke writers, and having proudly been one myself, I had to comment.

The first thing that got me about the article was how apparently it’s some huge revelation that most of the late-night shows take freelance jokes and pay only $75 to $100 per joke.  I understand how the general public might not be aware of it, but this has been around for many many many years, and most people who work in Hollywood know about it, so what shocks me most is the fact the LA Times and the WGA are playing dumb about it, as if it’s suddenly news to them.

The other thing that gets me about the article is how they are all completely missing the point.

I freelanced briefly years ago for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  I heard through the grapevine that they took submissions by fax and I thought it would be a great starter credit if I could sell some jokes to The Tonight Show.  So I wrote some jokes and faxed them in.

I am hugely proud of the fact that already on my second day I sold a joke.  Jay Leno told my joke to a huge laugh and even did some follow-up with Kevin Eubanks.  I heard from many people who said they tried for years to sell a joke and never sold any.  I continued faxing and selling for a short while, but soon stopped because I had already accomplished what I had set out to do.  And now I proudly list that credit in my bio.

Do I think $75 for a joke is too small?  First of all, it was never about the money — it was about getting a starter credit to build a resume and slowly break into the biz.  And on that count it was well worth it.  But let’s even talk about the money.  The problem isn’t the $75 a joke — the problem is that you’re not being paid for all the other jokes you submitted that were NOT purchased.  They have a staff and most of the jokes will come from the staff, so you’re not selling many jokes.  It’s the not being paid for the unsold jokes that’s the real kicker.  And that’s why I soon stopped because I had already gotten the credit I was looking for and therefore it didn’t monetarily make sense anymore.  (To be clear, I mean credit as in something I put on my resume — it is true that you don’t receive any official screen credit as such.)

So here’s how I feel about the situation.  If the freelance system is being abused, that needs to be outed and corrected, but at the same time, having freelance opportunities available for the people trying to break in is HUGELY important.  What the LA Times article illustrates to me is a current failing in unions, who don’t see it as their responsibility to help define the proper break-in path of newbies (and make sure that there ARE viable paths). The union members say the responsibility of the union is only to their current dues-paying members, and in my opinion that is short-sighted and wrong.  And will continue to lead to non-union newbies undermining the union because they need to do whatever they can to try to break in.  Until the unions take on some form of responsibility for people trying to break into the biz, I don’t see how they can complain.

So the solution isn’t to cut those freelance opportunities for newbies, it’s to make sure that this is being used properly as a starter credit and not being misused to either mistreat the freelancers on the one hand or take away any staff jobs on the other.

Listen, I walked around in circles with picket signs and will do so again in a heartbeat, but as big a union supporter as I am, I think this aspect of only being responsible to the current dues-paying members and not to the profession as a whole (which includes the newbies trying to break in) is a disgrace.