Conan O'Brien announces microfracture surgery to stop NBC from moving his time slot

Anybody that has a sense of justice will detest him. It is NBC and Leno who look bad, and Conan the victim. Leno is very much a part of this (he did this to Letterman years ago), but even if Leno did not do this himself, he looks like a weasel benefiting from this and looks bad by implication. This is not far-fetched, just read every newspaper talking about this situation... the newspapers aren't in on a conspiracy, they reflect a simple instinct of whats right. I am not even a Conan fan. Houston didn't allow me to be one when he is on at 3am. This all may be forgotten by September, but at that point, much of Leno's viewers would have switched to Letterman or stopped watching all together.
Why? Because I, like the American people, know whats wrong when it is so black-and-white.

You are wrong! And the future will show this.
On that day I will point at you and laugh in your face!

 

A little history kid. When Leno and NBC kicked Letterman off as the heir-apparent of the Tonight show, Letterman beat Leno on the ratings for years and years. It was only until Jay Leno landed an interview with Hugh Grant (right after Hugh was caught with a prostitute,) that Leno started winning and has won ever since. That was the pivotal moment.

This is a new pivotal moment, and it is a far more significant moment than an interview with Hugh Grant. It will be hard for Leno to get out of this one. Landing a big interview isn't going to save him from this one. It'll have to be years from now until such an interview would change things.

 

Wouldn't it be hilarious if Conan did an interview with Letterman and swung ratings back to CBS?

 

Had to embed one of my favorite Triumph skits. I wonder if any Clutch Fans were in that crowd...

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What part of this sentence that you quoted was unclear to you?

Understandable since he was angry and felt wronged, and I don't blame him for using the pulpit he has to express his thoughts.

Read it. Then read it. Maybe a few more times if needed. See if you can grasp what it means. And then decide if what I was saying was that it was bad for him to do it.

 

We'll see - but at the end of the day, it's hard to say a guy who got $45MM (more than twice his annual salary, I believe) to do nothing for 6 months was really a victim. Conan certainly didn't get what he wanted, but he didn't have some kind of inherent right to the show or the timeslot anyway. He was a contracted employee of a media network. Networks cancel programs all the time and no one thinks the people on those shows were wronged. People initially get upset that their shows were cancelled and then move on.

What's so black and white here? The network made a ratings decision that (they feel) was in their best interests. They had to either let Leno or Conan go, and it made more financial sense for them to do the latter. They laid off an employee that didn't fit in their plans and gave him a massive severance and allowed him to directly compete with them in just 8 months.

Are you saying they had some kind of moral obligation to a late night talk show host? I'm not sure why the network has no right to determine when to hire or fire employees, or what shows to put on TV.

We'll see. Fortunately, since Leno will be back in March (?), we won't have to wait too long to really find out.

 

This is probably the only thing you can really pin on Jay. Coincidentally, it's also the crux of the matter.

Leno could've very easily ended this fiasco by rejecting NBC's offer since he also had timeslot protection, which, if NBC didn't honor, could've paid him 80 million.

 

Fans of these disagree with you.



Edit: As mentioned by moestavern19 to me...

 

Thanks, but I'm aware; I was around in the 90's. Leno's interview following Grant's arrest was what put him on track as the late night leader. I agree this is a similar situation for Conan but NBC obviously didn't give him the chance. In my initial post, I was responding to someone who claimed Ferguson beat Conan on the Tonight Show and late night.

 

I see all the racists have come out in this thread. The level of anti-Italian sentiment here is apparently very clear cut. Very sad to see. This combined with the fiasco that is the Jersey Shore has made for a tough few months for God's chosen people.

 

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsideth...t-show-grabs-big-ratings.html#top-comment-nav

Conan scored a 4.8 rating for the 18-49 demo. That is just sick! For reference, that basically beats out all PRIMETIME shows in the demo except for American Idol. Also, Leno's final Tonight Show was a 3.5.

I know this is a special case, that's still ungodly impressive if you think about it. Considering he's on NBC, it's Friday night, and he's CANCELED.

 

"Here comes a greaseball!"

 

What numbers did Letterman pull after he announced his affair?

 

I think the car was mildly believable for a moment, until you realize why buy the car when they could just rent it, or have it on loan from a museum in this case.

I just found the bit to fall flat with me after the first night though. Don't know what I was expecting, but a champion race horse in a snuggie and a Smithsonian skeleton dumping caviar onto a Picasso wasn't quite it. That's just me though, but pretty much everything else the entire week was gold. Robin Williams and Tom Hanks were absolutely awesome. Ed Helms was great. I thought Steve Carrell would do a bit more, but that's ok...I was kind of expecting him to be in character and to drop a "that's what she said" in there. Niel Young's performance was rather touching I thought. And of course the send off with Will Ferrell was just about as perfect as you can get.

 

I don't really think you can just count the Tonight Show like it's any other program.

Also, the money doesn't really matter. It's like saying a professional athlete can't get upset about something or isn't effected by something happening on the field/court, simply because he gets paid a lot.

It's not hard to relate to the concept of Conan being wronged; I think at one time TTS was considered the 'top of the mountain' for a lot of comedians. There's no real reason to believe that he's lying when he says that getting to host it really was a 'dream' for him; putting nearly 2 decades into NBC for the chance to get there is a testament to that.

Unless you believe he is lying and he doesn't really care about the tonight show and is just doing it for the job and the money. But there isn't really any reason to lean that way.

If you take the specifics out of it, lots of folks can understand the idea of having a goal or something you really strive for; something you wanted that was the very top of your profession, for example. And then having that taken away without ever really getting a chance? It's something people can relate to.

 

1.3 among the 18-49. Letterman's audience is very, very old.

 

Cheer up, I hear there's a sale on track suits at Foot Locker. Chosen people, eh? Like Nero, and Pontius Pilate?

 

Conan had us all fooled, He's been planning this for over a year.


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That was awesome.

"Which one of these buttons calls your parents to come pick you up?" :grin:

"He finally gets his first kiss after years of practicing on his sister." :grin:

The Spock nerd flipping everyone off. :grin:

Rep + 1. :grin:

 

With network execs like that, it makes sense they don't have a late show.....