I feel like I’m channeling Conan O’Brien’s The Tonight Show: Classic Clips bit right now, as I take a look back all the way to June of 2009, when the giant, orange-coiffed host was my Ginger of the Month. I was still finding my footing in writing on this website, in general, and especially when paying tribute to a new redhead each month – Conan was my second Ginger, after all – I found it difficult to put my love for the man into words. So, seven and a half months later, I’ll try again as we say “goodbye” to the National Broadcasting Company’s version of Conan O’Brien.
I’ve always been a pretty shitty television viewer; I’m pretty forgetful, even with the shows I love, but DVR has served as a sort of saving grace. I don’t have to remember times or days or check for new episodes – I just set a series recording and watch it when I can. Of course, this type of viewership is killing television (not to mention Hulu and iTunes and other sources of online-viewing). No longer are people watching shows at their specified air-date (you know, when ratings are accounted for); they’re choosing when they want to watch. Unfortunately, the same goes for my watching of Late Night with Conan O’Brien and, subsequently, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.
I can’t remember the first time I watched Late Night, but I’ve never been a regular viewer. I’d normally watch on the nights I knew a favorite celebrity of mine would be a guest. Or – as the internet and my e-girlfriend, Oh No They Didn’t!, came around – I’d just watch those particular segments online. It’s not that I didn’t like Conan and Andy (and then just Conan), it’s just that I was a big poopy head. I honestly have no excuse. Yes, I’m usually in bed fairly early, but what about when I got DVR? Poopy head. Regardless, though, my viewership never really mattered, as I’ve never had a Nielsen Box and I’ve never been asked to keep a diary for the company. So, no matter how little or much I liked a show – or if I watched the show at its allotted time – it wasn’t up to me whether a show was safe or not. And I’ve definitely lost some amazing shows because of it (Pushing Daisies and Aliens in America are just two of many).
And this is where NBC comes in and fucks everything up. I’ll concede that, maybe, they made a mistake in changing things up for no real reason other than to change them. Jay Leno, unfortunately for those of us with taste, was doing extremely well at his post of The Tonight Show – though, with lead-ins like Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU, Carrot Top would’ve also had amazing viewership. But I digress. Perhaps they should’ve let Jay run his own course because, obviously, despite what he said in 2004, the dude was pretty pissed about being given the boot. Which is understandable! It’s the age-old case of agism, really. NBC wanted little Conan to take over and bring in more young viewers. The problem with that, though, is that we young viewers don’t control the Nielsen ratings. College campuses don’t come equipped with Nielsen boxes or diaries. Young couples, fresh into adulthood, aren’t given the opportunity to have their viewership monitored and taken into account with the rest of the Nielsen “families”. Not to mention, this generation (mine and the age groups immediately above and below) just doesn’t watch television that way anymore.
We watch television whenever we want. If we miss its original air-date and -time, we’ll watch it online (if we don’t have DVR). And, remember a few years ago, when NBC took their shows off of iTunes? Heroes’ ratings plummeted (and have never recovered), and it was just the beginning of the fourth place-ness NBC is currently experiencing. Fortunately for them, they realized their mistake and rescinded their fuck-up the next year – and went balls deep into Hulu – but the damage had already been done. But NBC still doesn’t seem to understand how this younger generation works. They want our viewership so fucking badly, but they don’t take into account the ways we actually, duh, view. This is evident on Hulu, where they leave out skits and musical numbers of Saturday Night Live episodes. They rely so heavily on Nielsen’s numbers without giving much thought to DVR views and online “play” numbers.
And this is where NBC fucks up more. We get that Jay doesn’t have a family to hang out with, and wearing a suit of denim can become pretty boring and lonely (not to mention fucking your cars), but he managed to weasel his way back into the schedule. And this time, during primetime. Long-loved shows, like ER, were cancelled; new shows, like Southland, that were promised renewal, were sent packing; and long-running shows, like Law & Order, were ripped from their Wednesdays at 10pm time slot and banished to the ghost-town of Friday nights (this statement works on many levels: one, two ghost shows air on CBS on Fridays (and they both do amazingly in the ratings) and two, no one watches television on Friday anymore (unless it’s about ghosts); also, I am a wordsmith). They thought this Leno-experiment would’ve been the biggest success they’d ever seen: they were going to save money by producing a much cheaper hour than a scripted drama, AND they were going to retain that “Leno lead-in”! Things were going to start happening to them now!
Unfortunately for NBC, they didn’t realize that people like scripted television more than Jay Leno. Perhaps the reason Jay enjoyed such large ratings all of this time is because he had those scripted shows leading him in, not to mention the news immediately before. Lots of people just leave things on; I’ve watched plenty of shitty shows because I wasn’t paying attention enough to change the channel. I know one person, in particular, enjoyed falling asleep to Jay Leno. That doesn’t say much about his content, does it?
Alright, back to Conan. Understandably, his first week on The Tonight Show put up some big numbers, despite the shaky and awkward start. And, also understandably, the ratings dwindled as the weeks went on. Jay Leno experienced the same tough transition his first few months and years when he took over. And, if anyone can remember (or do some fucking research), they’ll find that Conan experienced some difficulty when he first took over the Late Night throne from David Letterman (who must be feeling so vindicated over all of this, having been the victim of Big Jaw Leno all those years ago). He was on a bi-weekly renewal basis for the first three years of his time there. Obviously, Jay’s influence wasn’t doing much for him, huh?
Well, Conan had three months to get slightly comfortable before NBC’s experiment with The Jay Leno Show debuted. Of course, Jay experienced good ratings for the first week or so (out of general curiosity from viewers), and almost instantly began to struggle. He struggled so much, affiliates all over the country were threatening to stop airing his show because their eleven o’clock news shows were doing abysmally, having to follow a show no one was watching. So, as with any television show doing poorly in the ratings, NBC planned to cancel his show. AND THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN IT. “Jay, you tried, you failed, we’ll see you at the reunion.” And, I mean, his failure shouldn’t have even been this much of a shock. How often has Jay been up for an Emmy compared to his contemporaries? Conan’s writers were up for awards every single year since 1996 (not to mention, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Late Show with David Letterman were the usual contenders and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was almost never nominated).
But I continually digress. Jay should’ve bowed out like a gentleman (as he hinted at in 2004), but he didn’t. He wormed his way back on the airwaves, and failed miserably. He had the opportunity to leave on top, but he decided to be a jerk and play Daddy Lead-in again. Conan never had the chance to rake audiences back in on his own. They’d left after their curiosity was peaked, and they definitely weren’t coming back now that Jay was stinking up the place. And NBC is so far up Jay’s butthole, they didn’t give a second thought to changing the time of the motherfucking TONIGHT SHOW, to accommodate a would-be shitty half our of Jay. The Tonight Show, a show that has been around for fifty-six years and has always aired, um, tonight. Like Coco alluded to in his brilliant “People of Earth” statement, airing the show at 12:05 isn’t tonight anymore. 12:05 is tomorrow.
And this is where NBC bullied Conan into an impossible corner. Conan had the opportunity to leave NBC fives years ago. He was receiving offers from ABC, among other places; so, to keep him around and, hopefully, bring in more viewers (re: money), they promised to give him The Tonight Show in five years if he stuck around. And so he did. And then those five years came, and he was, again, having to follow Jay after being given only three months to hold the night on his own. And then, when The Jay Leno Show failed, NBC offered Big Jaw a half-hour show immediately following the news. Nevermind that that timeslot already belonged to Conan. Nevermind that Conan uprooted his entire family and staff, had a majestic Mario Bros.-inspired set built, and finally realized his dreams when he moved to Los Angeles and took over The Tonight Show. Conan never had a say in the 11:30-matter. He would either have to agree to move the show back a half hour, or leave. These were the choices he was given, while the man who was to blame – the man whose show was cancelled – was given some sort of bullshit-backwards royal treatment. Never in my life have I experienced seeing someone fail and then have the opportunity to put someone else out of a job. THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
Honestly, when I went into writing this entry, I planned on writing a few things about Conan O’Brien. And now it’s turned into nearly two thousand words of rant and information we’ve all read or skimmed through by now, but I just couldn’t not. I’ve been yelling this stuff to anyone who will listen and jointly becoming more and more upset with every angry release. I don’t enjoy the audition round of American Idol as much as most people because I don’t enjoy watching nice people feel like shit. And I especially don’t like that the entire country (or world!) is watching it, too. And that’s exactly how I feel about this entire situation. We watched Conan O’Brien’s dream come true. We watched as he tearfully left New York and his Late Night post. We watched as he clumsily made his way to Los Angeles (forgetting his keys along the way) and struggled through the first odd week. We watched as his ratings struggled, like a lot of us watched them struggle in the beginning of his tenure at Late Night. But we never imagined that it would be taken away from him. We didn’t know we should’ve been rallying for him from the start because seven months down the road, Jay and his Chin would come in and bully him out of a job. And now, in front of the world, Conan is being let go from a position he’s wanted his whole life. He’s being treated as more of a failure than he is (sure his ratings weren’t great, but he definitely didn’t deserve the shitstain of a fallout that’s resulted from someone else’s failure). Affiliates weren’t threatening The Tonight Show, after all. Just Jay’s piece of poop hour. And Conan is just embarrassed, as anyone in his position would be. It’s one thing to stumble in front of a few people on the street, but it’s another to do it on national television. He bitterly jokes about it, but I can only imagine how hurt he truly is.
I can’t stop thinking about how he must feel when he goes home, as the days near to the end of his reign (I really don’t want to know how he must feel today :( – I think I’m crying right now). I can’t stop thinking about what must’ve been going through his brain when this whole thing started. Who knew that Conan’s future depended so much on Jay’s dumbfuck show succeeding? I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS ENTIRE THING, OBVIOUSLY. I mean, does this mean that every cancelled show’s replacement can be replaced by said cancelled show when said replacement fails? If so – can we bring back American Dreams, please? Because, aside from shitty sports, nothing has succeeded at eight o’clock on Sunday nights on NBC, right? And while you’re at it, just give the show to ABC or something. No, Fox, since they’re actually in first place.
Well, anyway. Tonight is Conan O’Brien’s last night hosting The Tonight Show and, could be but I hope not, last time hosting a television show at night? Tom Hanks will be on (he tweeted about it), as well as Neil Young and (the cursed?) Will Ferrell. And poor Andy Richter can’t catch a fucking break! Since leaving Conan’s side and Late Night all of those years ago, he’s been unsuccessful in starring in a hit television show (no matter how good they actually were – cough – Andy Richter Controls the Universe – cough). So, he swallows his pride a little and comes back home only to have to concede to failure again. If only we can make Late Shift 2: The Rolling Thunder of Revenge happen, all would be right in the whole wide world.
In closing (but did anyone actually read all of this blubbering? I probably won’t), I am so privileged to have gotten the opportunity to attend a taping of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien in November. Not only was it an experience I’d never had and will never forget – and not only was my hero, Jim Carrey, on the episode, making the experience that much richer – but Conan (and Andy and The Tonight Show Band) did such an incredible job of ensuring everyone there had a wonderful time (AND DINNER!). Just being in the audience amped me up to really push my writing and get the fuck in it. I was dreaming of writing for his show and/or being interviewed by him someday down the line. I’ll put that on hold for now until we see his next move.
As for tonight, I will be spending the night celebrating a friend’s birthday, Rock Band-ing, and crying throughout the entirety of Conan’s final Tonight Show. I’ll probably have lots of orange snacks, too.
