One could argue that they never should have forced Leno to leave The Tonight Show in the first place, but the fact that they did shows that the NBC executives realized how terribly unfunny Leno has always been, and wanted to get someone exciting like Conan O'Brien to host The Tonight Show.
They announced the cancellation fo The Jay Leno Show, and that Jay would host a show at 11:30, because they wanted to piss off Conan O'Brien and force him to quit. From the exiling of Friday Night Lights to DirecTV, to the bogus cancellation of Southland, NBC has only made money-based decisions in the past year.
Which brings us to Dick Ebersol. Why the chairman of NBC Sports has an opinion on late night is beyond me, but Ebersol is very upset at Conan O'Brien for speaking out publicly against Leno, calling it “chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings.”
Okay, Mr. Ebersol, let's look at the facts: people watch shows at 10 o'clock, and then keep the television on through the local news, and then watch whatever late night program is on. The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien debuted on June 1st. No one is watching prime time television in June, because there's no new programming on the big four aside from reality competitions based on Japanese game shows. So, there was nothing to draw people into Conan's Tonight Show and build an audience. This was deliberate. NBC was scared and wanted to keep Leno at this point, but knew if they backed out of their deal with O'Brien, they would have had to pay him $45 million.
So then they wait until September to debut The Jay Leno Show, a non-starter program that no one watched. It sucked up guests that Conan would have gotten and its presence showed a general lack of confidence in Mr. O'Brien's ability to hold down late night TV on NBC. If they really believed in Conan, they would have told Jay that he could take his business elsewhere, but they didn't.
Mr. Ebersol is claiming that “what this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan.” How could Conan have ever succeeded, Mr. Ebersol? Who is going to tune into NBC at 11:30 to watch a guy talk to celebrities, do a monologue when that previously happened in nearly the exact same fashion, minus the laughs, at 10 p.m.?
“I like Conan enormously personally,” Mr. Ebersol said. “He was just stubborn about not being willing to broaden the appeal of his show.”
If by "broadening the appeal of his show" he means putting on a show like Leno's, then he's an idiot. Conan O'Brien has always been funny, and Jay Leno has always been a moron. Everyone knows this except the money men, and idiots who live in the Midwest.
Here's the Times piece on Ebersol.
