"Tonight Show" Becoming A Nightmare (Again) For NBC?
Looks like NBC might be walking into a "Tonight Show" buzz saw for the second time. NBC honcho Jeff Zucker insisted Monday in New York that Jay Leno is going to leave the late-night institution in 2009 as planned, making way for Conan O'Brien to take over the desk. But he spoke out because Leno hasn't. Leno has maintained radio silence since an L.A. Times report a couple of weeks ago claiming that he doesn't want to leave after all. Sources told the Times that Leno has changed his mind and feels NBC twisted his arm to make the deal a couple of years ago. And Leno didn't deny it after the Times story ran; he didn't say anything at all.
So if this deal falls apart, there are two scenarios. One, Leno stays and Conan goes free from NBC with a lovely parting gift of a reported $40 million penalty payment from the network. Or two, Leno goes, and Conan takes over "Tonight," but ratings king Leno is free to take his act to ABC or Fox. Either scenario would be a nightmare for NBC executives who thought they'd managed their way into an orderly transition unlike the Leno-Letterman nightmare of the early 1990s.
With David Letterman likely to retire from his CBS perch sometime in the next decade, NBC had to be thinking about sewing up late-night with the next generation of viewers with Conan at 11:30 and someone like Jon Stewart in Conan's current 12:30 slot. Zucker says he's hoping to convince Leno, a notorious workaholic, to become a primetime player, but that presumably would not involve a nightly show. But if Leno is pissed - and he may have been quietly carrying a chip since NBC almost dumped him for critical favorite Letterman all those years ago - then NBC could be watching one of its two late-night stars on another network before the end of the decade. And for the peacock that would be bad news indeed.
If Conan O'Brian takes over for Jay Leno, you've lost me as a viewer.
Jay is so superior to O'Brian's crap that I refuse to watch O'Brian.
Where Leno go's in late night TV, that's what I'll watch and purchase those advertisers products.
Respectfully,
Larry Dickason onegblmm@yahoo.com
Posted by: LARRY W. DICKASON | January 20, 2008 at 06:28 AM