A couple of solutions to the late night mess.

[Kenny Atkinson]

keep Conan on at 11:35.Put Jay on USA to go agasinst George Lopez.

another idea

With all the talk about NBC having to keep paying Conan how about Conan to FOX with NBC owning the show.This has happened in the past with one network owning a show and airing it on a competer.NBC would own (so to speak) the 11:00 hour on FOX.Since they are may have to cough up some dough.Although I hear now there is no Start time in Conan's Contract so NBC can run The Tonight show at 4 am if they wanted to.

David Letterman has it in his contract that he starts at 11:35.

 

[imhomerjay]

If the NBC affiliates were in near revolt about Leno at 10, a fair chunk of Fox affiliates will be hard pressed to clear the 11 (or 11:30, whatever the supposed case may be) slot.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

FOX could pretty easily do a "soft launch" of an 11/11:30 comedy show. If you're an affiliate who has a commitment to air TMZ at 11, you'll have until __/__/2011 to begin clearing the Conan show. Especially if NBC is paying his salary, FOX could afford to do this.

 

[Nate Wesley]

keep Conan on at 11:35.Put Jay on USA to go agasinst George Lopez.

I suggested in another thread that Conan get moved to cable, but he's the one getting hosed here (as he subtly reminded everyone in his open letter). O'Brien shouldn't get moved, as he hasn't failed--not in just seven months on the job. Leno should take the hit--he could have had a new gig lined up somewhere else.

Thinking about it, USA Network is the key to solving to NBC's problems, at least temporarily. Move The Jay Leno Show to USA at 11pm/10 CT, then push select USA originals to plug in NBC's primetime scheduling holes.

 

[landtuna]

O'Brien shouldn't get moved, as he hasn't failed--not in just seven months on the job.

HUH? Networks don't have the right to make changes when a new show fails to live up to its expectations?

Conan has lost HALF of his original audience. That's a huge failure.

Leno should take the hit--he could have had a new gig lined up somewhere else.

Did Jay sign up to exit The Tonight Show or was it a network decision? I keep hearing Leno had no say in it. If that's true why should he take the hit for (a) a poor network programming decision and (b) the failure of Conan to build a following.

 

[imhomerjay]

Jay didn't pick his departure date for Tonight, NBC did. Then fast forward five years, and you have a host who isn't ready to retire from daily television being seriously eyeballed by a top competitor, and a contractual obligation to turn over Tonight to Conan...oh, and a dismal slate of shows in the 10 p.m. slot (among other slots, to be sure). Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to judge each decision as wrong. They shouldn't have set 2009 as the date, they shouldn't have put Jay at 10, and so on. But that said, suppose for a minute Jay had gone over to ABC, and topped Conan. People would still be calling it a bad move to let the more successful host get away and bring down your late night franchise. (And still no guarantee the 10 p.m. slate would be doing any better financially.)

Rock, meet hard place.

Leno didn't necessarily fail, the format didn't work at that time. Conan didn't necessarily fail, he had a similarly short period of time to try to catch on when others had years to make a show their own. But neither of those things is relevant now. What matters now isn't bruised feelings (that can be softened by millions of dollars, perhaps), but what will bring the most viewers to Tonight. It's an unfair comparison, but right now, it would look like Leno is more likely to do that than Conan. Such is life.

 

[Nate Wesley]

HUH? Networks don't have the right to make changes when a new show fails to live up to its expectations?

Conan has lost HALF of his original audience. That's a huge failure.

By that same measure, Jay Leno should have lost his job in late 1994 or early 1995, just before the Hugh Grant incident slowly started putting the Tonight Show back into contention. And Katie Couric should be done too, her ratings haven't improved since she took--wait a second, her ratings have improved since she's taken over the CBS Evening News. Funny how those rumors that'd she'd be lobbing softball chats at CNN by now don't seem to be as rampant.

Again, seven months time ain't enough time for these kinds of institutional shows. These aren't random crime dramas or sitcoms.

Did Jay sign up to exit The Tonight Show or was it a network decision? I keep hearing Leno had no say in it. If that's true why should he take the hit for (a) a poor network programming decision and (b) the failure of Conan to build a following.

Leno signed a new deal for a new show--an almost new venture given the timeslot, same corporate home. Could have gone somewhere else at the regular time, but wanted to stick around that corporate home. Your new venture/job/show has been deemed a failure by that corporate home at that timeslot. Too bad, so sad.

O'Brien signed a deal to take over long-running show (in a long-running timeslot) that Leno agreed to cede contractually many years prior to today--to prevent the very mess caused by the previous Late Night/Tonight Show transition. Real ratings woes in the first half year, but certainly not unprecedented--the show's not in any real danger of being canceled--it's the freakin' Tonight Show. Corporate home decides "We're going to give your predecessor his old slot back", completely crapping on promises made years earlier in writing.

Now, you tell me how Conan O'Brien isn't getting hosed.

 

[landtuna]

Now, you tell me how Conan O'Brien isn't getting hosed.

I never said he wasn't. I just opined that Leno shouldn't take the hit (alone anyway) for that bad 10 o'clock show programming decision.

As far as contracts go....dozens of shows have been cancelled after much less than seven months when they failed to bring in viewers - and they are shown but once per week vs five times per week. Seven months is plenty of time for people, especially Tonight Show viewers, to 'discover' Conan. The fact is half of them apparently walked and that is failure by any standard.

That's showbiz baby.

 

[Nate Wesley]

Jay didn't pick his departure date for Tonight, NBC did. Then fast forward five years, and you have a host who isn't ready to retire from daily television being seriously eyeballed by a top competitor, and a contractual obligation to turn over Tonight to Conan...oh, and a dismal slate of shows in the 10 p.m. slot (among other slots, to be sure). Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to judge each decision as wrong. They shouldn't have set 2009 as the date, they shouldn't have put Jay at 10, and so on. But that said, suppose for a minute Jay had gone over to ABC, and topped Conan. People would still be calling it a bad move to let the more successful host get away and bring down your late night franchise. (And still no guarantee the 10 p.m. slate would be doing any better financially.)

Rock, meet hard place.

Leno didn't necessarily fail, the format didn't work at that time. Conan didn't necessarily fail, he had a similarly short period of time to try to catch on when others had years to make a show their own. But neither of those things is relevant now. What matters now isn't bruised feelings (that can be softened by millions of dollars, perhaps), but what will bring the most viewers to Tonight. It's an unfair comparison, but right now, it would look like Leno is more likely to do that than Conan. Such is life.

Can't disagree with much of your take. Just one thing, though--given NBC's consistent insistence on how cheap/profitable late night programming is to produce--how much could they have really stood to lose by losing Jay Leno to ABC or Fox? I know CBS still made a handsome profit for all of those years Letterman came in second.

Leno or O'Brien, assuming NBC would have simply let one of them go, would still be starting fresh on new affiliates on behalf of a new network, a network that probably wouldn't have done something as risky as say, put them on a prime-time show (oops). Even if that show had became a success, the likelihood of it instantly surpassing either Late Show w/Letterman or The Tonight Show isn't great--nor would it have been guaranteed to stay the ratings champion (as Late Show didn't).

NBC's 'late night in primetime' gamble has basically internalized all of that risk. Neither ABC nor Fox really 'need' late night help now, even considering ABC's usual showing for the recently freshened Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

 

[radiophiler]

Give NBC stations 10-10:35 to air their local news. Put Jay Leno from 10:35-11:35. Everyone else gets to stay where they are.

I know, it'll never happen.

 

[justpassingthough]

Conan may not have trouble getting cleared by Fox stations. According to Kevin Reilly, all Fox affiliates have it in their affiliate contract that Fox has the right to air a late night show and the affiliate MUST carry it. I imagine this was written into affiliate contracts for the express purpose of stealing or snagging one of the existing late night hosts.

I disagree that Conan has not failed. He is generating less than half the ratings of Leno. After 7 months, that is a failure. If there was a show of progress in the ratings, then it may be a wait and see. However, it appears that both Leno and Conan essentially had their audiences move with them to their new timeslots. The same 2.5 million at 12:35am doesn't fly at 11:35pm- when the show is moved to Los Angeles, giving you a better slate of guests and more potential eyeballs staring at the TV.

My suggestion is that if Conan agrees to stay with the NBC (unlikely now), he would be best suited for the Bravo network.

 

[1069_KIFR]

My take, for what its worth....

5 Years ago, NBC was scared that Conan would go to another network. Especially since Jay did not look like he would retire anytime soon. So NBC promised Conan to take over the Tonight Show in 2009. At the time, I do not think they had a 10 pm show in mind for Jay. 10 pm show was an afterthought.

Now here they are (NBC) in the exact place they were trying to avoid, having a very good possibility of seeing Conan bolting to another network.

As for Conan's ratings, if you look at the big picture, Jay did not bring in big ratings for viewers to hold over for their local news, thus they weren't there for Conan. A domino affect. Of course that is not the only reason for ratings decline.

Looks like Carson Daly saw this coming as to why he may have taken the morning show on LA's 97.1 AMP radio. At least he is covering his bases.

Also if Conan follows Jay ...again... that wouldn't even help Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, now that show would certainly have a ratings decrease. Thus making NBC's late night programming even worse. They are not thinking long term, just putting a bandage on the cluster**ck they created 5 years ago.

 

[benwolf]

The real problem is that the decision to give O'Brien the Tonight Show was made when he was "hot." But over the past 2 years, Craig Ferguson started beating him. Now, Conan is worth much less to any network, and I doubt Fox is really interested.
NBC's mistake was to change the Tonight Show when it was #1 with Leno...only true idiots mess with success.

 

[DToTheJ]

Give NBC stations 10-10:35 to air their local news. Put Jay Leno from 10:35-11:35. Everyone else gets to stay where they are.

I know, it'll never happen.

Actually, don't kid yourself. Not only would shortening prime time by an hour be an economically sound option, but it would be "following the leader," which in some cases, is Fox.

 

[firepoint525]

Give NBC stations 10-10:35 to air their local news. Put Jay Leno from 10:35-11:35. Everyone else gets to stay where they are.
I know, it'll never happen.

Actually, don't kid yourself. Not only would shortening prime time by an hour be an economically sound option, but it would be "following the leader," which in some cases, is Fox.

This would actually solve a number of problems. Affiliates claim Leno is a weak lead-in, so how about they precede him? Leno and Conan each get their hour, and Conan isn't "back-shifted." (Seems to me that if the affiliates' product was good enough, they wouldn't need to complain about weak lead-ins. Here in Nashville, our NBC affiliate claims to be #1 in news anyway. So I wonder if any affiliate complaints have come from Nashville?)

Only problem is, The Tonight Show still wouldn't be immediately following local news, which seems to be Conan's main gripe.

NBC has already taken risks, so moving the "late" evening newscast to 9:00 p.m. CST shouldn't be that big of a deal!

 

[MsMusicRadio]

How about nothing. NBC should realize that the Tonight Show has run it's course and just show movies. With 1000 cable channels to choose from, networks are nothing special at all

 

[imhomerjay]

Run its course? Up until the hand-off from Leno to Conan, Tonight was leading its time slot. No crystal ball about what will happen when it reverts back, but let's not pretend so called "controversy" keeps people away from a show--quite the opposite. Witness the spike in ratings since all this broke for both Leno and Tonight. Give it time and this will be nothing more than a blip in people's memory.

 

[Nate Wesley]

I see network TV preserving itself in two ways:

1. More made-for-TV live events/shows in the same participatory vein as American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, or America's Got Talent--possibly with certain prime time sports if they can swing it away from cable.

2. The subtle reduction in scripted dramas and sitcoms with a similar (but hopefully ratings-friendly) effort NBC took with The Jay Leno Show. I'd bet all my Monopoly money that the next crack at this will involve news, possibly at the 8pm/7CT hour or near the 10pm/9CT hour as the lead in for late local news.

Late night will play a part, but I think NBC's hard lesson will be a good one for all of the networks: Learn to let somebody walk.

 

[Silkie]

Solution:

Crawl under the covers, snuggle, forget about all of them and be the best company each other could possibly wish for.

 

[MsMusicRadio]

I think Stewart, Colbert, and Bill Maher are consistantly better than anything on the "Networks"