Cap was Team Jacob. Iron Man was Team Edward.
January's Tonight Show Wars forced people to choose between Team CoCo and Team Leno. And the people almost unanimously sided with Conan O'Brien, the then current host of The Tonight Show. Leno was quickly vilified by the Internet, the entertainment community, and his late night peers.
The other three fingers point back at you, internet!
Now, I'm no Jay Leno apologist. I fall into a very unique demographic: old enough to remember The Tonight Show in it's glory years under Johnny Carson but young enough that Conan's stint at Late Night appealed to me. I grew up, on the rare occasions my parents would allow me, watching Carson who was followed by Letterman's Late Night. They were the undisputed kings of late night, and the ratings reflected that.
Trust us, this is much funnier than "Jaywalking"
The Tonight Show has had a series of controversies regarding hosting duties. Frequently during his tenure Carson would take extended vacations and have his permanent guest host Joan Rivers fill in. Carson had acted as mentor to Rivers as she was coming up, with Carson often referring to her as his "daughter." Everything seemed in place for Rivers to take over for Carson when he retired: backing from the current host, the blessing of the network, and approval from the audience. However, that close tie between the two comedians was severed when, in 1986, FOX offered Rivers the opportunity to host her own late night show on their network, which Rivers promptly accepted. Carson saw this as a complete betrayal, going so far as refusing to speak to Rivers again. The Late Show with Joan Rivers tanked and she was subsequently fired after only a few months.
And yet FOX allows this to continue
As the years went on, it seemed that when Carson was to retire he would be handing the reins of The Tonight Show over to his new protege David Letterman. But suddenly NBC swooped in and gave the show to Carson's new permanent guest host Jay Leno, which prompted Letterman to leave NBC and directly compete with Leno's Tonight Show on CBS' The Late Show.
Letterman would continue to get screwed, just in a different way
To some the choice between Letterman and Leno was the same as between The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. McDonalds and Burger King. Mac and PC.
I side with John Hodgman. He's wearing a suit.
Justin Long can't even afford a haircut.
For me, the choice is easy. Letterman, Stones, and Mickey D's.
Leno's softer brand of comedy, however, played well in the conservative Midwest, earning him higher ratings than Letterman almost the entire time they competed.
Meanwhile, former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live writer and ginger kid Conan O'Brien succeeded Letterman as host of NBC's Late Night. His edgy brand of comedy, including such characters as the Masturbating Bear, Pimpbot, and Triumph the Insult Comic, along with his self-deprecating humor and alternative tastes in music made up for his lack of interviewing skills while making him popular with a demographic Leno was not: college-aged and high school students.
He was like unto a superhero. With a robot sidekick!
Then in 2004, for no real reason, NBC announced in 2009 Leno would be departing The Tonight Show and leaving it in the hands of O'Brien.
Even though Leno's ratings continued to dominate the competition.
Even though O'Brien would have to be tempered to play to an earlier and wider audience.
And even though NBC had no way of predicting the climate of television four years in the future.
They couldn't even keep track of Matt Lauer
What exactly changed the television landscape in those intervening years?
Digital Video Recording machines (DVRs) had been around since the late 90's, and as the price went down their usage went up. The ability to record one's favorite shows and watch them at leisure was the first death knell of late night talk shows. When do most DVR owners watch their recorded programming? Before they go to sleep, during the Tonight Show's time slot.
DVD sales climbed as well, and as they did more and more TV series were released to disc.
Oddly, it was not one of these shirtless gentlemen that made the sex-tape
Then came YouTube with Hulu quickly following: a pair of websites that allowed users to watch video and broadcast television shows for free 24/7. Now anyone with an internet connection could watch whatever they wanted when ever they wanted.
We make the same face as Fred when forced to watch him
Soon, appointment TV was a thing of the past. With the complete freedom from a strict television schedule, viewership for network TV dropped.
But it wasn't just advances in technology and the mode of delivery that killed late night talk shows.
This certainly didn't help
The main appeal of late night talk shows like The Tonight Show was that, in the glory days of Carson, the mass public didn't have access to the celebrities they loved. They could watch their movies, listen to their music, but that was as close as they could get.
Until they appeared on Carson. Then we got to see who they really were and not just as characters on the screen. We learned about their lives. But with the advent of celebrity gossip blogs we were learning everything about their lives all the time. Suddenly celebrities were too accessible. Who was going to stay up to watch their apperances on late night talk shows when the information we wanted was just a few mouse-clicks away?
As well as images that would haunt our nightmares
Soon celebrities' appearances on Letterman, Leno, and Conan ceased to be about them and became more about the next project they were plugging.
Or their burgeoning rap careers
Some people wonder why these late night talk shows are so important to the networks. The simple answer is that they are lead-in by the news, or in the case of Leno's prime-time disaster The Jay Leno Show, lead in for the news.
Affiliates depend on a good lead-in for their local news broadcasts because the news is where stations earn their money. E.R. was a resounding success for NBC and it's affiliates because an audience of millions watched the show and stuck around for their local news which then lead directly into The Tonight Show, keeping almost every pair of those eyes glued to the same channel.
Then 2009 rolled around. Leno was ousted from the The Tonight Show as per their contract with O'Brien and NBC tried to make it up to Leno by putting him in front of the news during prime time. This would prove to be a costly mistake, though not because of the host.
To make room for The Jay Leno Show on their prime time schedule, NBC cut five-hours worth of scripted programming, a move which cost thousands of jobs and resounded through Hollywood.
No one was more upset about our cancellation than Urkel
Leno has always provided good numbers (ratings) for NBC, but those numbers he put up during his 11:30 time slot with The Tonight Show were a pale comparison to what scripted programs during 10:00 did. And while Leno held on to his previous 11:30 numbers at his earlier time he was getting trounced by the competition's prime time programming and what NBC had previously shown at 10:00 pm.
The drop-off in NBC's evening viewership had a ripple effect on the shows proceeding him, starting at the local news, through to Conan, making their way through to NBC's morning show The Today Show. Most viewers, when they turn off their TVs at night, turn their TVs back on in the morning. And what channel they're watching when they turn it off is the same one when they turn it back on. Leno's show wasn't just losing money for his time slot, it was losing money for the affiliates and everyone around him.
Television, like every other facet of entertainment, is a business. The sole purpose of television programming is to keep you the viewer watching between commercial breaks for the next batch of commercials.
Or, failing that, they turn the commercials into shows
If people aren't tuning in to watch those 30-second bits of marketing the network doesn't make money since broadcast television is free to the public and advertisers pay their salaries.
Why was Leno given the show in the first place? NBC didn't want to let him go. He was a top money-maker for the network.
And they had signed Conan to ensure he wouldn't depart for greener pastures at FOX.
NBC wanted to keep both hosts under contract but didn't have enough air-time for both of them.
It's like if Neo had taken both pills then kicked Morpheus in the balls
With two hosts, one of whom was contractually guaranteed the Tonight Show job and the other a cash cow, NBC tried to hold onto both and hope the situation wouldn't implode. Leno had no plans to retire from The Tonight Show in 2009 and enjoyed hosting the show. Conan had stuck around only because of the promise NBC had made. And with Leno's prime-time show becoming a national punchline, NBC tried to rectify the situation by bumping The Tonight Show back a half-hour so The Jay Leno Show could play more for a late night audience.
It was a desperate attempt to continue to keep both men under contract and on the air under the guise of "appeasing the affiliates" when in actuality they were actually trying to secure the network financially for their upcoming sale to Comcast.
Conan refused to move back to 12:00, seeing The Tonight Show as an institution that NBC was mucking with, and he wouldn't be the one to mess with that institution.
A line in the sand was drawn, and people chose their sides. Most of the entertainment industry sided with Conan while corporate interest resided with Leno. Jimmy Fallon, who took over Late Night from O'Brien when he departed, suddenly was thrust in the position of choosing between his show's former host and the company he worked for and wisely kept his mouth shut.
The new location of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's studio
Meanwhile Facebook, Twitter, and millions of blogs were aflutter with almost unanimous support for Conan. Team CoCo rallies were organized (and poorly attended).
The best attended CoCo rally
Others changed their Twitter or Facebook profile pictures to the Team CoCo logo.
NBC CEO Jeff Zucker: Not a member of Facebook
NBC was faced with the choice between Conan, who under his tenure the The Tonight Show was losing money for the first time in 50 years, and Leno, who was a proven success on the show, as to who would host the show since O'Brien refused to get bumped later. So NBC, risking pissing off literally dozens of Tonight Show fans, and the better business decision (finally) and chose Leno, buying out Conan's contract for $40 million.
NBC was obviously at fault in the debacle, and because of the fallout suffered a tarnished image. But as I said earlier, the network was not alone in being at fault.
You thought I forgot about you, didn't you, America?
If only a small percentage of the people pledging their support to Conan on the internet had bothered to support him by actually watching Conan's Tonight Show, NBC, Leno, and Conan wouldn't have been in the awkward position in the first place. They would have instead canceled the Jay Leno experiment and hired Leno as an elevator operator.
Unfortunately, the weight limit combined with Leno's chin would mean he could only take one person at a time
The internet is quick to hop on a bandwagon but slow to do anything that would actually tangibly help the causes they support.
Surprisingly, Twitter is not a heavily trafficked site in fucking Iran
Leno is set to return to The Tonight Show once the Winter Olympics have concluded. Conan, as per a stipulation in NBC's buyout, is barred from hosting another television show until September 2010, though he is currently preparing a college tour where he will speak about his experience. A safe bet places O'Brien hosting a late night show for FOX which will, through no fault of his own, probably get trounced in the ratings by Letterman and Leno.
As it stands, the one thing we can learn from this whole mess is that with the demise of The Jay Leno show, NBC will need to create five more hours of programming to fill the vacant 10:00 pm slot...
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