The final Tonight Show with Jay Leno
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HammerOfThor
Member
Are there any clips of that floating around?
JasonUresti
Member
It's not Jays fault that Conan went diva to force Nbc to promise him the show and to fire Jay when he was number one in ratings. Also not Jay's fault that Conan tanked and the affiliates were screaming at NBC to bring Jay back.
Jay's 10pm show didn't help
IISANDERII
Member
The cameos were cool but it would've been nice to hear their farewells to Jay.
Also thought more comedians would be there, Seinfield especially.
Also thought more comedians would be there, Seinfield especially.
I watched a documentary on Netflix about Carson and he did the same, also during a writer strike.
Jay, is that you?
No, but difference is when Conan got fucked over, he didn't stay in the company lobby looking to get his old job back. He told NBC to go fuck themselves and left.
sixteen-bit
Member
shots fired
I love, love stories about and by comics. Rough rough life.
apocalidiot
Banned
Watched the first part up until the first commercial. Leno made an Anthony Weiner joke, What a dickhead (har har), he sucks and I'm glad he's done
It actually kinda was Jay's fault that Conan's ratings were down. Jay's primetime show had shit ratings which then caused the news and Conan's ratings to go down the toilet.
Did he roll out his old "Einstein got caught cheating If he got caught, you don't stand a chance" line? That joke never gets tired.
Just like David Letterman.
thecouncil
Banned
Did anyone on the show comment on the fact that this is his second "final show"?
And Conan didn't fucking go diva. Enough with this bullshit. He was successful enough that he was going to move to the 11:30 time slot somewhere. He went to NBC because he saw how Letterman had already been fucked over, and said "hey, if you want me to host the Tonight Show I'll stick around until then, but if not I'm going to shop around." NBC talked to Jay and came to the agreement that he would turn over the show in 5 years. Jay could have said no. NBC could have said no. They didn't. They offered Conan the job. Jay had 5 years to prepare for it. The day comes and what he does instead is demand he get a talk show before Conan's.
Jay's show tanks. The local news tanks hard. There are no viewers left to watch Conan. So NBC panics. NBC/s solution is to move Jay back to 11:30 and bump Conan to 12, effectively putting Conan right back to being "the late, late show". Conan says no. NBC looks at contracts. Jay's was written better and would cost far more to break, so they chose the cheaper option.
Had nothing to do with why Conan failed. Conan failed because Jay ran off his own fans during the 10pm time slot and left no viewers still tuned in for the local news, much less Conan.
NBC doesn't want Leno's viewers. They are mostly over 60.
I don't disagree with that, but Conan was losing viewers even before Jay's 10pm show started. That just made it worse.
Even with Jay tanking viewership, Conan's last Tonight Show had 40% higher viewership in the 18-49 demo than Jay's final Tonight Show. NBC was fine with Conan's ratings because he was pulling in FAR more of the younger audience that they want, and that's why they will be fine with Fallon. What they weren't fine with was when affiliates started threatening to pull out because they couldn't survive with Jay as their lead-in.
Conan did NOT get the boot due to his ratings. He got the boot because of Jay's poor ratings. So again, fuck Jay Leno.
Losing viewers was bound to happen anyway. When you transplant a host like that, they lose old viewers and have to work to build a new audience. It's not something that happens overnight.
Skiptastic
Member
I still don't see how that makes sense. Why not just cancel Jay's show and leave Conan as is?
Haha again I don't disagree. I think you've gotten the impression I somehow blame the situation on Conan losing viewers. I said him losing viewers before Jay's 10pm show came around made it even worse. Despite all the threats from local networks, shrinking numbers made it easier for NBC to rationalize with themselves that moving Jay back to 11:30 would fix the problem.
NBC panicked as Conan's ratings were getting worse, and they didn't realize they pulled the rug from under him when they planted Jay at 10pm.
Again, I didn't say Conan "got the boot" because of ratings. It was a contributing factor in the whole situation, though. But anyway, you're correcting me on something I neither said nor implied.
Ninja Scooter
Member
Because jay had a massive buy out in his contract while Conan didn't even have a time slot guarantee in his. In short, Jay had a better agent and lawyer and for a company that was bleeding money like nbc was, keeping him was the cheaper option.
AlphaSnake
...and that, kids, was the first time I sucked a dick for crack
Man that speech was heartbreaking. Leno doesn't show much emotion normally, so it was pretty sad to see the outpour and the tears. :|
Also, can we stop with the Leno/Conan bullshit? Both parties had a staff to protect. NBC didn't want Leno on another network, so they gave him an all new show...and if I were in his position, and had a staff of 150 people to keep employed, I'd have accepted it.
Conan had leverage to make money off of his contract exit which allowed him to pay his staff a salary until they landed on TBS. Both chose to protect themselves and their staff, ultimately. People make Conan seem like a scarred little baby after this whole ordeal...he got $40M+ to his name from NBC for the breach, nevermind all of the millions he made prior, and the additional $12M earned to pay his staff while they were in hiatus.
Leno doesn't have an agent or manager.
Also, can we stop with the Leno/Conan bullshit? Both parties had a staff to protect. NBC didn't want Leno on another network, so they gave him an all new show...and if I were in his position, and had a staff of 150 people to keep employed, I'd have accepted it.
Conan had leverage to make money off of his contract exit which allowed him to pay his staff a salary until they landed on TBS. Both chose to protect themselves and their staff, ultimately. People make Conan seem like a scarred little baby after this whole ordeal...he got $40M+ to his name from NBC for the breach, nevermind all of the millions he made prior, and the additional $12M earned to pay his staff while they were in hiatus.
Leno doesn't have an agent or manager.
depths20XX
Member
I always found it strange that Leno used to do standup and was successful at it. The guy is completely unfunny. Reminds me of some uncle that just tells really bad jokes and you chuckle just to humor him.
Laieon
Member
ЯAW;99937607 said:
Conan's interviews are hit and miss, I'll give you that, but I still say he's the best host simply because everything else he does is so, so good. I really, really wish he would just drop interviews and do nothing but remote segments, because that's where he excels.
Seth C is right in what he's saying, but I do think that Conan and Leno had different types of viewers, and that Fallon's "safe" (and boring, IMO) style and sense of humor will go over better with Leno's regular viewers.
I don't know enough about the whole debacle between Conan / NBC / Leno. But wasn't a big reason Conan tanked, because of his ratings? What were his ratings before he took the new timeslot? Was he at least retaining his audience numbers? And if not...why? I've seen a couple people say that Leno's new timeslot messed up his ratings too. But why?
Sorry if that's a lot of questions. I have no doubt that the way Leno / NBC handled this was very unprofessional and not fair. But I always thought this was an issue with ratings too. I always recalled the CoCo people being really loud after he was canned, but I wondered where they were when he was on air? (Or is that not a fair assessment?)
Sorry if that's a lot of questions. I have no doubt that the way Leno / NBC handled this was very unprofessional and not fair. But I always thought this was an issue with ratings too. I always recalled the CoCo people being really loud after he was canned, but I wondered where they were when he was on air? (Or is that not a fair assessment?)
I haven't seen him on a tv show are movie cursing up a storm like he was on Episodes.
Read back a couple of posts.
Canceling Jay's contract would have cost them far, far more. Conan's entire buyout paid him $45 million in total. Jay Leno's contract paid him $30 million per year. The buyout, I believe, was close to $150 million.
I also think this is true. Fallon brings in a young audience because he "gets" Twitter, etc. Conan was weird where Jimmy just seems "silly". His games are similar to the stuff Letterman used to do ("Will It Float"). I'm not sure it really mattered in the end though, because Conan's Tonight Show was far more accessible in this regard than his Late Night was. He'd made obvious changes for the earlier audience.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
There is a huge difference between a staff that has been told their job will be over in 5 years and a staff that was asked to move to the other side of the country under the auspice of having relative job security for the next few decades.
Leno's 10pm show staff and his Tonight Show staff probably had a great amount of overlap, but at the same time, it was a different job in a relatively risky venture. No one should have expected job security from a 10pm talkshow.
Conan's staff was more put upon and had less time to prepare for what happened to them. It isn't equivalent.
By putting Leno on at 10, that means that NBC could no longer put up a scripted drama in that time slot. The local stations depend on the ratings of those dramas so that they have an audience to watch them (for example, the people that just finished watching Heroes would stay on the channel for a little bit to watch the local news).
But Leno did not pull in the ratings, meaning that people simply stopped watching NBC before the local shows came on, so nobody watched the local news, so there was no one around to even watch Conan's Tonight Show.
NBC wanted to fix this by simply moving all the talk shows up an hour, meaning the local stations got their drama show and Leno remained on the air. Problem was that this made The Tonight Show go in after midnight, effectively demoting Conan back to his original Late Show position, after he had been promoted to 11:30.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I read that Fallon's matching Leno's 18-34 ratings already, and that's all they care about.
Sorry about that, will do. Sometimes I get carried away and forget to read the whole thread. *slaps head*
Thanks for explaining. This actually makes a lot of sense. As someone that usually follows ratings of Dramas etc. it didn't occur to me how much carry over happens at the 10 slot. I'd still be curious if he at least retained his original audience numbers though. But this explains the situation really well.
Did Leno demand he get the 10 slot or something? Or did NBC come up with this brilliant plan?
Those types of things and his sketches are the only reason I ever watch his show. His monologue and interviews are just dull and corny. I guess he's likable and non-threatening enough not to scare off Jay's audience out of the gate, but I wonder if the bits like History of Rap with Justin Timberlake will stick around.
That's true. I think they are going after that demographic really hard and ditch the oldies that have been carrying Leno for all these years. It will be initial drop in overall ratings but ratings in important demographics will see growth.
Ninja Scooter
Member
The funny thing is that Leno's show actually did the ratings they were expecting. Their plan was to sacrifice ratings in order to save some money for a few years because producing a talk show is a hell f a lot cheaper than producing a bunch of procedural dramas like law and order or ER. They just didn't expect the affiliate backlash to their plan. NBC really fucked this up at every step. They were desperate to keep both Jay and Conan around and got greedy. They knew that if they let Jay walk, he'd go to ABC or Fox and destroy Conan's Tonight Show in the ratings, but they also had this hot shot upstart in Conan who they wanted to keep around and who was blowing up at that time. They should have let Conan walk in 2004 and kept Jay on as long as they could but they were too scared.
And for Conan's part, he should have walked when he had the chance instead of agreeing to that stupid 5 year "succession" plan. I mean, who the fuck does that? Who in showbusiness, at the height of their popularity puts their career on hold like that? It was incredibly stupid in retrospect and all for what? The Tonight Show name? Which nobody even cares about anymore after 20 years of Leno?
Never said he wasn't...
That's all I was asking - is Fallon's style more in tune with Leno's than Conan's was? If so, it would help with viewer retention. Not sure how my question was derailed so much into something else.
Emperor Bohe
Member
I never really watched Leno that much, but I definitely respected him. Sad to see him go
. Hopefully Fallon does well on the Tonight Show. I'm glad that it's staying in New York with The Roots. The Roots on the Tonight Show... who would've thought it? Dope as hell.
I'm going to be really sad when Letterman retires. Dude is a legend to me, provided me with many laughs throughout my entire life. Same with Conan O'brien. I know everyone cares about the Tonight Show, but Late Night is the king of comedy IMO. Especially in the Conan years. Late Night with Conan was the undisputed best late night talk show ever IMO. It;s sad because it seems like he lost some of his magic when he moved to California for some reason.
edit: is Late Night moving to Cali when Seth Myers takes over? It would seem odd for them to have two shows out in the east coast..
again
I'm going to be really sad when Letterman retires. Dude is a legend to me, provided me with many laughs throughout my entire life. Same with Conan O'brien. I know everyone cares about the Tonight Show, but Late Night is the king of comedy IMO. Especially in the Conan years. Late Night with Conan was the undisputed best late night talk show ever IMO. It;s sad because it seems like he lost some of his magic when he moved to California for some reason.
edit: is Late Night moving to Cali when Seth Myers takes over? It would seem odd for them to have two shows out in the east coast..
Calamari41
41 > 38
He still does standup all the time in SoCal, and I can confirm that he is still very good at it. Every Sunday he gets on stage and tests out a bunch of jokes for the coming week's shows, and I was shocked the first time I saw it that a vast majority of them were really hilarious, and barely any made it through to the show. He is held back a lot.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
That Daniela Ruah interview is amazing.
I'm still amazed Fallon managed to have the Tonight Show moved to New York, which works out great for him and his staff.
Nope. The new Late Night studio is just down the hall from SNL.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
I think it's because Comcast is in charge of this transition. They're basically doing everything NBC should have done for Conan.
It's also nice that Lorne Michaels has been given so much control over these two shows.
I think Fallon will have an easier job of keeping Leno's audience than Conan did. His comedy is mostly harmless and he's a kiss ass interviewer that doesn't upset the apple cart. The transition shouldn't be too jarring for Leno viewers. I mean he writes thank you notes as a comedy bit for goodness sake.
I'm sure it sounds crazy to you, but that "Tonight Show" name means the absolute world to Conan. I don't know if it was during one of his last episodes, or in one of the interviews he did post-layoff, but he went indepth as to how much that show meant to him.
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