The Late Night Wars

So, Jay Leno came out on the first show of this week to explain the situation, as to how he sees it, with the whole NBC late night debacle. This whole thing broke when I was in Mexico last week, so I was somewhat shocked when I got back to discover the story. I should preface this with the fact that I've never been a Jay Leno fan. He took a lot of cheap shots at Canadians in his early years, and quite honestly, I don't find him that funny. He's pretty vanilla, which appeals to a large part of Amercians. I call him Jay LAMO. Anyway, I watched what he had to say about the situation, and really if there's anyone to blame, it's NBC. According to Jay, back in 2004, the network didn't think that he'd hold down the #1 spot until last year, and Conan had recieved some offers to go elsewhere, so they told Jay come 2009, you're out. Now that neither show is doing well, NBC had wanted Jay to do a half hour at 11:35, then Conan could do an hour at 12:05. Conan didn't bite, so it looks like Jay will go back. The one thing about Jay's announcement was the fact that NBC wouldn't let him out of his contract to go elsewhere, so to not just save himself, he saved the 175 staff members that he brought over from the Tonight Show, many that had been with him since day 1. I thought that was pretty honorable. Conan's staff, however, not so lucky. Many moved from New York to L.A. to work on the show. The funny part about this whole thing is that we're talking about a show, that when hosted by Jay Leno and was number one, had only 5 million viewers! 5 million, out of a country of nearly 300 million people. I wonder that had the advent of being able to watch TV from other markets across the country, namely the folks out west watching TV from the east 2 hours earlier, would there even be late night TV anymore. Who would be able to stay up that late to watch it in there own market anyway?

Johnny was the King... Dave took over the crown, but now, Craig is damn good. Watch out for Ferguson!