Conan Says “No Way” to Tonight Show Time Change

I can’t understand NBC’s continued fetish over Jay Leno. I’ll admit, he’s funny, but his time is over – plus, he stepped down, he wasn’t forced off the stage. When NBC was planning the The Jay Leno Show, everybody said it would be a failure, but did the network listen? No. Sure, it was an interesting experiment in cost-saving, but the show never found an audience. Now they think that they can just slip Jay back into late night with no questions asked. In my opinion, that’s an insult to Conan and his millions of fans.

Conan has an incredible and enthusiastic fan base under the age of 40. Assuming that he doesn’t stop being funny, which is about as unlikely as him staying with NBC at this point, he could successfully host the show for the next 20 years. The fact that NBC didn’t even give Conan the courtesy of running his show for a full year proves just how deluded the fourth-place network is and it’s a big reason why Conan’s fans are pushing him to ditch the peacock and set up shop somewhere else.

As detailed in the Media Decoder blog at the New York Times, Conan fans on Twitter have shown their support for the red-headed comedian by using the hashtag  #teamconan, again proving that Conan is the right host for a younger generation. As of this posting, Team Conan is still a trending topic on Twitter, while mentions of Jay Leno and NBC are either non-existent or decidedly negative.

Unfortunately, it may be harder for Conan to switch networks than we would like. According to another article by Bill Carter in the New York Times, the president of Fox Entertainment, Kevin Reilly, has expressed an interest in bringing Conan to Fox, saying, “He would be a very compatible fit for our brand,” and that, “He is one of the few guys on the planet that has demonstrated he can do one of these shows every night.” However, there may be some snags regarding the actual language of Conan’s deal with NBC.

Quoting from the article:

Despite the fact that Mr. O’Brien is being ejected from the 11:35 p.m. time period he was given in June and pushed to after midnight to make room for Jay Leno, NBC executives are expressing confidence that the network has not breached Mr. O’Brien’s contract.

The reason? The contract, NBC is arguing, guaranteed Mr. O’Brien would be installed as host of “The Tonight Show” — and unlike many other deals for late-night stars, Mr. O’Brien’s contract contains no specific language about the time period the show would occupy, NBC executives said. NBC has said Mr. O’Brien’s relocated show would be called “The Tonight Show.”

The contractual terms could affect Fox’s pursuit of Mr. O’Brien in several ways. Mr. Reilly acknowledged that even if Mr. O’Brien found a home at Fox, NBC could insist that it had the right to keep Mr. O’Brien from starting a show for an extended period of time — as long as a year or more.

Of course, given the negative publicity surrounding NBC’s decision to switch the schedule around, it’s unlikely that the network would want to take the contract dispute to court. What is more likely, assuming Conan did start a show on a new network, is that NBC would buy out his contract and he would be forced to forfeit a percentage of his earnings. Ultimately, I hope that that’s what happens so that Conan can wind up somewhere his unique sense of humor is appreciated.

What do you think of Conan’s polite ultimatum to NBC? Are you on Team Conan or Team Jay? If the contract details were worked out, would you watch Conan on a different network?

Sources: The NY Times, Media Decoder blog, Coco O’Brien

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