It may be time for me to stop following the Leno/O'Brien mess as closely as I have been. I actually had a dream about it last night, and I rarely dream about things that are occurring in reality unless they're really, really close to me. This matter isn't and shouldn't be, though I have spent some time the last few days talking to folks who are living with it, mostly over at NBC. The discussions have been fascinating as spectator sport, and in trying to understand better the bizarre manner by which networks operate. If it doesn't make sense to you from afar, take some comfort in this: There are people who know a lot more about this than you and I could since they're in the thick of it…and it doesn't make complete sense to them, either. Such confusion is, by the way, not unprecedented in network television.
The conversations have also made me aware how so many who are outraged over this silly bit of network bungling simply have the basic factual recital wrong, and how many of the hysterical insults of Jay Leno are way out of scale even if he committed all the treachery they ascribe to him. Apparently, not giving Conan O'Brien a strong lead-in at 10 PM or taking back a job you didn't want to leave in the first place is now a capital offense. Well, I guess I can see that.
Some of the differing perspectives are, I suppose, a matter of personal experience. Those who are furious that NBC made some bad calls seem to be expecting a level of perfection at the executive level that I sure have never seen. Not there, not anywhere…and certainly not with regard to any show I ever worked on. While it's obvious some very bad decisions were made, it's not so obvious what the right ones might have been. Even armed with hindsight and the knowledge of how the ratings would go, no one seems able to say, "Everything would have been peachy if Jeff Zucker had done X, Y and Z." At best, they seem only able to come up with scenarios for a series of lesser disasters.
I also have been around Leno enough to see that he's a decent guy with some unusual, but not at all unethical notions of how to handle the business end of his business. They work for him and he generally gets what he wants, much to the angst of competitors and the many peers he bypasses. In this case, it's all led (unfairly, I think) to a lot of vilification…which is not to say I fret for his future or reputation. One moment when I really liked the guy occurred back when he was getting slammed by TV reporters and critics who saw it as inevitable that Letterman would drive him from the airwaves and back into the comedy clubs. Leno was asked if he wasn't crushed by all the bad press and he said to the fellow who asked him this, "Hey, tell you what. I'll give you my paycheck and I'll call you a moron. See if you can handle it." When he gets slammed, he keeps it in perspective and somehow endures.
Life is seriously askew when anyone feels sorry for any of the characters in this psychodrama. I cringe inwardly and outwardly when someone rails on about the injustice of poor Conan O'Brien having his dream yanked away from him after a mere seven months. Conan, Dave and Jay are all guys who've gotten about 95% of everything they ever could have desired in their chosen line of work — and to put that percentage in context, you have to remember that this is an industry where the average player is lucky to achieve 2%. These guys are at the level where on the extremely-rare occasions that they don't get what they want, the consolation prizes are in the tens of millions of dollars. Conan himself said it well in his classy closing speech.
All I really remember of my dream last night is that it was about people yelling about Jay and Conan, Conan and Jay, all out of scale with what is basically a series of S.O.P. network business decisions. They may be wrong decisions. I mean, I think Conan's ratings would have gone up if NBC had left him at 11:35 for a few more months…and I have a friend who thinks they shouldn't have cancelled Ugly Betty. Somewhere out there, there's someone who thinks the NBC guys are brain-dead for not bringing back Phenomenon and stripping it five nights a week at 10 PM.
One or more of us may be correct, just as Armchair Quarterbacks are sometimes right when the guy on the field is wrong. TV programming is, to at least a significant degree, a hunch business. Yes, there's research and test audiences and focus groups and going with proven winners…but every time a network puts on a show that gets quickly cancelled, it means someone played a hunch and it didn't work. Or at least, it didn't work quickly enough. That happens all the time so it's silly to get emotional about it, especially when it really doesn't impact your life much. Those who make their lives in and around the networks learn how to roll with the inexactness of the science. A friend of mine who was briefly the Vice-President of Comedy Development at NBC — I think he held the post for about three hours — once said to me there was one surefire way to be right most of the time in a network job: "You merely predict that every single decision anybody makes, including you, will prove to be wrong."
Ultimately, I am more bothered by the incivility than anything done by the principal actors in this Kabuki. One friend of mine who has never liked Leno is going all Glenn Beck on this, twisting facts and ratcheting up the invective to no good purpose. I have an awful feeling we are one phone call from the end of that friendship.
March 1, Jay starts his new show. Most of those who said he'd irrevocably destroyed his career with his sinister machinations are now backpedalling to allow that, well, maybe he will start winning the time slot again. Even if he doesn't, no one seems to be wagering that he won't do better in March than Conan would have. I still think Leno's success will have a lot to do with whether he can fix one of the main things that was wrong with his 10 PM show — above and beyond the fact that it was on at 10 PM — which was the weakness of the material. I'm eager to see what he'll do but I'm even more eager for this all to be over. When it starts invading your sleep, something's wrong. I don't think I've ever dreamed about a show I was working on. Why this?
