At the risk of horrifying certain friends of mine — something I do every day, I would imagine — I would like to defend Jay Leno. I'm not going to address the issue of whether you oughta find him funny or not. If you don't, you don't. I generally do, especially in a live setting, and based on his success rate, I'm obviously far from alone. I also note his demographics and who I see in the audience when I go see him in person and I reject the idea that one specific generation or age bracket doesn't like him. Heck, I don't even buy the idea that — of Dave, Conan, Jay or the others — I even have to have a favorite. Anything wrong with liking all of them?
By way of full disclosure, I should say that I've met Jay on a number of occasions dating back to his Comedy Store days, and sometimes sold (or more often, given) him jokes. He has been unfailingly nice to me and everyone around him. I also have several friends who have worked for the guy and they have nothing but good to say about him. I'm sure there are those out there with different experiences but you tend to give more weight to first and second-hand encounters.
Some (note the "some") of the attacks on him from within the industry fall into the twin categories of Personal and Professional Jealousy. Leno is a notoriously prosperous, well-adjusted guy. He has no drinking problem. He has no drug problem. He has a famously happy marriage. He has more money than any of us and more cars than they make these days in Detroit. He also has a ratings track record that anyone in any part of the television industry would kill for. And perhaps most maddening to some is that he keeps having these publicized dilemmas and winning, surviving when his detractors have written him off for dead. Some people — especially those he's bested in the ratings or refused to have on his show — keep being denied their Schadenfreude and can't resist kicking a guy when he might, at long last, be down.
And some of it is folks who don't like his act, don't like his comedy, which is to be expected in this world. From that though, they leap to "He's not funny" and an insistence that his achievements could not possibly be Kosher. Those who flock to see him must be deluded or simple-minded, and all those steps up the ladder could not possibly have been earned. For the record, there are a number of very popular, wealthy comedians who rarely make me laugh…but I recognize that plenty of other folks find them hilarious and that's why they're popular and wealthy.
I don't like everything Jay's done. I wince at some of his political views and was not at all comfortable with his actions during the recent Writers Guild strike. That he went back to work bothered me but my Guild did clear him completely of all charges related to possible scabbing. Given that and the fact that I don't know all the legal considerations — the kinds of contractual problems he would have had as a performer if he hadn't returned — I grudgingly give him the benefit of the doubt here. I was, of course, very disappointed with his 10 PM effort and there are a number of things he did on The Tonight Show that sent me diving for the Fast Forward button on the TiVo remote. I don't think he's been at his best lately but that's true of Dave, Conan, most of them. Of all those guys, I think Craig Ferguson's the only one who's at the top of his game currently, though Conan's final week was terrific.
I have already written here that I don't think Leno did anything unethical or all that unusual in the manuevers that got him The Tonight Show job in the first place; that it was a natural process, at least to the extent anything is ever natural in network television. In the matter of the rearrangement with Conan, consider: Jay was doing a very successful Tonight Show. No crime there. NBC decided to take it away from him and give it to Conan. That might have been dumb on the network's part but Jay was gracious in stepping aside from a job that he wanted. Given his ratings clout and wealth, he could easily have engaged a killer attorney and pressured NBC to find a loophole in Conan's deal or renege and buy the guy off. Leno could also have immediately made a deal with Fox or ABC to go up against Conan and try to crush him in some emotional lust for revenge. Perhaps neither move would have worked but as far as we know, Jay didn't even try. I'm not sure I would have been as cooperative if I was thrown out of the biggest game of my life, especially when I was winning.
Those seeking to make some sort of case against him are arguing like his acquiescence included a pledge to go away, retire from network television and go work on his cars forever more. All he agreed to was to hand off The Tonight Show to Conan and he did, agreeably. He even had Conan on his last show, thereby making it at least partly about Conan O'Brien and not wholly about Jay Leno. How often in TV do people pass on an opportunity for self-congratulation? Not too often…
Taking the 10 PM slot on NBC, I'm sure, looked lucrative and it was also a good way to keep 175 people — the ones who helped put on a very successful Tonight Show — employed. But it was probably a mistake in the sense that the show was a mistake. It was not a breach of ethics, and I don't get this argument that Jay had some sort of obligation to get off the stage in order to do everything possible to help make Conan's Tonight Show a success. He did the two most important things, which were (a) not to dump on Conan for shoving him aside and (b) to hand off the program in good shape with high ratings. Conan continued those high ratings for about three days and then the show lost around half its (or Jay's) audience, plunging from First Place to Third, where it largely remained until talk of it moving or ending got it some attention.
I like Conan and once even told him so. I think Andy Richter's one of the funniest people on television and I'm glad that they finally moved him from being a distant announcer to an on-the-couch sidekick, thereby righting one of the early errors I think they made. Conan has/had first-rate producers and writers and, for my money, the best band of all the late night programs. But his Tonight Show did not connect with audiences as NBC had hoped…and it's annoying to see his partisans trying to spin that to blame Leno and his 10:00 thud. Conan took over The Tonight Show on June 1. The Jay Leno Show didn't start until mid-September, by which time Conan had been in last place for more than three months.
If you want to argue that before and after, Conan was victimized by bad lead-ins, okay. That's sure some of it. NBC had a 10 PM problem before Jay went on there. They had a 10 PM problem while he was on there. They'll probably have one after he's gone from there. The job description of hosting The Tonight Show pretty much comes these days with having to rebound from weak lead-ins. Somehow, Leno always managed it and Conan did not. Given more time, would that have happened? I don't know. Among the many aspects of this that must be eating at O'Brien and his staff is that no one will ever know. I'm sure at the network there were arguments, with one side noting that late night shows often build an audience over time. The other side probably said, "Yeah, but it's not like Conan O'Brien's an unknown quantity or some beginner who requires on-the-job training about how to do a talk show. He's been on for seventeen years."
As I've said here several times, I think he should have been given more time and I'm glad I don't have to say how much. One of the many reasons I'd never want to be a network programmer is that sitting at home, it's easy to say I'd cancel this, renew that, move some show to Tuesdays. It's the least exact of sciences but it's fun when no money rests on your decision and you really can't be proven wrong. If I were actually moving, cancelling and picking up the shows and millions (sometimes, billions) were on the line and my bosses and the affiliates were screaming at me to make a change, I'm not sure I'd be as apt to gamble and to rule out the safer decisions.
In this case, I don't think their decision to bail on Conan has a lot to do with Jay Leno, except for this: Jay's available. If he'd never done the 10 PM show and gone off to play Vegas and other places, he'd still be available. There would still be folks at that network looking at Conan's ratings and looking at Jay's and asking, "Can we get the guy with the chin back?" They might even be more apt to do that because Jay wouldn't have the prime-time disaster hanging over him, making some wonder how much he'd damaged himself with that failure.
If he'd said, "No, I don't want to take back The Tonight Show," that would have bought Conan more time on the air…but only because it would have taken several months for NBC to decide on someone else to host Tonight and to get that person up and running. Jeff Zucker and his team would not have said, "Okay, we can't get Jay back. Let's just be content with Conan finishing third and not have anyone else lined up to replace him if he doesn't pick up." Networks are not content — and come on, you know this — to finish last. Especially with a show that not that long ago was in First Place and earning them tons more money.
Yeah, I understand why Letterman and Kimmel are cranky about all this. Their ratings went up when Jay went away and now he's coming back. I understand why those who like Conan O'Brien (and I am one of 'em) don't like seeing him go away, even if he might be back as soon as September. I even understand an exasperation at watching a big company like NBC have this public, dysfunctional meltdown and screw with what's on our sets.
What I don't get is why some people think Leno had a moral obligation to retire and disappear. They didn't like that he did that 10 PM show. They didn't like that he was willing to do the half-hour show at 11:35 when that was proposed. They don't like that he's going to take back a show that he and his crew didn't want to give up in the first place. I know some of you don't think the guy's ever funny but you oughta try what I do. If I don't like a performer, I don't watch him. It's just as effective as if he did disappear and it saves a lot of time.