Jay Leno was on with Oprah Winfrey this afternoon for a chat. Ms. Winfrey has the habit of pressing her guests to discuss their lives and feelings in her terminology and in very simple terms…the kind of pop psychology wherein you can summarize a human's complete emotional profile in one sentence. Which is fine if that's how they see their lives or if they can distill it all down to Oprah shorthand. I felt like on the deeper, personal questions — why Jay didn't walk away at certain points or express hurt or anger — she and Leno didn't connect. I don't think Leno was being evasive or obtuse. I think the guy just doesn't view his world in those terms. His attitude is that you bury hurt feelings and you don't look for love or sucking-up from your employer; you just take the opportunity you think will work best and go with it.
On the matters of who did what and promised what, Jay laid out his case pretty well. If you're inclined not to like the guy, you won't buy it…but he said it about as well as he could, considering that he couldn't really emphasize the point of how weak Conan's ratings were. That's the heart of this whole problem but Leno would have looked bad for making an issue out of how, for example, O'Brien's Tonight Show went from first place to third in about a week. (One thing Jay could have mentioned, if only because Oprah didn't seem to know this, is that this did not happen with The Jay Leno Show as its lead-in. Jay's 10 PM show didn't come on for several months. Conan lost with the same kinds of lead-ins that Jay had when he was in first place.)
A much better case for Leno was made by Oprah herself in a post-show discussion group that I think is only available on the Internet at this link. It's about 40 minutes and some parts of it are kind of silly. Oprah's main goal seems to be to get the Leno-detractors in her audience to admit that the interview she conducted with Jay changed their minds. Most in her little focus group don't know anything about the TV business or the players in this drama so it's a little frustrating to hear their opinions on both. But then there is Oprah, who does know the industry (and Jay and Dave…), explaining how things are and how she doesn't see how Jay could possibly be the Bad Guy in it all. I suppose that's the best endorsement Leno's likely to get until he's back on The Tonight Show and all of America votes on whether they still like him.