One of the things that has lessened my enjoyment of and admiration for Mssrs. Leno, Letterman and O'Brien has been this ongoing playing of the victim card. These are three men who've each gotten about 97% of everything you could ever want in an industry where the average is well under 2%. My Uncle Aaron used to say, "Never feel sorry for anyone who makes more than a million dollars a year." If Uncle Aaron were around today, allowing for inflation, it might be more like ten million a year. Jay, Dave and Conan are all well ahead of that and will probably remain above that level for the remainder of their careers. They're all loved by much of America…all adored by most of their respective staffs…all respected by most of their peers. Somehow, I have trouble feeling someone has suffered a great injustice because he wound up with zillions of dollars and a show that wasn't in Johnny Carson's old time slot.
I'm fascinated, not necessarily in a good way, that people are so passionate about it…and also that the factual recitals are so fact-free. When you come right down to it, this is a pretty simple story, one based in a situation that occurs constantly in network television: Someone in power (or someones, plural) makes an educated guess on what programming choice would get them the most desirable ratings. That's what this game is all about. You're a network programmer. You have to decide what to put on at 9 PM on Tuesday. You look at all your options — cancel what's there, renew it, move something else you have into that slot, buy one of the pilots you developed, etc.
You look at past ratings and any overt or implied trends. You look at audience testing reports. You talk with the folks who'll be producing or supplying those shows and maybe you get a sense of who's worth gambling on. You may consult with affiliates or advertisers or media consultants who study audience demographics. Often, there are political considerations…for example, maybe one of the shows you could buy is from Jerry Seinfeld's company and you'd like to build a relationship with Jerry Seinfeld. That might tip the scale a bit that show's way. There are many factors you might consider but ultimately, it all comes down to playing a hunch. It may be an educated hunch…and often (and this is key to understand) it's less a hunch about what will do well than it is about what will harm you personally less if it doesn't…
But it still comes down to a hunch.
If you're in show business, your life turns on such hunches — your own and others'. You can become rich and famous (or not) because of someone else's hunches. Conan O'Brien got Letterman's old job because Lorne Michaels had a hunch about him. For a time, ratings were iffy and Conan was renewed in tiny increments and even, at one point, briefly cancelled. But various folks had various hunches, as well as a dearth of more promising alternatives, and Conan hung in there until he proved his value. I'm not suggesting that the quality of the show he and his crew produced was irrelevant. It mattered a lot. But he got to keep doing it because someone at the network believed his numbers would improve…and they did.
In 2004, there were folks at NBC, maybe even some of the same folks, who had a hunch Jay Leno's ratings would soon falter and that by 2009, it would look like a great idea to retire Leno and move O'Brien onto the Tonight Show throne. That was maybe not as wise a notion but it also worked to Conan's advantage. He got a new job he wanted badly. If someone else had been in charge at NBC at the time, they might well have said, "What? Cancel Leno when he's #1 and promise Conan that slot? Are you mad?" But the someone who was in charge, reportedly Jeff Zucker, had a hunch.
Conan benefited greatly from that hunch. He didn't do as well with a more recent hunch when some of the same people looked at his numbers as Tonight Show host and decided they were unlikely to ever get to where they wanted them to be, and that Jay stood a better chance of achieving that. Were they right? We'll never know for sure. A lot of armchair programmers on the Internet are prepared to argue that the numbers suggest otherwise.
It's important to remember that the real programmers, the ones who made the decision, have access to much more detailed, extensive viewership data than is available to some guy who goes online and gets the brief, bottom-line summaries that are released to the public. It's also important to remember that network execs, armed with all the information, sometimes make decisions they live to regret. Some at NBC no doubt regret the decision to dump Jay for Conan. They may soon regret dumping Conan for Jay…or even regret not firing both and making an offer to Adam Carolla or Stephen Colbert.
An old pro once said to me that in Show Biz, it was "Live by the hunch, die by the hunch" and that's not a bad way to look at it. One of the reasons I don't have a lot of sympathy for Conan's situation, above and beyond his settlement loot, is that the decision to drop him seems to me no less fair than the one to take the job away from Jay and give it to Conan in the first place. So what you have is Jay and Conan (i.e., two multi-millionaires who even without The Tonight Show have loads of job offers) reaping the benefits of the hunches that went their way and whining about those that didn't.
I think I understand why people whose livelihoods are not linked to Jay's or Conan's care about this. I think it has much to do with how shaky the economy is, these days. More so than usual, Americans are worried about being unjustly or capriciously fired…and depending on which guy you prefer, you can make the case that he was; that the other guy stabbed him in the spine and snatched away the great gig. I just don't think anyone can make the case that either guy is deserving of sympathy or that a great wrong needs to be avenged, and I'm really finding it distasteful for anyone to suggest as much. These are two — three, if you count Dave and we should count Dave — of the most fortunate and successful people who've ever been paid megabucks to interview supermodels and seated stand-up comedians. They'll all continue to do just fine…and that's not a hunch.
