I haven't written anything here lately about late night TV because I haven't seen anything on it worth writing about. Much to my amazement — because not so long ago, I was a tremendous fan of both Dave and Jay — I now find both their shows largely unwatchable. I TiVo Letterman when he has on a guest who seems worth watching. Lately, this has been about twice a month and generally, the show strikes me as something Dave is doing just because he doesn't know what else to do with himself. I record Jay most nights because he at least acts like he enjoys his work but after the monologue, I don't find a lot that I enjoy. The only talk show I do find interesting is Craig Ferguson's because he keeps doing things he's never done before. It also helps that Ferguson, unlike the other guys, is willing to allow a bit of spontaneity into the proceedings.
I'll sample Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS in the hope he'll be more like he was during his first ten years on NBC. At some point — around the time Andy Richter left that program — Conan seemed to decide his show was about him being funny and it didn't matter if the guests or anything else was. His last year or so hosting Late Night, I abandoned him for Ferguson and a lot of viewers did, too. My lasting impression of the early Conan series is of a lot of cleverly-written pieces with fresh concepts. Most of what I recall of his last few years is him doing his string dance, making funny faces and trying to top his guests.
Around the time Conan debuts, we're going to have a reopening of the healed sore that was the Tonight Show debacle. The press won't be able to resist rehashing it all, plus there will be new skirmishes. O'Brien has an interview in Playboy next month and you also have Bill Carter's book coming out…the same day Conan debuts on WTBS, in fact. Carter, of course, wrote The Late Shift, which most take as the definitive account of the Leno/Letterman brouhaha, though I have heard other versions from folks involved in those battles. Mr. Carter's new volume — The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy — reportedly depicts both men as having done much about which they should be embarrassed but paints Leno more as the injured innocent. If you want to advance-order a copy, here's the place to do it.
In the meantime, the ratings news for late night talk shows is bad all around, though worse for Leno than for Letterman. Their two programs are approximately tied lately and in this case, a tie is probably a moral victory for Dave. That's, of course, if you just view the contest at 11:35 as Dave vs. Jay. Nightline on ABC has pretty consistently been beating both of them. Also worth noting, and it also can be spun a number of different ways, is what's happened with NBC at 10 PM. When Leno's prime-time show was there, it was considered a ratings disaster. The assumption was that more traditional programming at that hour would have to do better. Well, it hasn't. What's there now is drawing lower ratings than The Jay Leno Show did…and costing NBC a lot more. Isn't show business wonderful?