Douglas Alden Warshaw writes an interesting profile of Conan O'Brien…most interesting for its description of how, they say, Twitter and new media enabled Conan to reinvent himself and his career after the debacle of his Tonight Show.
I still think Jay Leno has been unfairly blamed for what transpired…and this article sure makes it sound like what sunk The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien was that it had The Jay Leno Show as its lead-in. Reality check: Conan's first Tonight Show was on June 1, 2009 and Leno's 10 PM show didn't come on the air until September 14. If Conan's show had been getting good or even encouraging numbers before Leno went on at ten, you'd have a good argument that Leno's ratings had undermined O'Brien's. That would have been obvious and it ain't what happened. Conan was in trouble before Jay's show debuted…and while it's true that what NBC had on at 10 PM before just before Jay went in there was not a lineup of hit shows, that was the best NBC was able to program at that hour. Leno had won the 11:35 time slot for a decade or so with that kind of lead-in. I can't see that anything Jay did or didn't do would have prevented NBC from moving Conan out of the 11:35 position, nor do I see any reason Jay should have tried to stop that even if he could.
In any case, I find myself enjoying Conan's TBS show more than either his Tonight Show or his last few years on NBC at 12:35. (For what it's worth, I'm enjoying Leno less than I used to, and I gave up even TiVoing Letterman. Most nights, I record then watch Leno, O'Brien and Craig Ferguson — each until some guest starts to bore me. Currently, Craig is the one most likely to keep my digit off the fast-forward button for the entire hour.) I like Conan best when he's less interested in being funny himself than when he's playing straight for Andy Richter or someone in the guest chair. I think Andy Richter's the best sidekick in the history of American talk shows — admittedly, not a highly competitive arena.
I hear mixed reports on how well Conan is doing and a lot of it depends on what standards of weights and measures one employs. He was never expected to beat Jay or Dave…and probably not even Jon and Steve, which is fine because that doesn't seem to be happening. There's some dispute over how much ratings-type cred you give O'Brien for the folks who watch his show days later via TiVo or view it in whole or in part online. The bottom line is that he seems to be profitable for TBS, which is generating more income via the back-to-back pairing of Conan followed by George Lopez than they saw with just Lopez on every evening. A friend of mine in the biz said, "If TBS was expecting any more than that, they were nuts." I don't think they were nuts. I think they were very smart to bring Conan O'Brien and his show on board.