NBC has just put out a press release announcing that Jay Leno will leave The Tonight Show in Spring of next year and that Jimmy Fallon will begin doing that program from New York. The most interesting paragraph in the release to me is this quote from Steve Burke, Chief Executive Officer of NBCUniversal…
We are purposefully making this change when Jay is #1, just as Jay replaced Johnny Carson when he was #1. Jimmy Fallon is a unique talent and this is his time. I'm thrilled he will become the sixth host of The Tonight Show at exactly the right moment.
No mention in there of Conan replacing Jay when he was #1…but that didn't work out so well, did it? Burke also said of Leno, "His long reign as the highest-rated late-night host is a testament to his work ethic and dedication to his viewers and to NBC." Yeah, and NBC has been so dedicated to him that they've decided to oust him three times, all when he was delivering the ratings they wanted.
Leno's contract was not up until the Fall and he reportedly had a clause that paid him a huge fee if he was yanked off the air before the contract was up. I'm assuming that all the delay and scuffling of the last few weeks have been because negotiations were being held as to how much Jay would get and at what point he'd be free to go elsewhere. Will he land at Fox or somewhere else? Hard to say. My guess is he'll increase his schedule of stand-up gigs and wait to see what's offered and — equally important — how committed those suitors are to stick with a new show. If Fox offers him 26 weeks with options, he'll say no. If they offer him a pretty solid couple of years…well, maybe. Jay's never been a guy to turn down a job if he could squeeze it in but sooner or later, he's gotta. There's a good "quit while you're ahead" argument here.
I find something very likeable about Jimmy Fallon but I find myself unable to like his show. I don't mind that he is not edgy. All the criticisms of Leno softening his act and dumbing it down for Middle America strike me as more applicable to Fallon, except that he never really had a hard-edged act to soften. Every time I tune him in, he seems to be playing Beer Pong or some game designed to cover him and/or a guest with food or beverage. I don't find that kind of thing all that entertaining — or any hipper/wittier than Jay bringing out stupid people to play Jeopardy! and get all the questions wrong.
People keep asking me how I think Dave or Conan feel about all this. I doubt either one cares that much. They have their own shows to worry about. Conan's just been extended on his TBS series but that only means he's doing about as well as George Lopez did for them there. It's steady but that's about it.
Meanwhile: Without Jay on the air, Letterman's really going to feel like a dinosaur. Friends who know him say he's only doing the show (a) because it's the only thing he does that brings him much happiness, (b) he doesn't know what else to do and (c) he wants his son to get old enough to really understand that Daddy is a TV star. It'll be interesting to see if he inherits the older viewers who don't have Leno to watch anymore — that's assuming Leno isn't over on Fox — or if Dave loses too many of the younger ones to Fallon. In any case, the narrative changes from "Dave's staying on the air because he wants to outlast Jay" to "When's Dave going to pack it in?"
There's a new batch of rumors that NBC is talking to Seth Meyers about taking over Late Night. One friend over at NBC says it's all about costs and that a 90-minute Tonight Show, in lieu of anyone following Fallon at 12:35, is not yet off the table. I like Seth Meyers but wonder if he isn't too much like Fallon to work in that slot.
And that's about it for the moment. You'll probably see a lot of articles that say this may be the dumbest move NBC has ever made…so I don't need to write why it may well be that. If this were a few years ago, I'd confidently predict that the network will regret the decision but the landscape is changing. There's a very different game emerging here — one played in part on the Internet with streaming and morning-after clips. I can somewhat understand how NBC might see Fallon as better-equpped to fit in with where they think late night TV is going. My pessimism is based on this: The 10 PM Jay Leno Show experiment was predicated on the theory that TV was changing and that NBC was leaping to pioneer in playing by the new rules. Remember the cover — was it on Time or Newsweek? — about how Leno's show might represent the future of television? Then he got on the air and someone discovered that the old rules still applied.
Fallon will certainly succeed by some measure — lowering the cost of programming, finding ways to multi-purpose, delivering younger demos, etc. Conan O'Brien also succeeded by some kinds of scorekeeping and so, pretty consistently, has Jay. It isn't that late night hosts aren't winning. It's that the network can't figure out just what the game is in which they're supposed to emerge victorious.