We somewhat interrupt our Jay Defense for a few questions about the whole weird situation. This one is from Donald Byrne…
Thanks for answering these Late Night questions. I have one. How serious was NBC about really letting Conan O'Brien keep the Tonight Show by moving it to 12:05 a.m. and then giving Jay Leno a half hour at 11:35? I sometimes wonder why Conan did not take that deal — he would have kept the Tonight Show. Of course, there would be some egg on his face and it's hardly a show of confidence from NBC, but at least he could have kept his dream job, the one he had been working towards for more than 15 years. Or did Conan have some inside knowledge or a premonition that it was just the first step to getting rid of him in 6 months or a year down the road, when he would have less leverage? Did he really believe when he left the Tonight Show that Fox would be ready and willing to give him an 11:35 show? Was Conan really so committed to keeping the Tonight Show at 11:35 (his stated reason for leaving) that he was willing to leave NBC?
I think NBC was quite serious about the offer…though they might not have minded if Conan had quit, thereby relieving them of having to pay off his contract. They were also facing the prospect of paying hefty production fees for three late night shows when they probably would have preferred to just pay for two.
Why Conan didn't take the deal: This is partly speculation on my part but no one likes to suffer a public demotion like that and he also must have felt cheated. He turned down other, more lucrative offers elsewhere to stay at NBC, then five years later move to 11:35 and get away from directly following Jay Leno…or anyone. Now, NBC was yanking 11:35 away and asking him to again follow Leno. I think we can be pretty sure he felt NBC had not given his show proper time to grow and find its audience before they declared it something of a failure. I think so, too.
As I understand it, he did not have a real offer from Fox at the moment he rejected the 12:05 plan but he and his agents probably had a fair amount of confidence that one would be forthcoming…and indeed, a lot of execs at Fox did want to bring him over. But that would have involved getting their affiliates, who'd invested in Seinfeld and other highly-rated reruns for that hour, to yank those off and clear the time for Conan. That didn't happen. (It would probably not have been an 11:35 show on Fox, by the way. It more likely would have started at 11 PM.)
Personally, if I'd been his manager, I'd have advised him to get out of NBC before he moved any further into the category of Damaged Goods. The Leno half-hour probably would have boosted the ratings and then everyone would have said, "Hmm…think what a whole hour of Jay there would do." But an awful lot of people in the industry — one or two of them in Bill Carter's book — have weighed in with the opposite view. Conan could have kept The Tonight Show and maybe built something out of it…and that might well have been preferable to, say, winding up on TBS. As I said, I wonder if he'd have taken the NBC realignment if he'd known there would be no offer from Fox or ABC or any venue more prominent than Basic Cable.
Quitting one job often has a lot to do with finding another. Did he have something else he wanted to do professionally other than a late night talk show? I don't know the answer to that. He seems to have been eager to quickly commence another, similar program somewhere, possibly to prove to the world that he could still draw an audience to one, possibly because he felt he owed it to his staff to come up with employment for all or most of them. Apart from Fox, there weren't a lot of other good places where that might happen. A friend of mine at NBC I discussed this with said to me, "At the time he refused the 12:05 realignment, if Conan had made up a list of everyplace else he might go do a new talk show, I'll bet you nobody around him would have suggested TBS."
This next question is from Edwin E. Smith…
I have a question that I don't think I've seen addressed anywhere. What will NBC do if Jimmy Fallon tanks on The Tonight Show? Do they try to bring Leno back again? Would they consider Conan or Craig Ferguson? They didn't have much of a Plan B last time, but this time they are really up there without a net, potentially killing two time slots with one stone. I still don't understand why even if they don't want Jay around they haven't offered him some other time slot like a once a week program on Sunday night or a series of specials of the same type Bob Hope used to do. I'm not a huge fan but I could probably get into a Jay Leno Fourth of July Broadcast or a Thanksgiving special. Granted, no one wanted to watch him five nights a week in prime time, especially not with the format he had, but you'd think NBC would try to keep him around in some form.
NBC will probably offer Leno some sort of presence on the network but he turned that down before and will probably turn it down again. Everyone I know who knows Leno says his goal is a venue from which he can do that topical monologue every night…not a weekly show, not a show taped days before it airs. I don't know that any such place exists.
Odder things have happened but I'd be amazed if Leno is ever asked back to that time slot by NBC. Conan or Craig? I think there's more chance they'd offer the job to Paula Deen. Craig, for better or worse, has aligned himself with CBS for whatever happens there. Allegedly, Ferguson's contract has some sort of clause that gives him the 11:35 show at CBS if Letterman retires or dies but I'll be very surprised if that happens. He hasn't won his time slot in quite some time against Jimmy Fallon so why would CBS want to put him on against Fallon at an earlier, more crucial hour? And why would NBC want him there over Fallon? And Conan O'Brien is maybe the least likely person on the planet to be asked to take over The Tonight Show again…for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.
More of this tomorrow…and maybe Wednesday…