For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, NBC is letting Conan O’Brien go in favor of returning Jay Leno to the Tonight Show (read the story from the Washington Post here).
Here is Conan’s full statement from Tuesday, January 12, 2010.
People of Earth:
In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.
Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.
But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.
There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.
Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.
Yours,
Conan
Conan is getting a really raw deal here. We love him and want him to keep going! The problem here is the importance of the time slots to NBC executives, and how their ratings went down when they moved Jay Leno. I would argue that it’s not even about the ratings of either show, but about how the local networks news shows were hurt by the Jay Leno show being put at 10pm. The News are one of the few shows (and sports) that just don’t work on DVR — you want to know the news, or the score, as it’s happening. So for the news, the time slot matters a lot.
But what about shows like Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien? Does the time slot really matter in the era of DVRs?
Let me share something with you that you won’t get anywhere else:
In my MBA class, our teacher would sometimes bring people in industry to discuss our case studies with us. Sometimes he would have them on the phone and we’d be able to ask them questions about the cases we read. It was quite the amazing class format, and we got to talk to some people we would have never met before. One class, we got to talk over the phone with an Anonymous network executive.
She kept stressing the importance of a good line up in different time slots, and how revenue is generated from sales of airtime for commercials. My question to her was “with the increasing trend of DVRs and online watching, have they considered new ways of making money in the future when live TV is no longer relevant?” Pretty obvious question to ask, but I really was curious about the answer. You wanna know what she said??? She said that they have noticed that people’s TV watching habits revert to live TV as people get older (what?? How do they even know this?? DVRs are not a lifetime old yet!). I followed up and told her that the younger generations, or at least myself, definitely watch more DVR’d TV than live TV. So she asked for a pole around the room to see the % of people who watch live TV. Only a couple of hands were raised. She chucked that to be because we have a specific group of people in the MBA class, and we might not be representative of their real audience.
She also said that if that trend was true, they would go out of business. So people better start putting more importance on live TV, or there will be no shows to watch at all. Talk about not evolving with the times.
When we hung up the call, I openly expressed how deluded the networks are, and how they are completely ignoring the fact that new trends are driving them out of business.
I just wanted to illustrate to you why the time slot matters to them: it’s how they make money. If the ratings are low, the companies who advertise will not pay as much money for the time. All this is happening while most of us are here thinking “who cares? I fast forward through commercials anyway!” But they do care, because people who watch the news might stick around and keep watching Leno. Unfortunately they really screwed up that strategy by replacing the news 10pm slot ALTOGETHER.
From Conan’s perspective, I don’t think he cares about time slot per se. I think he really cares about the fact that he is being totally disrespected and his contract is being broken by a network that pretty much made him hang tight for 6 years before giving him the Tonight Show. Did you know that? He signed the agreement to host the Tonight Show back in 2003! He passed on multiple more lucrative offers for this opportunity. He moved his family and the ENTIRE crew (and their families) from New York for this. And now, they are bumping him back to his Late Nite schedule. That is NOT how you treat the Tonight Show’s host. That’s how you treat a second-rate less-important whatever show. That is NOT what Conan deserves, and Conan is right to stand up for himself.
I just hope that Conan finds a new home that will treat him with the respect he deserves. We love him, and will continue to DVR his work. After all, my DVR knows no network. Just shows.
ina