Photos
The New York Times has an update on NBC’s supposed (but still unofficial? It is 2010, NBC, it is time to CONTROL THE STORY) plans for the late night lineup:
Pressed by affiliates and shrinking ratings, NBC has a plan in the works to radically alter its late-night television lineup, restoring Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 each weeknight, while pushing the man who replaced him, Conan O’Brien, to a starting time of 12:05 a.m.
And while NBC officially said no final decision on the plan had been made, two senior NBC executives who had talked to the top management about the moves said that under the plan being discussed, Mr. Leno would definitely shift back to 11:35 but in a half-hour format, while Mr. O’Brien would slide back his start time by a half hour and then produce an hourlong show.
The third NBC late-night star, Jimmy Fallon, would then begin his show at 1:05 a.m., the executives said. The revised lineup would go into effect after NBC concludes its coverage of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 28. NBC will pre-empt its prime-time and late-night lineup for more than two weeks to cover the Olympics, creating a natural break in which to put the late-night changes into effect.
So, there you go (maybe).
This, of course, does nothing to solve the problem of The Jay Leno Show* being awful, because a half-hour-long nightmare still leaves you just as sweaty and panicked as an hour-long one. And it won’t help to quell NBC’s concerns that Conan O’Brien is dragging down the Tonight Show‘s ratings because the lead-in to the Tonight Show will still be The Jay Leno’s Miserable Power Move. Not to mention who starts watching TV at midnight anymore? Anyone who is still awake is poking people on Facebook, or alphabetizing their Pogs. Probably. And if you are watching late night television, by the time you get to Fallon your brain will have jellified and dripped out through your nasal cavity, because what NBC does not seem to realize is that THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY INTERVIEWS WITH SIENNA MILLER THAT A HUMAN BEING CAN WATCH IN A ROW.
Oh well. No one ever said that NBC was not excellent at remaining a troubled and struggling network.
The good news is that this means they will actually have some watchable TV on at 10PM! Neat! I can’t wait to see how they avoid taking any chances and just rip-off Bones on the night that they aren’t launching a new Law & Order spin-off.
But seriously, shut up, Jay Leno
Boo.
UPDATE: Ugh.
*A note to fans of The Jay Leno Show: I recognize that if I had ever been a fan of Jay Leno, I would have seen his replacement by Conan O’Brien on the Tonight Show as a bizarre and inexplicable betrayal on the part of the network, and I would see his return in the 10PM slot as a welcome return of a beloved hero. I would find anyone complaining about him to be missing the larger point, which is that he is a popular entertainer, and NBC is a business, and it is their job to provide things that people want. As the show suffered in the ratings and received negative criticism, I might agree with and understand some of the complaints, but I would nevertheless be concerned that everyone’s reactionary demand that Jay Leno just be fired would suggest a dangerous breach of contract–because Jay Leno does have a contract–that could open the door to a future in which no creative and talented person was legally safe from the impetuous and short-sighted demands of advertisers. This would lead to an entertainment industry even more dominated by the flitting whims of unimaginative people trying to sell products that no one needs. There would be no interest in allowing a project or performer to develop or find his/her audience because their contract would be rendered meaningless, and there would be no interest or ambition to find something “new.” The thing is that I am not a fan of Jay Leno, and I think The Jay Leno Show is a bald-faced power-grab from a mediocre talent suffocating on his own ambition and materialistic need for MORE ANTIQUE CARS to PUT IN HIS AIRPLANE HANGAR. So I just basically ignore all of these otherwise completely valid points.
 |
 |
If this goes through, I will at least take pleasure in knowing that someone had to replace all the graphics that say 10 with graphics that say 1135. I think we can all agree that is less punchy.
Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’ll be right here waiting for you . . .
If Jay Leno thinks his the Worst can trump Seth McFarlane’s the Worst on Fox, he could have another (closeted) gay baby think coming.
Affiliates…. ratings…. how accomplished we are at being unhappy.
Some advice? To avoid shrinkage, quit bathing us in your “hot new lineups.” Anymore laundry tips, I’m happy to oblige. For laundering tips, see Gabe.
Alphabetizing their Pogs. Wow. That was incredible. Gabe, I don’t know what kind of Internet supplements you’re taking these days, but you’ve been on your game this week!
the gif folder strikes again!
So we get to see this guy again, since it’s back on Edgy Late Nite Times?
Groooosss. Is that another picture of your dog? GROSS
is this a racist Avatar joke? we don’t take kindly to racism around here.
(I was just remembering DS3M changed his avatar because DS3M thought people were tired of pictures of DS3M’s dog, and so I was pretending that the masturbating bear was another picture of this dog. If someone can upvote me and make me carbon neutral I promise to never pretend again.)
It’s cool mang, I upvoted you because you remembered and comemoralized my struggles vis a vis commenting on this interwebsite.
Also, My dog gif changed b/c A: She’s not famous B: She’s not named after a famous person, and C: AVATAR AVATAR
i know! i was pretending too! <3
This gif illustrates why Leno will always suck, and Conan will always be funny.
maybe its just me or the booze talking, but does anyone in the 20-40 age group reallllly watch late-night TV anymore? is it just me? i don’t give a crap about interviews, and i know that if a band i like is playing i can just watch the clip on my own time in my velvet robe in my library. with that being said, i’ll still watch Colbert or Stewart at night anyway so whatevs.
I Tivo Conan (and Stewart) and watch Conan’s sketches, and once in a while the musical acts/guests. I find that if I keep the TV on and the volume turned up I can hear the booze talking less. Don’t get me wrong, it still talks, I just don’t hear it as much.
Are we close to reaching the point where people do not care what time things are on anymore? Cause I’m there. I know everyone doesn’t use DVRs and a large part of Leno’s audience was probably in an uproar when they realized they had to get digitial converters to keep watching Leno, but is the time the show is on really so integral that it becomes a part of the set design? Plus – time zones?!?! There are a lot of people on Central Time! Unless it’s a live sporting event or a political debate, we’ll watch it when we want to watch it, thanks.
I’m with you. At first I was all “Grr,” because midnight is a lame-ass timeslot, but then I was all “What time does hulu come on?” so then finally I was all like “Oh. This affects me not at all.” Further, I might like Conan in a less “advertiser-friendly” timeslot. It’s a big turnoff to see him and Andy hawking this shit they’ve been hawking since being on the Tonight Show. This will be listed in my “Turn-Offs” section when my Playmate of the Month pictorial comes out (June 2010, by the way).
I love Conan but I never watch his show anymore (when I graduated from college I was diagnosed with a disease called adult that instantly aged me from 22 to 73 thus rendering all hours of the day between 7:45 pm and 5:09 am meaningless. And yes, I have a movie in the works about that disease). The couple times I’ve watched him on the Tonight Show its been terrifying and awful. I think Conan needs to just take his $40 million and run. Why continue to toil away under the shadow of the great chinned one?
It seems to me to make sense for Conan to just jump this sinking ship and go over to another channel. What’s Fox got going on at 11PM, reruns of Family Guy?
I’m all for Arsenio Hall to take the 10PM spot. Oh how I miss thee oh sweet Dog Pound.
(Arsenio gesturing to dog pound) “See these people over here? These are the people who ran Jay Leno off the 10 p.m. time slot with their VGum comments and snark only to end up with me.” (cue wordy graphic)
Go to FOX Conan…please.
LeNO, amirite?
What a fucking joke this is. Conan is too good for NBC, clearly. The Tonight Show is not his style because he is not a 70-year-old man. Even the stuff Jimmy Fallon is doing is much more fun and original than Leno, but then again, we don?t like fun and original. We like watching Jaywalking FOR THE 189472389437th TIME.
Fox, like NBC and all the broadcast networks, are going down the tubes. The Fox/Time Warner scramble is just the beginning; premium cable channels are winning the war for quality (or at least widely tuned into) programming, one reality show/movie channel original series at a time. Although NBC holds the last few pieces (Thursday comedy lineup is key), soon the networks will have to bow to lackluster ad revenue and lower ratings. Think about how many shows you watch on Hulu already, how long before Hulu has its own original content? Five, ten years maybe?
That being said, Conan is a great entertainer and its sad that he must exist in an era of uncertainty for great, edgy talent. A combination of oversaturation of derivative late-night schlop and a generation of torrent-addled kids, DVR, and old people being the only people not time-shifting their programming is enough to kill a late-night show airing after 10. The good news is that Conan is a beloved man in the American collective concious, and no backstabbing from NBC could change that love, however tragic.
Whew, sorry about that! Professor ramble over here. Yo, Preach!
“Yo, Preach!” Nice work.
MOTHERFUCKER. If ANYTHING happens TO CONAN, I’ll be LEADING THE revolution FROM MY goddamn DOOR IN Texas ALL THE WAY to the NBC FATCATS IN LA where I will FUCK the National Bitch Company UP. THEY’LL be asking ME TO LET Leno host my AWARDS ceremony AND I’LL BE ALL “No fuck YOU ASSHOLES. You suck and THIS WINE IS fuckin AWFUL!”
I bet you won’t.
Oh, American Patriot. You may be the leader of the riot now, but we all know how you started.
.
OH WELL I’m sorry FOR BEING a person WHO CHANGES and not a MINDLESS WAX figure OF TOM Cruise!
Why the caps, bud? I thought maybe if you read all the capitalized words together, it’d would make a sentence, but it didn’t…Where am I going with this again?
WHAT DO you mean?
I had no idea that late nite tv was still a thing, let alone that there were three shows? Do other networks do this too? Amazing.
I was all ready to be upset with NBC for dick teasing Conan, but then you linked the article where it states he has a $25 million contract with a $40 million dollar buyout option. NBC could use me for personal entertainment for executives via testicle electrocution if that was the salary.
nbc should take a chance on bringing back veronica mars or arrested development or whatever other shows were cancelled by the other networks.
This story is depressing, no doubt. Coco rulez forever! But if you really hate your life, read the comments on the articles about the shakeup on People.com. Fat troglodytic americans everywhere agree, Leno is awesome.
Inappropriate!
Infinity upvotes.
Guys be sure to check for Carson Daly ever night from 3:05 to 3:08 in the split screen with the extended version of sarah mclaughlin’s animal abuse commercial!
Carson – He likes music.
Daly’s show isn’t even in a studio with a live audience anymore. And he doesn’t tell a joke. Ever. Now that’s late night innovation!
I assumed Daly was moving to the Today Show slot. I guess I’m bad at this
It’s like NBC had two options to try and improve their ratings, cancel the Jay Leno show and call it a loss or move jay leno back to the tonight show because that’s what the viewers ‘want’. But no instead they chose a third option that wasn’t even on the table that will most likely cause them to loose ratings! You think someone would have said, “hold on a minute, something about this doesn’t feel right to me.”
I might actually watch Conan now, since it will come on after the superior Daily and Colbert and contain less filler by a half hour.
I was thinking that this whole thing would (eventually when Mr. Leno decides to gather his staff and drive his hangar full of cars across the desert for eternity) lead Conan to jump to CBS after Letterman leaves. But then I remembered Craig Ferguson and then I remembered that these will probably be the last group of people to host TV shows of this format as we hurtle toward the future of television.
Another silly thing that just makes me upset about the Conan/ Leno thing is how NBC set up a show that competes directly with another of their own shows for guests. I keep picturing the next season of Entourage having Ari Gold saying things like “No no man! Vinny Chase only does Leno!” but I really hope the next season of Entourage involves a lengthy storyline about Mr. Chase doing dinner theater.
I Like how the statement starts out, “Pressed by affiliates…”
HAHAHAHAHA
affiliates!!!
Hmm… and all this time, I’ve been arranging my Pogs by most/least remaining cultural relevance.
Jesus Christ. Jimmy Fallon starting at 1.05…What time do Americans stop watching TV?.. Does everyone just tivo or catch up online? Or are we all gonna start getting this shit piped straight into our heads in our sleep now? And live it on the way to work. Demolition man!
Okay, this is weird. I was cleaning my closet two days ago and found my old collection of Pogs. Instead of organizing them, I just tossed them in the trash. But still, Gabe, I’m starting to think you’re some kind of warlock… It may be up to you and you alone to save Conan’s show. You have the power!
If he can cancel Jeff Dunham (sp? who cares) he can save Conan.
IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSANDDDDDDD…… 1980s action/comedy star Lawrence Tero, a.k.a., “Mr. T” will make a prediction for NBC’s dwindling late-night audience. His prediction? PAIN. IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAAAAAAND!.
I guess if the choice is between putting Leno back at 10:30 (I live in Central time, bitches.), or dumbing Conan down to make him more palpable, I’d prefer Leno be the one in charge of tickling your Aunt Betty’s funny bone or whatever, and let Conan be Conan.
I mean, I’d more prefer that NBC use it’s 4th place status to its advantage and give edgier, smarter comedy a place on network TV like Fox tried – doing more stuff like it’s Thursday night lineup – and get rid of Leno altogether