It Happened: NBC Signs Jay Leno to Hourlong Tonight Show
The writing has been on the wall for Conan O'Brien this week, but that won't make this news any sweeter for him to hear: TMZ is reporting that NBC and Jay Leno just signed a deal to give Leno back The Tonight Show. For a full hour.
The news comes just hours after Hollywood buzz had O'Brien booking guests for a farewell tour next week.
So, to recap: Leno's taken back O'Brien's show and timeslot, and there's still no word on where O'Brien will go next -- or whether NBC will keep him on ice as part of what will presumably be a hefty payout.
Developing...
Leno and NBC Strike 1 Hour Tonight Deal [TMZ]
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Comments
It's not Jay's fault. He never wanted to leave the tonight show...so why bash him? NBC execs are the ones who came up with that stupid idea! I say welcome back Jay...Good riddance Conan...the guy is wierd.
sUGGESTION:
Whoever does not like what NBC is featuring what about "trying to click once" to change the chanel.....!!!
This is not stone age, where there is only ONE channel? Why all the disdain and rudeness toward people you do not even know or have never even met??
No wonder we can't stop wars - I can't believe all these hateful online messages for soemthing as ridiculous as "someone else's" job-change - GET A LIFE!
I hate to admit it, but you are right; most people would do just like Jay.
Still, it doesn't make Zucker any less sleazy since it was Leno's ratings which caused all this, not Conan's....
Unless you have a Nielsen box what's the point? You don't matter. Just don't buy products from their advertisers if you feel the need to hurt them. And watch it live - they get a cut of Netflix and Hulu revenues.
Right, cause the older folks running the country the past decade did such a great job being so smart and all.
If NBC had kept Letterman and left Conan on after him NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING.
The problem is that Letterman and Conan have roughly the same audience and I guess people watch Letterman and TIVO Conan.
Wherever Conan goes I hope it is not against Letterman...
As for Jay> Insert shot of Blue-haired old ladies and the easily offended applauding. Another win for Mediocrity!
Leno is dumb to have taken the offer. He's not getting the Tonight Show back. Letterman has pulled a chunk of his former audience, a completely unproven slate of lead-ins, and he comes out looking like a jerk. Just like the previous issues with Letterman, Leno ends up taking the heat for poor leadership at NBC. HBO is preparing Nightshift 2: The Re-Lenoing as we speak.
But at least my grandparents can go back to falling asleep to Leno, he's cheaper then Nyquil.
Not completely. NBC didn't want Conan to leave at the end of his previous contract. Leno agreed to give his show another five years. When his time was up, he re-contracted and got an earlier slot and made a shitty show, on which he complained a lot about not having the Tonight Show. He could've bowed out gracefully and let Conan make a go of it - instead they (NBC) concocted this idiotic scheme which set this sh!tstorm in motion. So, at least in my book, there is some blame for Jay in all this.
The Late Shift has made an appearance in my Netflix queue.
Yes, three cheers for mediocrity. As Andy said last night - Welcome to humanity.
god, i'm such an idiot
Jeff Zucker should be fired. I can't believe GE hasn't already. He has ruined NBC with one after another stupid decisions.
How did NBC get the AARP members to post here? And NBC should have just cancelled the evening news.
Are you crazy? It was Conan who threw his ultimatum at NBC back in 2004 -- promise me The Tonight Show or I'll go to Fox.
Jay never gave anyone an ultimatum -- he simply agreed to do what his bosses asked him to do.
Conan is now getting what he deserves -- bad karma for throwing that ultimatum tantrum back in 2004. He should have just worked at his job, improving his skills, and waited for a natural progression to occur -- instead he threatened to quit unless he got what he wanted!
Numbers don't lie. It's money and Conan isn't drawing the numbers that Leno did. Networks have advertisers to answer to. As for myself, I tried watching O'Brien but don't find him funny. His immature humor doesn't do it for me, but I know he draws a younger demographic.
It's for reasons like this that God gave us DVD's and Wii !
Nothing--NOTHING has been the same since Johnny Carson retired!!!
Shame on Leno, shame on O'Brien and SHAME on NBC !!!!!!!
I got bored with Leno years ago. Conan was fresh, funny, contemporary and had better writing. If no-one was watching Leno at 10 pm, I don't see why NBC thought he'd redeem himself back at 11:30 again. There's a lot of great late night talk show talent around (way better than Leno) and maybe this will cause a big shuffle and move some of this talent around to other networks, like ABC. I like Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon in particular. Maybe at then some of these guys will be in earlier time slots where I can enjoy watching them on a regular basis.
And as I recall, all this shuffling started when Leno announced that he was retiring (17 year is enough). Why doesn't he just take retirement and enjoy his cars and give Conan the opportunity he deserves.
But I still hold that everyone gets boring after enough time.
Jer
Nobody seems to appreciate just how badly NBC has mismanaged the Tonight Show. Consider that the goal of network television is to maintain the largest audience possible to maximise ad revenues.
Back in 1992, there was little to no competition in the timeslot for other talk shows. Other networks attempts to create talk shows failed miserably. So NBC goes and creates it's biggest competitor by mishandling David Letterman, handing CBS a talk-show with a built in audience. Leno may have beat Letterman in ratings, but it still fragmented the audience of the Tonight Show with both receiving a fraction of the original ratings. Thus reducing NBC's profits.
18 years later, and in an attmept to prove they are just as dumb as ever, NBC is eagerly repeating the same mistakes. During this whole mess they continue losing viewers to Letterman. Creating yet more competition for their former program, and potentially handing Fox a late-night talk show with a built in audience. Fragmenting the audience, reducing ratings and profits yet again.
This would be like Exxon allowing Joseph Hazelwood to captain another oil tanker, only to have him run aground again. Who keeps giving the NBC executives money? An unpaid intern could have run NBC into 4th place just as easily.
neither one is funny
Ok first of all Jay is a big cry baby. I thought Obrien being on there would changed things. What people do seem to think is, that Conan had some pretty big shoes to fill, and I am not talking about Jay i am talking about Johnny Carson. I think that NBC should have given the younger face loooking guy a chance to prove himself. Jay stole this under Conan and I will not be watching that show anymore. Everyone remember how Jay got the job in the first place? A Doritto's commercial, he was not refered by anyone. I thought the Tonight Show sucked with Jay in it, not like Johnny, now that man could make you laugh. Jay is a joke a loser. A money hungry bloodsucking leech. Well I said enough. GO CONAN DONT TAKE A PAYOUT FIGHT FOR YOURSELF.Well jay says he knows what NBC stands for. He was wrong, he should relate to this. NBC: No (really) Bad Comedy.
Its just business!
I will not watch Jay when he comes back. He is not funny, and is the worst interviewer I have ever seen. I have seen him insult guests on more than one occasion, and I guess it's because he and his wife never had kids, that occasionally he tends to say the most unappropriate things to children during their interviews. I don't understand the reasoning of giving him back the Tonight show. His 10 pm show was a flop, (he's the man out front, no matter who's responsibility it is to make the show work), so why in hell does he deserve to have the Tonight Show back? In my opinion, he doesn't. He needs to gather up his pride and move on, and let Conan have the job that was rightfully given to him.
I might actually start watching the Tonight Show again. Jay is this generations Carson if anyone likes it or not and for NBC and Connan to force him out was a joke to start with. I hope team NBC goes with team Connan and leaves Jay alone from now on. Connan failed bad at his job and that is why he is going. He was popular 5 or 6 years ago and then his show started to stink even before he took over the tonight show. Anyone should have seen him failing being the probably course. Connan himself was never funny anyway. It was the skits and people on his show and once they went on to bigger and better things his show has stunk ever since.
On top of that: Jay is someone who can relate to both young and old, Connan only relates to young college kids who have smoked so much weed they do not even know which way is up. Elderly people, which make up a huge part of the audience will never watch Connan and NBC should have known that to start with. NBC basically GAVE CBS the entire audience over the age of 40 when they took off Leno and put on Connan. I have no idea how they could not know that???
Go Jay, the Tonight Show was and still is yours.
Stolidog, why did you cause all of this?!!!!
They promised a year's supply of Activia.
What? Know anything about contract law? If what you're saying is accurate- Conan said I want this or else I want to pursue a different path- NBC totally at a bare minimum breached their "duty of good faith and fair dealing" with Conan. If they didnt' want to give him the Tonight Show, they should have let him go do something else instead of stringing him along for years and then giving him this fake deal and now threatening to ice him for years after they duped him. Meanwhile, Leno is a f*ck. No ifs, ands, or buts about it... But mostly I'm just shocked that somehow you think it was wrong of Conan to negotiate for something that he wanted. It's not an ultimatum like a girlfriend wanting to get married, it's a f'ing contract deal. He negotiated for something he wanted... Last I checked, this country did away with slavery and Conan did not have to stay with NBC if he didn't want to. He negotiated to get something, they said he could have it, then they took it back unfairly all b/c, as I said earlier, Leno is a f@ck, and failed in the other time slot. If Leno didn't want to give up the Tonight Show, he should've just said so in the first place--- he wasn't forced to do anything, he made a lot of money agreeing to this deal, and now he gets the best of both worlds. he screws a competitor, and gets his show back.
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