BREAKING: Conan-Leno Mudslinging Continues With Oprah.com Poll Allegations
One of the better moments in Oprah's Leno-spectacular last week occurred when Lady O. drew attention to a recent poll in which a staggering 96 percent of her viewers America aligned themselves with Conan O'Brien after NBC's Tonight Show scuffle. Leno shrugged, agreed that he had a long, hard road ahead of him before he could reclaim his Letterman-trouncing ratings at 11:35 PM, and then delivered a blistering forty minutes worth of blue collar verbiage designed to seduce middle America back into his grease-stained arms. Oprah announced that she would post a new poll immediately after the interview, in which viewers could recast their Leno/Conan ballots based on Leno's testimony. Twenty-four hours passed, Movieline discovered that Leno had only swayed one additional percent of Oprah's voters...and we figured that sounded about right. (After all, he confessed that he did not try to contact Conan throughout the mishandling). But then Oprah.com quietly took down its poll on Friday without announcing results on air as promised, and Movieline received a tip from a source close to Leno's camp alleging that the vote had been rigged.
So how exactly does the source close to NBC figure that Team Coco flooded Oprah's ballot box? By good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing, thanks to software designed by die hard Coco fans and advertised on one of the many Team Coco Facebook pages, in a message like the following:
The source claimed that when Harpo was informed of the ballot stuffing, they immediately removed the post-interview poll from their website. When Movieline asked Harpo about the poll yesterday, a company spokesperson issued the following blanket response:
"We used poll findings from Oprah.com for our initial interview with Jay and after the show aired, it was subsequently taken down."
Movieline followed up with Conan O'Brien's camp, who denied any knowledge of the rumors surrounding Oprah's PollGate.
The water at NBC is might murky these days, with a new suspicion being circulated around Movieline HQ today: "Is NBC sinking to new depths to garner support for Leno by accusing Coco fans of sinking to new depths by rigging Oprah.com polls?" This Tonight Show Ouroboros is exhausting to ponder. But the truth remains, if Oprah.com had really wanted to make their Leno/Conan poll fair in the first place, they would have made allowances for Leno's fans to rotary dial their votes in.
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I think there is little overlap between people who love Oprah and people who love Conan. I am one of them, but I think I'm one of the few.
But online polls are generally so reliable. That's how we know that most of the world thinks that Robert Pattinson is the greatest actor of the decade.
Lame. every aspect
then the author wonders why she gets called stoopid. dial in...why bother? it's oprah. who watches that?
An internet poll that allows for multiple submissions per IP is flawed in every way, shape and form.
On another note, Oprah should have seen this coming. Conan's fans are younger, more enthusiastic and more well-versed in using the Internet to get their point across then both her an Leno's fans.
Yes, because non-scientific, non-reliable, easily-manipulated Internet polls are the smartest way of finding the truth. Stupidity on every level.
The truth is this. EVERY online poll is baloney because of the fact that people will vote more than once or even design scripts that will do the work for them, sometimes casting thousands or millions of votes this way.
So no, NBC isn't stooping a new low by pointing out reality. For once they're telling the truth.
The problem, however, is still two-sided. Some Conan fans ballot stuff because they feel their opinion isn't being heard, and they're right. Because of NBC's deal which is keeping Conan silent, perhaps until September, there hasn't been equal opportunity for Conan fans to reach the American public. NBC has lots of power and their former fans have none, save for this little thing called Facebook.
Although the course of action some of them have chosen isn't right, neither is NBC's position in all of this. And while two wrongs don't necessarily make a right, one has to question if they can make things less wrong. I mean, imagine if this had happened in the pre-Internet era. Oh wait, it did, the last time Jay Leno was named the host of The Tonight Show. Funny, that. Only last time around, few people knew the depths to which he'd slunk in order to get what he wanted. Now a much larger percentage of the population is educated and aware. Is that a bad thing?
Ultimately, if Oprah wants to know how America really feels about the Conan/Leno situation, perhaps it's time she comes out of her cozy little studio and does some Oprahwalking, LIVE, so she cannot censor or restrict the opinions she doesn't like.
Let me put this BS to rest. NBC dumped Johnny Carson because of sheer
stupidity! Carson had another good 10 years or more in him. Leno had a rough start, however Leno is a money machine for NBC. Any moron
would have know better than to replace Leno with Conan but the prune
who made that decision is operating with zero brain cells.
No one can ever replace Carson, not even Leno who sucks up to the lefties in Hollywood just to try and keep things quite and smooth but then comes the crybabies like Oprah, Rosie, and even Conan. This entire
fiasco is the result of the NBC brass and it's poor decision making.
Leno will come back and take the rating back from that loser Letterman who is a gofer for the lefties! Kimmel could not carry Leno's underware so forget him. Time to move on to things of importance and this NBC baloney IS NOT important! Get a life you slackers.
If Conan was so great he would have been able to pull up the ratings.
Conan should be very happy with his settlement and be quite.
WHO CARES ABOUT BALLOT BOX STUFFING JAY PUSHED JOHHNNY CARSON OFF THE TONIGHT SHOW SO HE COULD HAVE IT AND NOW THAT SPOILED LITTLE BRAT WANT IT BACK SOMEONE SHOULD PUT A BOTTLE AND DIAPER ON JAY LENO BIG CRYBABY CONAN O BRIEN ALL THE WAY SCREW THAT BIG JAW JERK OFF LENO JAY LENO YOU CAN SUCK IT
Morons need to learn how to spell "Quiet", you've effectively nullified any respect your opinion would garner by looking like a complete idiot, 2nd graders know how to spell better than you do. Also, claiming that a Late-Night talk show host has a political agenda makes you look even dumber.
Lameo Leno took 90 weeks for him to beat Letterman! 90 Weeks that's 3 months short of 2 flippin' years! Conan had 7 months! Leno is a worm!
I don't mean to stir up trouble, as I am on TeamConan. But if anybody stacked the poll, it wasn't Oprah. Check out these links below from Reddit.com
I'm with CoCo! Jay Leno going on Oprah to try and smooth things over. There is a poll there asking who you're with, and if Jay should go back to the Tonight Show. You know what to do. That is all.
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/ati5a/im_with_coco_jay_leno_going_on_oprah_to_try_and/
So apparently Oprah is going to have Jay on her show, and she has this poll going . . .
http://www.reddit.com/r/conan/comments/atjc3/so_apparently_oprah_is_going_to_have_jay_on_her/
Oprah is hosting Jay Leno on her show and has a poll up asking if we support Leno or Conan. You know what to do
http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/ati98/oprah_is_hosting_jay_leno_on_her_show_and_has_a/
forget the polls, the rallies speak for themselves. we want conan.
CoCo got 30 million unearned bucks! He can give it back if he is so good! He is a guy of outstanding character so I imagine he might only give back 29 million.
Leno better hit the ground running, because in 6 months he could be facing 3rd place in a race against Letterman and Conan. And Iron Jay skits won't stand up to that.
now for some intelligent entertainment:
http://www.grahambanks.com
Leno better hit the ground running, because in 6 months he could be facing 3rd place in a race against Letterman and Conan. And Iron Jay skits won't stand up to that.
now for some intelligent entertainment:
Dear Internet,
I am with CoCo. Yeah, now that its out there...
I really enjoyed the "rotary phones" for Jay's audience comment. I laughed very hard.
This whole thing with Jay trying to smooth things over is a tough pill to swallow. His ratings were abysmal. Just plain awful. Affiliate news crews even complained about it affecting their ratings. So with a terrible lead in Conan had a lot of ground to make up.
All those old and tired jokes Jay uses. Ugh. Lewinsky was in the 90's and Clinton is no longer president. Stop doing those jokes! I guess they can still be funny to those using the rotary phone.
@Anonymous - Conan is paying the severance for his stage crew out of his own pocket. They got nothing from NBC. He is a good guy with outstanding character. Compare that to Jay's actions.
One thing that people don't seem to take into account is the ratings of Leno and Conan. Way back when Leno was competing with Letterman, and when Leno was a big money maker for NBC, he also had great lead-ins from the NBC dramas, which were the best on the air. All the viewers who waited a couple minutes or went to the bathroom before changing the channel, all counted for Leno's ratings. Now, on a prime-time slot, which is usually reserved for the best shows, Leno is doing extremely poorly. The typical rating for this time frame is 10-15 million viewers a night or more. Leno barely scraped by with 5 million viewers, 1/3 of the average. Yes, Conan was losing to Letterman, although he still took in 2-4 million viewers a night, comparable to Leno's show in a better time-slot, and he didnt have the lead-ins that Jay did in the "good old days", when he magically got the show instead of Letterman. I'd like to see how Conan would do in a prime-time showing, and I'm also curious about what Leno's audience will be in March. I'm guessing that it will do even worse then Conan's show.
Why the hell does everyone have such a hard time spelling QUIET? It is not spelled "quite". LOL @ "Conan should be very happy with his settlement and be quite." "Leno who sucks up to the lefties in Hollywood just to try and keep things quite and smooth"
Frank,
Conan's crew did get a severance package. it amounted to about 11-12 Million. Conan is supplementing that with money out of his own pocket.
That said,
Go Coco!
TV ratings equal advertising dollars. If all the Coco fans thought he was so great where were the ratings? His 2nd grade low class humor apparently only appealed to a small vocal minority. Coco's version of the Tonight Show was tasteless, classless and nobody watched - much like old go-nowhere Letterman. Conan got what he deserved. Sometime in the distant future all the faithful Coco fans can track him down on Fox or cable. As for Coco getting a terrible "lead in".. the lead in was the news. People vote with their channel selector and viewers opt'd to skip Coco.
Wow, this is like major cool dude!
RT
http://www.web-privacy.cz.tc
Q-U-I-E-T.
I love how sophisticated you sound, yet your name is MEGA DEUCE.
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