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 used to work for a big ad agency and we created and ran compeitions for Coke, McDOnalds, Gatorade and other companies like that. I did hundreds of them.
If there was *anything* valuable on offer (and there always was), we would get hit by scripts 99% of the time. Running those things was a pain because we spent 90% of our time just removing bogus entries and trying to write new detection routines.
We even got to know the popular forums where people would discuss how to get around the stuff we put in there.
All I'm saying is that I would be *astonished* if there wasn't any rigging going on by Conan's fans. It's 100% normal.
MEGA DEUCE. HA! Best part of this entire discussion.
This "NBC baloney" was apparently important enough for you to formulate an opinion on the subject, type it out, and then post it to a website. Which is, oddly enough, exactly the same thing that we're all doing here. Idiot.
I'm all for proper spelling, but sometimes it's not a spelling error, but a typing error. I mean, I know how to spell "quiet", but I could see making a mistake like "quite". Stupid yes, but we can't assume the person doesn't know how to spell. We must take into account that they may just lack proofreading skills.
Do you know ANYTHING about TV and viewing habits of human beings? People are painfully predictable and when a primetime show pulls in big numbers, sh*tloads of people stay on that station for their news. Yes, they CAN switch channels, but they tend not to. This is why executives scramble around to make sure primetime does well. They know the importance it has for the remaining programs of the day. Jay Leno, by EVERYONE'S estimation (except yours), was a weak lead-in for the rest of the evening on NBC. This is a fact. This is why everyone (JAY INCLUDED-- he even said he "felt sorry" for them!) was freaking out about the "affiliates".
So... Jay Leno's fans are unable to do the same thing (ballot stuff) as Conan fans? Are they THAT old and out of touch with technology? Really? That's actually kind of awesome.
Team CoCo all the way! Conan has consistently proven himself to be a class act. Some may call him a crybaby. I completely disagree, he is a man with integrity.
Suppose you worked with a company for 20 years. Then you got a huge promotion that was promised to you years ago. Then once you and your entire staff MOVE FROM ONE SIDE OF THE COUNTRY TO THE OTHER, things start to improve, and you get better and better at your new job, your boss says, "your not doing well enough" and effectively demotes you.
you would probably be very insulted, insulted enough to quit the company and go to greener pastures.
Leno's audience is shrinking. My generation doesn't find his brand of stale jokes and smug superior attitude funny. Leno's audience is dying....literally.
My generation enjoys Conan's intelligent sillyness, and self-depreciating humor. We will follow him to any network. I'll buy a satellite if I have to to watch Conan, and leave Jay on the sinking ship that is NBC.
I always though Jay was for the old people and I haven't watched The Tonight Show in years. His chuckle annoys me. I do like Conan better but still never watched the show. I look at The Tonight Show as a retirement home and I think for Conan to remain relevant he would have to move on anyway. It would be like taking a job at the library, you have have a job but nobody cares. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert kill these guys anyway. NBC sucks balls and if it wasn't for Hero's (which is starting to suck too) I wouldn't watch that shitty network at all.
It's time for leno to quit - he had his time already so move on and let a new group of much more talented, interesting and genuinely funny characters entertain us. These days people do not appreciate unscrupulous or disrespectful tactics from leno or NBC. I'm one of them, and proudly stand behind Conan O'Brien.
megaduce, it seems you misspelled your name... shouldn't it be MegaDouche? I'm just sayin 😉
Yeah Conan's ratings were low, you got that right. What you fail to remember is that in show business a "lead in" is vital!
Why do you think that the slot between Seinfeld and ER was so coveted during the 90s? Its because ANY show placed after Seinfeld would have everybody who watched Seinfeld lingering and checking it out. Why do I bring this up? Well, what was Conan's lead in? The Jay Leno Show! Leno had real prime time shows leading in for him that were also winning the ratings war. Shows like ER, Law and Order, ect.
The Jay Leno Show was doing so badly that it was decreasing the ratings of the affiliate news. The affiliate news generally has ratings you can safely consider as constant and yet they dropped so badly that the affiliates threatened to air something else on their own, most likely shows in syndication. Yet you claim that Conan should have been able to pull ratings up in the worst case scenario for talk shows. Not only that, you claim he should have brought the ratings up in 7 months, it took Jay close to 2 years to win the ratings war and that was only thanks to the Hugh Grant interview. Why not have Leno break Conan's legs and complain that he can't crawl as fast as Leno can run?
Get your head out of Leno's ass, his salad has already been thoroughly tossed by NBC. You will see that Leno and NBC will be the death of a 60+ year old franchise.
Did I mention that Leno never thanked Carson for handing the show over to him? Not to mention that Leno made sure he did not have guest hosts like Carson did, in fear that a guest host would do better. Leno is a sleaze, this was something we all new when he took the show away from Letterman( who was Carson's personal choice ), its simply coming back into light again.
I never liked Leno to begin with, all his bits are stolen and stale and his interviewing is robotic at best. At least Conan was being creative and was having a good time with his guests.
One reason why a lot of people weren't watching Conan's Tonight Show was because Leno's 10pm show bored them all to sleep...or drinking. The few times I saw Leno's whole new show: I turned off my TV, and went to sleep depressed and angry after watching that shite. And I'm not the only one, I'm sure.
This topic is nearly as polarizing as the whole John and Kate divorce.
I prefer Conan over Leno any day .
Conan needs to be put back on. Leno isn't entertaining one bit. I stopped watching.
I won't! They did Conan wrong! Yes, it's true that in his contract, there was no set "time" that "The Tonight Show" would have to adhere to. It was all in the name of ratings, and Jay Leno, and probably a little bit of lingering animosity against Dave since he left the network some time ago to have a new show on CBS.
My generation enjoys Conan's intelligent silliness, and self-depreciating humor. We will follow him in any network. Forget the polls, the rallies speak for themselves. They want Conan.
Well actually online polls are generally so reliable and i agree with that Conan is paying the severance for his stage crew out of his own pocket.
I am with conan about this. We will watch conan at any cost. We give a damn about the polls. And I'm not the only one, I'm sure.
To fix everything, CBS should fire David Letterman and hire Jay Leno in his place.
I think 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.
As a full time freelancer myself, this is a good read. Though I do not write for any other blogs yet I have been approached by a few, unfortunately all of them run as soon as they hear money. You said did conans fans rig oprahs poll besmirch jay lenos good name.
Conan is still the best!
It was all in the name of ratings, and Jay Leno, and probably a little bit of lingering animosity against Dave since he left the network some time ago to have a new show on CBS.
You may think Robert Pattinson is the greatest actor of the decade but what's the guarantee of this??Many vote can be castes from fake id and thus online vote may not be reliable
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