January 15th, 2010 
joel 
Jay Leno
In show-business, since when does going with the bean-counters ever work out?
If we listened to the bean-counters, there would have been no green-lights for Titanic, or Lord of the Rings, or Avitar. The bean-counters have given us 500 stations with Ryan Seacrest and only two television news teams in Erie.
Yet it was solely a bottom-line decision to take number-one rated Jay Leno off of The Tonight Show, and give him a prime-time strip, so that GE wouldn’t have to fork over $3M an episode for an hour long drama like ER.
Who was watching, and now squandering the “Bottom Line”? None other than NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker. The one-time wonder-kid of The Today Show proved that he was toxic to NBC’s once-revered prime time. I almost never agree with Maureen Dowd, but she got it right in her scathing NY Times editorial earlier in the week. It’s time for Zucker to go.
Conan O'Brien
I doubt that its going to happen, as the network wagons circle around Jeff and Jay leaving Conan O’Brien as the odd man out, and it looks like to Fox.
It’s gotten so nasty at 30 Rock to the point that Dick Ebersol totally called out Conan in yesterday’s NY Times, saying that he was unwilling to change his shtick for 11:35, and skewed too young for the marquee placement of The Tonight Show. That O’Brien is consistently second to The Late Show with David Letterman is definitely a problem, and now it seems the network just wants to do a System Restore back to May 2009, except with Jimmy Fallon on Late Night.
All of this drama is fascinating to watch from the media observer perspective, but I gotta think that average Joe is plain disgusted and screaming at their HD sets “I told ya so!”
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I don’t blame Conan for leaving the Peacock. The network has went from “Must See TV” to the 4th place network. So Conan will more than likely head to a more solid network in Fox after NBC screwed him over for Jay Leno. I couldn’t imagine Johnny Carson ever excepting this if it was still his show so why should Conan. He respects the history of “The Tonight Show” and that it should not be on after Jay Leno. Conan, Andy & Max will hit their stride again as the late night wars become a 4 way battle with Nightline & Jimmy Kimmel in the mix. Funny, NBC did not try to put Conan on USA and keep him. I guess George Lopez is doing well on TBS. Hmmmm.
My sincere hope is that Jay tanks when he comes back to the Tonight Show. There is a move on Facebook to boycott Leno. Hopefully enough people will turn him off so that his ratings go into the toilet. Jay has shown himself to have an ego bigger than the 30 Rock building. Go riddance to Leno, and good luck to Conan.
If you’ve watched any media over the last week, the vast majority (from what I’ve seen, take that for what it’s worth) has been in Conan’s corner. I’ve seen several programs where the host’s have been solidly in Conan’s corner. I’ve also seen web polls where the vast majority of respondents have been in favor of Conan’s position.
Is the same brain-trust who runs SJL also running NBC?? They seem to have made the same decisions regarding quality of product versus the immediate bottom-line…
I’m just disappointed that NBC cancelled the primetime, $1M “Deal or No Deal”. Being a game show nut, I do catch the syndicated $500,000 version at 2am weeknights on WFXP. I don’t know why so late either. They know it’s popular.
Deal or No Deal is on at 5:30pm out of Youngstown. The new version of Let’s Make A Deal on CBS isn’t too bad with Wayne Brady as host. I too love game shows since I first caught Gene Rayburn on Match Game.