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Late Night Wars - Conan's last Tonight Show was TONIGHT a long time ago

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Coolio McAwesome said:
Conan's numbers were not the issue.

NBC knew the Jay Leno Show was going to tank in the ratings from the very beginning, but they promised him two years because they figured it would be cost effective even if no one was watching. However, Leno's show was an even bigger failure than NBC anticipated and ended up costing local affiliates tens of millions of dollars within a matter of months. Overwhelming pressure from affiliates basically forced NBC to cancel Leno. However, Leno's contract guaranteed him a reported $150 million if his show was cancelled. NBC was left with three choices: a) Leave the Jay Leno Show on the air and infuriate the affiliates even further; b) Cancel the Jay Leno Show and pay him a $150 million penalty; or c) Appease Leno by giving him the 11:30 spot back and push Conan out in the process. Basically what it came down to is that breaching Conan's contract was cheaper than breaching Leno's. If Conan had been pulling in ridiculous ratings from the very beginning, it still would have been cheaper to breach his contract.
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Why in the blue hell would NBC saddle themselves with a $150 million dollar contract for anyone, much less the guy that was headed out the door in 2009 from the Tonight Show?

Are they that dense?

If so, smh...
 
ryutaro's mama said:
Why in the blue hell would NBC saddle themselves with a $150 million dollar contract for anyone, much less the guy that was headed out the door in 2009 from the Tonight Show?

Are they that dense?

If so, smh...
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Leno didn't like the whole Jay Leno Show thing, foresaw a high chance of it being cancelled, so put that 150 million clause in his contract. And as NBC was really, really scared of losing Leno, they went ahead with it.
 
Chamber said:
Leno's a fuckin idiot. Wasn't the whole point of the Oprah interview to rehabilitate his broken image?
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Exactly what i was thinking. I was kind of indifferent about Leno before this but he looks like a huge dick.
 
He was trying to rehabilitate his image too soon. He should've learned from when Michael Richards tried to appear on the Tonight Show way too soon before his story blew over.
 
I haven't watched Oprah in forever. Where's the audience?

And he totally comes off as an asshat in that TMZ clip.
 
Wow, Jay continues to prove he is a douchebag. I'm glad to see Oprah pressed him, and like someone above me said, didn't throw any softballs his way.

Zoe said:
I haven't watched Oprah in forever. Where's the audience?
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They did the interview on the set of Jay's Show.
 
Wow just saw the ophah bit. Did nothing to fix Lenos image. all he did was say he had nothing to do with it, it was Conans fault because of ratings

fuck you leno.
 
numble said:
He was trying to rehabilitate his image too soon. He should've learned from when Michael Richards tried to appear on the Tonight Show way too soon before his story blew over.
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I actually don't think Leno needed to do anything. Most people seemed to put the blame on NBC for the way the whole thing was handled. Even Conan only took a few small jabs at Leno during his monologues. It wouldn't have been hard at all for Jay to just let it blow over. Instead he goes on national tv, admits to hoping that Conan would fail and even called out Oprah on the retirement issue. That's pure stupidity.
 
Oprah coming out with the (relatively) hard-hitting questions... and Leno manages to make himself out to be more of a jackass. I didn't think that was possible, but it was.
 
The Oprah interview isn't going to help Leno at all with the people who have followed this closely from day one. However, based on this video, I think a lot of people might be swayed based on Jay's biased description of the events that transpired. At the very least, it seems like Leno's strategy of blaming NBC might be working.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Debates-the-Tonight-Show-Controversy-Video

I love the woman who says that Leno is just as good as Carson was in the first few minutes... That's the problem right there.
 
Shaneus said:
Oprah coming out with the (relatively) hard-hitting questions... and Leno manages to make himself out to be more of a jackass. I didn't think that was possible, but it was.
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...what interview did you watch? The only people thinking he came away looking "very" poorly are the Coco fanatics.

If you watched the entire show and the Q&A afterward you get much more out of it. Oprah is a MASTER manipulator. Her whole intention here was to lie her ass off when it came down to the gritty details and smooth Jay's balls to polish as bright as his cars.

- She mentioned NOTHING about Conan's gag and chalked it to "His people didn't think it was the right time"

- She told the audience that Jay WANTED out of his contract. Forgot to tell them the much higher severance upward of $100+ million upon doing so.

- Continued to push to the audience Conan wasn't asked to leave the show. FORGETTING to mention any of the history of the Tonight Show.

- She spoke down to anyone still undecided and kept bringing up topics like Jay's work ethic, personality, or just blame NBC.



Again, some people (mostly Conan supporters) will come away from this interview thinking Jay looked like an ass. If you look at Oprah's online polls and the direction of her conversations...it's pretty clear what she was trying to do.
 
the only point Jay could say, which he did say in the interview, is that he has 130 people that work for him and to just say "I'm going to retire to keep Conan's feeling from getting hurt" THAT would be selfish.

To which Oprah replied, "well you could've done what Conan did which was demand your crew be paid their full wages for the remaining contract." To which Jay replied, "yeah, I could've done that, but I DIDN'T."

wow
 
Flangus said:
The Oprah interview isn't going to help Leno at all with the people who have followed this closely from day one. However, based on this video, I think a lot of people might be swayed based on Jay's biased description of the events that transpired. At the very least, it seems like Leno's strategy of blaming NBC might be working.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Debates-the-Tonight-Show-Controversy-Video

I love the woman who says that Leno is just as good as Carson was in the first few minutes... That's the problem right there.
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The black woman's face sitting beside her is classic!
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
...what interview did you watch? The only people thinking he came away looking "very" poorly are the Coco fanatics.

If you watched the entire show and the Q&A afterward you get much more out of it. Oprah is a MASTER manipulator. Her whole intention here was to lie her ass off when it came down to the gritty details and smooth Jay's balls to polish as bright as his cars.

- She mentioned NOTHING about Conan's gag and chalked it to "His people didn't think it was the right time"

- She told the audience that Jay WANTED out of his contract. Forgot to tell them the much higher severance upward of $100+ million upon doing so.

- Continued to push to the audience Conan wasn't asked to leave the show. FORGETTING to mention any of the history of the Tonight Show.

- She spoke down to anyone still undecided and kept bringing up topics like Jay's work ethic, personality, or just blame NBC.



Again, some people (mostly Conan supporters) will come away from this interview thinking Jay looked like an ass. If you look at Oprah's online polls and the direction of her conversations...it's pretty clear what she was trying to do.
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Bingo.
 
ryutaro's mama said:
Naw, I'm not a Conan supporter and that interview convinced me he was an ass.
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My favorite part of WW2 is when Hitler invited the Jews to the show but their people just thought it wasn't the right time.
 
Flangus said:
The Oprah interview isn't going to help Leno at all with the people who have followed this closely from day one. However, based on this video, I think a lot of people might be swayed based on Jay's biased description of the events that transpired. At the very least, it seems like Leno's strategy of blaming NBC might be working.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Debates-the-Tonight-Show-Controversy-Video

I love the woman who says that Leno is just as good as Carson was in the first few minutes... That's the problem right there.
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I hate how she subtly pushes everyone towards her point of view. No wonder people often say she has a lot of political clout.
 
ryutaro's mama said:
Sorry, I don't get how that relates to what I just said.
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I could say the same thing about your comment. I quoted "very" in my statement meaning that while I do believe he will come across poorly it won't be to the point of no return for him. With Oprah doing cleanup for him this will do nothing but help him. You also made no mention of Oprah's slant which was the central point of my post. Your response just came across as you bought, didn't see, or ignored the entire slant to the piece today.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
I could say the same thing about your comment. I quoted "very" in my statement meaning that while I do believe he will come across poorly it won't be to the point of no return for him. With Oprah doing cleanup for him this will do nothing but help him. You also made no mention of Oprah's slant which was the central point of my post. Your response just came across as you bought, didn't see, or ignored the entire slant to the piece today.
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I didn't look for slants--I didn't see the whole show

I looked at Leno's body language and and listened to his replies. That was enough for me to see that he was an asshole.When I commented before in this thread about it being business and whatnot, at that time, I didn't have an opinion about Leno, personally. In fact, I laid most of the blame at NBC's feet. Now, after seeing this interview, I have a better understanding of Leno's direct role in all of this.

I honestly don't care how Oprah's audience saw it and again, I didn't see the whole show.

I can only speak for myself and what I saw, and for me, Leno came off as a fucking douche.
 
ryutaro's mama said:
I didn't look for slants--I didn't see the whole show

I looked at Leno's body language and and listened to his replies. That was enough for me to see that he was an asshole.When I commented before in this thread about it being business and whatnot, at that time, I didn't have an opinion about Leno, personally. In fact, I laid most of the blame at NBC's feet. Now, after seeing this interview, I have a better understanding of Leno's direct role in all of this.

I honestly don't care how Oprah's audience saw it and again, I didn't see the whole show.

I can only speak for myself and what I saw, and for me, Leno came off as a fucking douche.
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Okay.

Not watching the whole show is the key to my point to everyone else. By watching the entire show and post-session you get a very different outlook on everything if you are well versed in the facts from this entire saga. It's very interesting to view the manipulation factor here. I don't watch Oprah normally or have really read much into any of her previous controversies.
 
Willy105 said:
It's everybody's fault, I think:

It's NBC's fault for wanting to keep Leno and not trusting Conan.

It's Leno's fault for accepting NBC's offer after he announced he was going to retire and give his show to Conan on the air.

It's Conan fault for not accepting the 12:05 time slot.

That's how all this went.
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Come on now. How can anybody fault Conan for that? He clearly perceived it as the insult that it was, and he wasn't having any of it. The man's got some integrity.
 
Can I just say, I've never really seen Oprah in action, but my God this woman has everyone in her fingers. One interview and she somehow was able to sway most of that audience from Conan to Jay. I'm afraid for the day she runs for President.
 
Does anybody do comedy like Jay Leno anymore? It's kind of like a Full House/Family Matters TGIF safe type of humor, and I see all these people on Oprah's show talking about how funny he is, and I wonder where they'll turn to when Jay finally retires--all the comics nowadays try to be edgy or raunchy.

VisionaryQuest0 said:
Can I just say, I've never really seen Oprah in action, but my God this woman has everyone in her fingers. One interview and she somehow was able to sway most of that audience from Conan to Jay. I'm afraid for the day she runs for President.
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Did you guys all get that? Do you see what he's saying? Instead of questioning or deconstructing the argument, let's highlight it again and make an extreme and simplified analogy to this argument and apply to your life.
 
Zeliard said:
Come on now. How can anybody fault Conan for that? He clearly perceived it as the insult that it was, and he wasn't having any of it. The man's got some integrity.
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It was an insult, a very big and personal one, but if he had accepted, he and his staff would still have their dream job.

In two years when Leno is finally forced out, he would have been back at 11:35.

numble said:
Does anybody do comedy like Jay Leno anymore? It's kind of like a Full House/Family Matters TGIF safe type of humor, and I see all these people on Oprah's show talking about how funny he is, and I wonder where they'll turn to when Jay finally retires--all the comics nowadays try to be edgy or raunchy.
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I agree a lot of comics today are raunchy, but Leno IS NOT TGIF safe type of humor. In the Jay Leno Show he frequently did a ton of dirty jokes, much more than Conan did at 11:30. It always surprised me how held back Conan was when Leno was doing all these suggestive and dirty jokes in primetime.
 
Zeliard said:
Come on now. How can anybody fault Conan for that? He clearly perceived it as the insult that it was, and he wasn't having any of it. The man's got some integrity.
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Refusing to accept a perceived insult is not a measure of integrity, it's a measure of pride.
 
AstroLad said:
The whole Oprah-backing-Jay thing is seriously making me reconsider whether Obama was the right choice. :/
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Oprah likes to peddle all kinds of bullshit on her show because she herself is a shockingly gullible person. She's a fucking champion of pseudoscience whenever Dr. Oz isn't around.
 
Willy105 said:
I agree a lot of comics today are raunchy, but Leno IS NOT TGIF safe type of humor. In the Jay Leno Show he frequently did a ton of dirty jokes, much more than Conan did at 11:30. It always surprised me how held back Conan was when Leno was doing all these suggestive and dirty jokes in primetime.
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I guess I always base it on Headlines and Jaywalking, which is like 40% of his comedy bits. I know he always makes fun of sexual situations in his monologues like Clinton and Letterman's infidelity, but those always still seemed tame to me. But I don't know about his other stuff.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
...what interview did you watch? The only people thinking he came away looking "very" poorly are the Coco fanatics.

If you watched the entire show and the Q&A afterward you get much more out of it. Oprah is a MASTER manipulator. Her whole intention here was to lie her ass off when it came down to the gritty details and smooth Jay's balls to polish as bright as his cars.

- She mentioned NOTHING about Conan's gag and chalked it to "His people didn't think it was the right time"

- She told the audience that Jay WANTED out of his contract. Forgot to tell them the much higher severance upward of $100+ million upon doing so.

- Continued to push to the audience Conan wasn't asked to leave the show. FORGETTING to mention any of the history of the Tonight Show.

- She spoke down to anyone still undecided and kept bringing up topics like Jay's work ethic, personality, or just blame NBC.



Again, some people (mostly Conan supporters) will come away from this interview thinking Jay looked like an ass. If you look at Oprah's online polls and the direction of her conversations...it's pretty clear what she was trying to do.
Click to expand...

I was going to say. If you want to talk about the person with the most pull in Hollywood. Oprah is it. Leno is going to come away looking good outside of the selective quoting which a bunch of Conan fans will bring up as the interview.
 
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