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

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Codeblue said:
It's because Conan is funny and Leno is not. A lot of us grew up watching the guy, so his show means a lot to us, and it's not so much that he's leaving, but rather that he is getting screwed out of his job.
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I grew up watching Conan too. Before that I was a Letterman fan and was annoyed when he got screwed out of the Tonight Show. Yet neither time have I felt emotionally invested in the outcome of the events.

Tobor said:
I grew up loving The Tonight Show, and I wasn't able to watch it for 17 years due to extreme mediocrity. I wanted to see the show returned to glory. It's not complicated.
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The idea of someone becoming so attached to a brand name does seem complicated to me. Is it the television equivalent of video game fanboy-ism? Are you saying that if we were talking about a succession issue over the Late Show rather than the Tonight Show that you wouldn't care?

numble said:
Why do people take NPDs seriously? Or anything in any thread for that matter?
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I also find that weird. Like those people who are like 'GO GO GO Atelier Iris' or some shit. You have to admit that some people are quite emotional in this thread though.
 
templeusox said:
Leno has not earned the right for us to give him the benefit of the doubt. When you have a history of stabbing people in the back, you need to earn that respect.
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Bolded for truth.

And as said before, it's disingenuous and convenient to say the least that Leno waited until Conan was under the non-disparagement rule to make his big statement.
 
tokkun said:
I grew up watching Conan too. Before that I was a Letterman fan and was annoyed when he got screwed out of the Tonight Show. Yet neither time have I felt emotionally invested in the outcome of the events.

.
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Obviously people are upset that they're losing a host that they're attached to, but a lot of the reaction is also happening for fun's sake.

For example, if you look at the demonstrations as purely a result of people's anger then it might seem weirdly obsessive, but when you consider that those people probably had a lot of fun it seems less strange.
 
numble said:
Why do people take NPDs seriously? Or anything in any thread for that matter?
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Conan is not a videogame or a sales chart, he's a human being, and a funny, charismatic one at that--one who's supplied thousands of hours of entertainment to millions of people over the course of nearly two decades. Some people are taking it a bit far, yeah, but comparing this to NPDs is pretty ridiculous.
 
gdt5016 said:
This is terrible, he's trying to pawn everything on NBC, the snake.




And of course it's not funny.
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To be fair, everything released so far shows that NBC is at fault here. Leno is an egomaniac and should have retired, but the NBC execs botched this badly.

IF what Leno says is true, all NBC had to do was release him from his contract and there would never have been an issue.

Leno is in this purely for himself. It's clear he wanted to continue doing a show--even at another network.
 
You weren't getting ratings at first either jackass. You were going for, what, 2 years before you got things going.
Yes, I'm talking directly to Leno as he is definitely reading this.
 
lol

Even Leno's audience wasn't buying his faux-consideration bullshit. "They asked me if I wanted 11:35 back and I said, well, gee, hmm, I dunno, oh gosh, well oh sure they had me in no-man's land I said yes."
 
Does Jay have a pre-set segment for everyday of the week? I know he has one day set for headlines and another day set for Jaywalking, but is there ever anything new or all they all repeated stuff over and over?
 
Zeliard said:
lol

Even Leno's audience wasn't buying his faux-consideration bullshit. "They asked me if I wanted 11:35 back and I said, well, gee, hmm, I dunno, oh gosh, well oh sure they had me in no-man's land I said yes."
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:lol Yeah they laughed and he was trying to be sincere.
 
I'm quoted in this WCBS Article as "Brian Sarber" (real name 'Ryan Sarver'...). There's a sound bite of me on the little 30 second sound clip found mid-article at the link:

http://www.wcbs880.com/PIC-AUDIO--Rally-for-Conan-O-Brien-Held-at-30-Rock/6145004

Rally for Conan O'Brien Held at 30 Rock

NEW YORK (WCBS 880/AP) -- "What do we want? Conan! When do we want him? 11:35!"

That's what about three dozen fans chanted outside Conan O'Brien's old studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.

O'Brien appears to have his foot half out the door at NBC's 'Tonight Show' after the network told him they wanted to push his show back a half an hour to make room for his predecessor, Jay Leno.

"I watched him since I was 14, I'm almost 22 and we'll continue loving him no matter where he goes," O'Brien fan, Stephanie Wachtel told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond at the rally.

Leno gave O'Brien the coveted 'Tonight Show' seat last year and moved his show to prime-time.

Settlement talks continued Sunday on a deal that would let O'Brien leave NBC and "Tonight," and put Leno back into the 11:35 p.m. EST time slot he occupied for 17 years through last spring. NBC is dropping ``The Jay Leno Show,'' his disappointing prime-time show that debuted last fall at 10 p.m.

A proposed deal would give O'Brien more than $30 million for leaving and allow him to go to another network as early as this fall, according to people familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.

O'Brien has rejected NBC's initial plan to move him and "Tonight" to midnight EST and give Leno a half-hour show at 11:30 p.m. EST.

"It's not something a large scope company like NBC should be doing," Brian Sarber told Diamond.

Similar rallys were held in Burbank, Chicago and Seattle.
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SMH

Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
You weren't getting ratings at first either jackass. You were going for, what, 2 years before you got things going.
Yes, I'm talking directly to Leno as he is definitely reading this.
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It's so sad and pathetic how he keeps insisting that "Conan is a gentleman" yet at the same time indirectly faulting him due to his bad ratings...

...which btw were not bad at all..Conan started the Tonight Show with excellent ratings and it was falling off just a little until David Letterman's scandal became popular and took away some of his viewers. And then you have Leno's show preceding him, making it even worse!
 
infinityBCRT said:
Exactly what I thought-- Leno said he wanted to be released from his contract to go do a show on another network and thats why NBC freaked out.
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Which is similar to what happened with Conan in 2004.

All NBC had to do is pick ONE of the two--Leno or O'brien. They got greedy.
 
KdoubleA said:
SMH



It's so sad and pathetic how he keeps insisting that "Conan is a gentleman" yet at the same time indirectly faulting him due to his bad ratings...
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For Brutus is an honorable man!
 
So Jay doesn't think Conan would mind hosting the Tonight Show at 12:30? Really? Are you freaking kidding me? What a snake Jay is. What a lame ass explanation. He knows NBC are screwing Conan and helping him, yet he acts like he's the victim.
What a fucking scumbag.
How about you call Conan yourself and ask him whether he would mind going to 12:05 Jay you douchebag?

And the cunt had the nerve to mention he cares about his staff. WHAT ABOUT CONAN'S STAFF YOU ASSWIPE! You could have waited for your contract to expire and kept your staff and Conan's staff employed. Jesus Christ what a selfish, self serving morally bankrupt person Jay Leno is.

Also, you failed because of your competition. Conan failed because of YOU and your horrible lead in you degenerate assbag.
 
The sad part was that his audience was clapping for him while he told his story. One of my manager is a Leno fan. She's going to throw this explanation in my face tomorrow without questioning it one bit.
 
Photos from the 30 Rock Rally:

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Some asshole cop gave one of the protesters a ticket for disorderly conduct immediately after he left the barricade. Such crap.
 
The staff comment is the most hilarious, even in his story which probably plays with the truth... every time NBC comes to him, the first thing he claims he says is "Can you let me out of my contract?" (Read: A threat to move to another network), the staff thing is only mentioned when NBC was obviously going to let him keep his staff to do the same show.
 
So his whole thing boils down to "WELLLLLllLllLl, I failed at prime-time and that humbled me so I just said yes to everything . . . I really thought Co-Co was OK with it!"?
 
The funny thing is that Jay refused to move his show to accommodate Letterman in 1992, when he was doing poorly in ratings, yet he "believes" that Conan would be happy with a move:

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/23/arts/jay-leno-criticizes-nbc-on-tonight-cliffhanger.html

"Am I crazy?" Mr. Leno said in a telephone interview. "The ratings are going up, the advertisers are happy and so are the affiliates." And yet Mr. Leno said he had not received any assurances from NBC executives in New York that he would not be dropped in favor of Mr. Letterman by Jan. 15. That is the deadline NBC is facing to match a CBS offer to give Mr. Letterman about $16 million to star in a nightly talk show at 11:30, the same time as the "Tonight" show.

"I am disappointed," Mr. Leno said. "I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell the car to his brother-in-law." Go Elsewhere? 'Of Course'

Mr. Leno said he would "obviously leave NBC immediately" if the network decided to give the "Tonight" show to Mr. Letterman. He said he would absolutely refuse to do a show in the 12:30 A.M. spot now occupied by Mr. Letterman's show, "Late Night," and would indeed consider creating the same problem for NBC that Mr. Letterman's proposed deal with CBS caused.
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tokkun said:
I grew up watching Conan too. Before that I was a Letterman fan and was annoyed when he got screwed out of the Tonight Show. Yet neither time have I felt emotionally invested in the outcome of the events.
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It's like a real life soap opera, with interesting characters.
 
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