Hey, i tried to post a video today (as you did above) but it doesn’t work for guest posters. Is there a setting somewhere you can set?
Jazz
Its long been said that the Tonight Show slot has an unusual reliance on unsophisticated rubes in flyover country, who get that programming at the much more watchable 10:30 PM hour than the 11:30 airing seen by coastal sophisticates.
There are three interesting aspects to “Coco” that relate to this fact: 1) his ratings have been badly in the toilet, 2) he’s the first Tonight Show host to lose money for the network, and 3) there’s nothing at all about his show that would be remotely appealing to old ladies in Des Moines.
O’Brien almost exudes this desperate cool guy wanna-be nervousness, as if his whole schtick is to be cooler than losers in Iowa. Which is great, if your business model doesn’t fundamentally rely on losers in Iowa. O’Brien did a “best of” retrospective of his seven months on the Tonight Show, and there wasn’t a moment in there that a viewer in Iowa would relate to, much less like.
In this regard O’Brien couldn’t have been more different than Letterman. Letterman was always edgy, but he’s a flyover country nonsophisticate at heart. During his NBC days, his most memorable character was Larry “Bud” Melman, an old guy who was made fun of, sure, but whose character was written to give as good as he got. One of Dave’s first moves when he got to 11:30 was to make his elderly mother a roving reporter, she reported from the Lillehammer Olympics, among others. Those are the types of bits that are silver and gold in the Central Time Zone. O’Brien had nothing for those folks.
Its also funny to hear all the people saying that Leno sucks. He sure does. You know what else sucks? Thomas Kinkade paintings. Adult contemporary radio. QVC. Romance novels. A whole host of other things that those critical 10:30 watchers in the Central USA like. Come to think of it, Leno sucks in about the same way as all those other things, he’ll probably be a bit hit on the Tonight Show again.
In the end, the pillorying of Zucker is just another reminder that the common man doesn’t understand the first thing about the requirements of a businessman. Job #1 is to make money. Making money is about giving your customers what they want. O’Brien has much less of what the relevant customers want than Leno does. It’s not that hard to understand, really.
Jazz
What’s more, in O’Brien’s widely published resignation letter, he reported that he spent “literally hundreds of hours” since 2004 thinking of ways to improve on the Tonight Show franchise when he took over. Hundreds. Of hours. For a franchise with an unusual reliance on the Central USA, given the quirk of prime time scheduling being moved forward an hour there.
Somehow, in spite of those hundreds of hours, and the undeniable importance of the midwest to the franchise, Conan still drowned in a sea of red ink, with his most famous parting image being the question of intellectual ownership of the masturbating bear.
The masturbating bear.
I’ve lived most of my life in several towns in the Midwest, and I gotta tell you, there hasn’t been a single one of those places in which the masturbating bear would have remotely resembled entertainment.
Jazz, that’s not true and the numbers bear that out. Conan wasn’t pulling the ratings Jay Leno was at 11:35, but that was to be expected. Leno had 17 years to get those numbers after losing to Letterman for months after Dave gave “Tonight Show” viewers a second option. That last point is the crucial one; when Leno premiered at 10, Conan’s audience dribbled further, as Leno fans who stuck it out with him on “The Tonight Show” could watch the guy they really liked, then the news, then go to bed.
Also, it didn’t help Conan at all that his network was willing to basically amputate one-third of its primetime programming by offering a program that they knew was going to get bad ratings every night and thus wasn’t crosspromoting its other shows as well as “Private Practice” or “The Mentalist” or every other network show at 10.
Oh, and also, Leno siphoned off plenty of good guests that had been a “Tonight Show” staple. Kanye West’s first post-“ALL TIME!” appearance? Leno.
And by the way, The Masturbating Bear was forbidden from “The Tonight Show” until Conan’s “f*** it” final week. He tried to blend the “SNL”/”Simpsons” postmodern type of comedy he’s practiced for 20-plus years with the kind of show the vast majority of America would enjoy. And it could have survived, had NBC given him the patience they gave Jay Leno when Letterman started beating him, or even the same patience they extended Conan when he took over for Letterman and spent months trying to find an identity for “Late Night.” But they stabbed him in the back and then blamed him for bleeding on the carpet.
Hey, i tried to post a video today (as you did above) but it doesn’t work for guest posters. Is there a setting somewhere you can set?
Its long been said that the Tonight Show slot has an unusual reliance on unsophisticated rubes in flyover country, who get that programming at the much more watchable 10:30 PM hour than the 11:30 airing seen by coastal sophisticates.
There are three interesting aspects to “Coco” that relate to this fact: 1) his ratings have been badly in the toilet, 2) he’s the first Tonight Show host to lose money for the network, and 3) there’s nothing at all about his show that would be remotely appealing to old ladies in Des Moines.
O’Brien almost exudes this desperate cool guy wanna-be nervousness, as if his whole schtick is to be cooler than losers in Iowa. Which is great, if your business model doesn’t fundamentally rely on losers in Iowa. O’Brien did a “best of” retrospective of his seven months on the Tonight Show, and there wasn’t a moment in there that a viewer in Iowa would relate to, much less like.
In this regard O’Brien couldn’t have been more different than Letterman. Letterman was always edgy, but he’s a flyover country nonsophisticate at heart. During his NBC days, his most memorable character was Larry “Bud” Melman, an old guy who was made fun of, sure, but whose character was written to give as good as he got. One of Dave’s first moves when he got to 11:30 was to make his elderly mother a roving reporter, she reported from the Lillehammer Olympics, among others. Those are the types of bits that are silver and gold in the Central Time Zone. O’Brien had nothing for those folks.
Its also funny to hear all the people saying that Leno sucks. He sure does. You know what else sucks? Thomas Kinkade paintings. Adult contemporary radio. QVC. Romance novels. A whole host of other things that those critical 10:30 watchers in the Central USA like. Come to think of it, Leno sucks in about the same way as all those other things, he’ll probably be a bit hit on the Tonight Show again.
In the end, the pillorying of Zucker is just another reminder that the common man doesn’t understand the first thing about the requirements of a businessman. Job #1 is to make money. Making money is about giving your customers what they want. O’Brien has much less of what the relevant customers want than Leno does. It’s not that hard to understand, really.
What’s more, in O’Brien’s widely published resignation letter, he reported that he spent “literally hundreds of hours” since 2004 thinking of ways to improve on the Tonight Show franchise when he took over. Hundreds. Of hours. For a franchise with an unusual reliance on the Central USA, given the quirk of prime time scheduling being moved forward an hour there.
Somehow, in spite of those hundreds of hours, and the undeniable importance of the midwest to the franchise, Conan still drowned in a sea of red ink, with his most famous parting image being the question of intellectual ownership of the masturbating bear.
The masturbating bear.
I’ve lived most of my life in several towns in the Midwest, and I gotta tell you, there hasn’t been a single one of those places in which the masturbating bear would have remotely resembled entertainment.
Jazz, that’s not true and the numbers bear that out. Conan wasn’t pulling the ratings Jay Leno was at 11:35, but that was to be expected. Leno had 17 years to get those numbers after losing to Letterman for months after Dave gave “Tonight Show” viewers a second option. That last point is the crucial one; when Leno premiered at 10, Conan’s audience dribbled further, as Leno fans who stuck it out with him on “The Tonight Show” could watch the guy they really liked, then the news, then go to bed.
Also, it didn’t help Conan at all that his network was willing to basically amputate one-third of its primetime programming by offering a program that they knew was going to get bad ratings every night and thus wasn’t crosspromoting its other shows as well as “Private Practice” or “The Mentalist” or every other network show at 10.
Oh, and also, Leno siphoned off plenty of good guests that had been a “Tonight Show” staple. Kanye West’s first post-“ALL TIME!” appearance? Leno.
And by the way, The Masturbating Bear was forbidden from “The Tonight Show” until Conan’s “f*** it” final week. He tried to blend the “SNL”/”Simpsons” postmodern type of comedy he’s practiced for 20-plus years with the kind of show the vast majority of America would enjoy. And it could have survived, had NBC given him the patience they gave Jay Leno when Letterman started beating him, or even the same patience they extended Conan when he took over for Letterman and spent months trying to find an identity for “Late Night.” But they stabbed him in the back and then blamed him for bleeding on the carpet.