Statement from Conan O'Brien

rickyv:

Pretty impressive.

You may have heard that Jay Leno recently joked that NBC stood for “Never Believe your Contract.” A nice, bland, toothless joke - especially when every other late night personality is using the recent shake-ups to bust out some pretty scathing material (particularly and most pointedly Conan O’Brien).

The thing is this - Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show after a heated public battle with David Letterman (Johnny Carson’s choice and contractual inheritor for the job). Leno spent the next 17 or so years honing his comedic skills while laughing at newspaper clippings.

Oh, and what did Leno quip when he won the battle for The Tonight Show in 1992?

“You know what NBC stands for? Never Believe your Contract!”

Yes, his comedy has progressed exactly ZERO in 17 years. He has also fucked over 2 of the best late night hosts in history in similar scenarios, with little sign of remorse or guilt.

NBC showed how little they understand about their own programming. While Leno commands a significantly larger audience than Conan, his audience is older, while Conan’s is the audience of the future. Conan gets pretty decent DVR numbers as well, which Leno does not. It’s short-sighted, to say the least.

Conan has tried harder, been more inventive, and given more of himself to this show in 7 months than Leno gave over 17 (and continuing…) years. I will follow Conan to whatever public access network they banish him to, and Leno can enjoy making Dr. Kevorkian jokes and shoving “Jaywalking” down our throats.

That’s the thing about Leno: his jokes aim directly at the lowest common denominator (kind of like Tiger Woods with his women, am I right? *cue audience laughter and Kevin Eubanks guffawing loudly*). It seems to be his belief that the easiest way to gain a wide audience is to dumb down his material so that literally no one could not understand his punchlines (heck even Sarah Palin finds his jokes funny! *cue audience laughter and applause and Kevin Eubanks saying ‘oh Jay!’ loudly*).

It may sound like a hipster argument (“Man, Jay Leno was so good before he sold out.” “Yeah, Conan is so much more underground”), but when it’s so clearly true, the cliche-ness of the argument is forgotten. Wherever O’Brien goes, I will follow. If he joins a fearsome three-headed late-night comedy lineup with Stewart and Colbert on Comedy Central, I will follow. If he moves to Fox and finally gives them more than two hours of daily original programming, I will follow. If he is given a tofu-only cooking show on the Food Network called “Conan the Vegetarian,” I will follow.

For a network whose best shows are youthful comedies, NBC sure did a piss-poor job handling perhaps their best comedic talent.