Conan to NBC: Drop Dead

[ponytrot]

^ No, that's incorrect. Most of Jay's staff was laid off and replaced when he got the 10pm show. They did not continue on with him.

In fact, a fair few of them lost their jobs during the writer's strike - with Jay reneging on his promise to ensure they had job security and that he would cover their salaries.

Compare this to Conan, who paid his staff out of his own pocket during the writer's strike, moved from NY to LA with the SAME loyal staff, and will (if he does set up elsewhere) continue with that same staff.

 

[Bella_Lass334]

ponytrot, can i just say how much I agree with literally EVERYTHING youve said on this thread?

I hate how people are acting that everything is suddenly ok because of how much he was paid. It's not about the money, it's the principle of the thing. Look, I dont feel sorry for him, but if anyone out there has a passion, you can appreciate how much it must royally suck to have your dream job taken away from you. I mean he's talked about how he dreamed of hosting the show since he was a little kid. If you watch his interview on Inside the Actors Studio, it's impossible not to notice the passion and love he has for his job and how he was just brimming with excitement to host the tonight show. Of course, he is extremely lucky and very well off, but, and I hate to break out the cliches here, money doesn't buy happiness.

Also, I don't know if this was mentioned or not, but in addition to the money that NBC is paying his staff, Conan is also supplementing more money to them out of his own pocket. Very very very classy man.

Anyway, I was beyond bored and I made a set on polyvore


http://www.polyvore.com/team_conan/set?id=15338816

I want that shirt!

 

[ponytrot]

Conan's farewell speech:



What an amazing man - to the end, he was absolutely gracious, humble, thankful and truly, truly inspirational.

What Class.



Here's to Coco and all the amazing things he will now be able to move onto - free as a bird!!

 

[ponytrot]

(the original song for those interested)

 

[melfreya]

I love you Coco!

 

[brokenenglish]

Michael Ian Black's take on this, comparing Conan to Norma Rae.....

Norma Rae

When did Conan O’Brien become Norma Rae? For those of you who don’t remember this 1978 film, Norma Rae stars Sally Field as a beleaguered factory worker who risks her job and everything she’s worked for in order to correct injustices in the workplace. She is everywoman, standing up to The Man to do what’s right. Not just for her, but for the millions just like her all over the country. Those oppressed masses just trying to put food on the table, the ones without health care, the ones struggling to make ends meet. The ones who just want a fair shake. Somebody had to have the courage to take on the Big Baddies running the show. In 1978, that somebody was Norma Rae. In 2010, it’s Conan O’Brien?
How did a Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host magically transmogrify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant? The overreaction to Conan’s departure has been kind of astounding; as a nation, are we really that concerned about who hosts “The Tonight Show,” a television program that stopped being culturally relevant around 1986?
And let’s not forget, it’s not as if Conan was cancelled. He quit. He walked away from “The Tonight Show” because he rightly or wrongly felt that moving the show half an hour later would destroy the show’s integrity. Okay, fine. But let’s not act as if he’s leading a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter. It’s not that big a deal.
Yes Americans believe in fair play. Fair play means making a deal and sticking to it. Conan got “The Tonight Show,” and therefore he should keep it. I agree with that. But Americans also believe in capitalism, and when fair play bumps up against capitalism, capitalism usually wins. It did this time.
To my mind, there are two reasons why Leno has come across looking as bad as he has throughout the last few weeks. The first is that he seems like an opportunistic pig for agreeing to move back to 11:30. He should have packed up his funny headlines and gone home. The other reason is that Conan has been much funnier about the whole thing. His letter to the Times was funny, his monologue jokes have been funnier, and whereas Leno has come across as needy and desperate, O’Brien’s departure seems, if not exactly classy, then at least in classy’s neighborhood. Of course it’s easy to be classy-ish when you and your staff are walking away with forty million dollars.
I think the deeper reason people are so inflamed by this petty war is that Conan in his own way has come to represent the aggrieved, the injured, the wrongly terminated. I think there is a sense in this country that giant corporations are ruining everything, even late night talk shows. Something so insignificant takes on greater importance because I think on some level, “The Tonight Show” actually has become a very flawed stand-in for all the jobs lost to corporate greed, arrogance, and stupidity. We see Conan as a victim because we feel as though, like us, he wasn’t given a fair shot. If a guy like that, a guy who has everything, can be downsized and demoted, what hope do the rest of us have?
Moreover Leno is installed back in his abdicated throne. It feels like a coup, a particularly unfunny coup. And above him, all the top brass still have their jobs. Just like all the top brass in every other failed or bailed-out corporation. It feels unfair. And it makes people mad.
Sure it’s a shame it didn’t work out for Conan, the most creative talk show host since David Letterman, and I think it’s great he took a principled stand against NBC, but is this really the stuff of rallies? Is this really where we want to spend our political capital? If you have the energy to protest Conan O’Brien’s departure in Burbank, shouldn’t you maybe think about spending some time chanting outside General Motors or Goldman Sachs? Or Congress? This is the cause you want to get involved with? Instead of holding up placards with the Masturbating Bear on them, maybe donate a pint of blood. It’ll be a lot more helpful to somebody.
Conan is an unlikely hero of the working man but at this point, when heroes are far more likely to be squashed than celebrated like Norma Rae, as sad as it sounds, he might actually be the closest thing we’ve got.



(from his official website)

 

[AlexLovesIt]

I cried like a baby when he addressed his young fans and said not to be cynical. I also agree with what Michael Ian Black said, if so many people loved Conan they should have watched the show and maybe this wouldn't have happened. But in a way Conan does represent what people are feeling about their own jobs.

 

[jml2]

completely agree with Michael Ian Black whoever that is.
Americans really needs to be doing massive massive protests against Goldman Sachs et al

 

[melfreya]

He really did end with a bang..what a beautiful heartwarming and fun ending..though there were tears too

 

[AlexLovesIt]

completely agree with Michael Ian Black whoever that is.
Americans really needs to be doing massive massive protests against Goldman Sachs et al

I think that's so ridiculous.

 

[Bella_Lass334]

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the Internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

I teared up when he said this. I don't want to sound cheesy but the part about working hard and being kind really really meant a lot to me.

 

[Hana_N]

I just thought I'd post this "news" report on the late night wars.

 

[ponytrot]

Great summary of the whole mess:

Post-Jaypocalyptic Fiction: The History-Rewriting Begins

Posted by James Poniewozik Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:54 am

9 Comments • Trackback (0) • Related Topics: conan o'brien, jay leno


Last week, with Conan O'Brien getting ready to leave the air, Team Coco dominated the Internet. This week, with Jay Leno preparing for an image-rehab visit to Oprah tomorrow, the race to be "the only one out there sticking up for Jay Leno" is starting to get crowded. Mark Evanier argues that Jay is not the bad guy and that NBC's decision to ditch Conan had little to do with Jay. Michelle Cottle in The New Republic contends that people who blame Jay simply never liked him in the first place.
Meanwhile, Neal Gabler gets positively revisionist, arguing that the decision is a triumph of a Baby Boomer "silent majority" over hipsters and a repudiation of TV's focus on the 18-to-49 demographic—and pretty much entirely ignoring the historic implosion of the Jay Leno Show experiment, which necessitated the shakeup in the first place.

I don't see much point in arguing the relative funniness or unfunniness of Conan and Jay; people can vote with their remotes. I'm not interested in debating "was Jay the bad guy?"—I've said I believe he's more hypocrite than villain, but ultimately I don't think it much matters.

What does matter, even in something trivial like TV comedy shows, is getting history right. We are probably all a little sick of this story and I hate to belabor it. But for the record, this is the rough sequence of actual events of the Jaypocalypse:

* In 2004, NBC agrees with Conan O'Brien to boot Jay Leno in 2009 and replace him with Conan. Jay graciously says he wants to avoid acrimony, tells Conan the show is his, and says nobody but Johnny Carson could have kept hosting Tonight into his 60s.

* 2008: NBC announces The Jay Leno Show at 10 p.m., acknowledging ratings will be lower, but arguing that it will save so much money as to be worth it.

* 2009 comes. Conan's Tonight ratings are bad. Leno's primetime performance is disastrous—he successfully cuts NBC's costs, but so damages the affiliates' 11 p.m. newscasts that they threaten to rebel, which in turn could create trouble for NBC's proposed purchase by Comcast. NBC has to fix it, now like yesterday.

* Problem: NBC would owe Conan a big payout (reportedly $40-50 million) if it fired him. Bigger problem: NBC would owe Leno a bigger payout (reportedly as much as $150 million) if it fires him early.

* NBC does the math, decides to keep Jay.

* NBC offers to push the Tonight Show with Conan to 12:05 p.m. Did the network expect him to accept? Did NBC ever think a half-hour Jay Leno Show at 11:35 was a realistic long-term plan? Or did it hope Conan would quit, in a way that would get the network out of a payout (or at least reduce it)? Jeff Gaspin now says he thought Conan would take the deal. I can't decide if it's worse if he's lying, or was thick enough to actually believe it.

* Word leaks out. Jaypocalypse ensues.

This is what happened. NBC was forced to act by an unignorable emergency in its primetime lineup and with its affiliates—not by Conan's ratings. (No denying it, they were bad, and worse than NBC expected; but if not for the affiliate crisis, NBC would have stuck to the long-term plan of trying to grow a future audience in the ad-friendly demographic—for how much longer, no one knows.) It based decisions, as it had through its whole history with Jay and Conan, largely on trying to avoid huge contractual payoffs. (Also in part on trying to avoid having either Jay or Conan jump ship, though that ended up happening anyway.)

And as for TV no longer caring about 18-to-49-year-old viewers: Gabler is knowledgeable enough about the entertainment business to know that's not true. TV will stop caring when advertisers stop caring. (I agree the controversy took on generational significance—the old guys won't move over! why should we get pushed out for young people!—but that was a result, not the cause.)

It is, of course, in NBC's interest for the public to believe, months from now, that Jay is hosting Tonight because too-hip-for-the-room Conan bombed, because America demanded its successful, beloved Jay back, and for no other reason. And that The Jay Leno Show never, ever happened.
And because people have real lives and don't obsess about this sort of thing, that is probably what they will remember. But for the handful of you reading this post for research—I'm guessing somewhere around the Leno-Fallon War of 2017—well, thanks for listening.



Read more: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/...n-the-history-rewriting-begins/#ixzz0dyuiTmM3