On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 11:23 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> NBC has to keep Conan happy at the end of their process. He still has >> a monologue and if he gets pissed off and stays that way, he can blow >> off steam by blasting NBC on the air. Or Conan becomes detached from >> the show and phones it in, letting everybody know he's unhappy with >> his deal but he's willing to do the minimum to meet his contract >> terms. > > But what can NBC do to make Conan happy at this point? They have already > screwed him on the essential. They told him they wanted him to be NBC's main > Late Night guy, then they took it about 33% back by putting Leno on at > 10:00, and now they have taken it about 99% back by putting Leno on at > 11:35. All he has left is being host of the Tonight Show, but this will no > longer be NBC's flagship late night program. This is basically the same > screwing NBC administered to Dave, only worse, since they had only implied, > not publicly and in writing promised, to make him the host of their > flagship.
The first thing I would say they could offer Conan is lots more money, in effect overpaying him to keep him pretending to be a team player. If Conan wants to branch out to producing prime time shows, like Worldwide Pants did, maybe NBC can offer up some production deals. In a TV Week articles Bob links to, NBC's Gaspin said the PR problem overshadowed the contractual problem when it came to affiliate relations. I think it does with Conan also. > > A 12:00 show after Leno is different in almost no way from doing the 12:35 > show he was doing at Late Night - in fact it is arguably worse. Last week > Leno and Conan told exactly the same joke on the same night (about it being > so cold in China the kids could not walk to work in the snow). I happened to > hear both because I wanted to see what Leno had to say about the bru ha ha, > but at least it was separated by 90 minutes. What happens when it is > separated by only 30 minutes? And Leno and Conan are both in Los Angeles? Going back to The Late Shift, some of the then-NBC execs thought that Dave might accept the idea of following Jay's show. Dave's people told Carter that Dave's show was meant to provide a contrast to Johnny's Tonight Show and following Jay's Tonight Show would be following one type of talk show with an identical type. Conan's in a similar position here - Jay would come on at 11:35, do a monologue and comedy bit, and then Conan would come on at 12:05 and do a monologue and comedy bit. I've given up on trying to figure out what's going through the minds of NBC's leaders. Putting Leno on at 10 was so obviously going to lead to an affilates' revolt that a Plan B should have been in place. Now they're trying to bail out from that bad decision on the fly and it's obviously going to lead to problems with Conan. Tom
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