On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> Arsenio Hall has been making the rounds promoting this A&E doc which > premieres this evening and runs a few times this week (and probably > next). About a decade ago, A&E produced an outstanding documentary > about the daytime shows (in which I made a lengthy, unexpected cameo, > but that is neither here nor there). I've seen them air good stuff and > bad stuff. I'm hoping this will be good stuff. It is supposed to be > about several of the late night feuds, not just the most recent (Jay & > Conan) or the most notorious (Dave & Jay). Given Arsenio's > involvement, I suspect they'll include the war of the late '80s/early > '90s and all of the wannabe heirs to Johnny's throne. And it would be > nice to learn something about Carson's brutal contract negotiations > which gave him sole ownership of his show, cut the time down from 90 > to 60 minutes, and eventually cut his schedule to three days a week. > I may have missed the discussion on this show. I just watched it last night (just before 60 Minutes). It was just a cut above an E Hollywood Special, but interesting to see some of the reflections. Not much new information. It was amusing how they would cozy up to potentially interesting questions, ask, or sometimes almost ask, them, but then do nothing in the way of answering or even exploring them. No real answers to why Fox did not stick with Arsenio, why Arsenio walked away, or why Craiggers walked away (or what he is doing now, besides, apparently, putting in some serious In and Out time). A little bit on the Carson negotiations - with Silverman basically saying Johnny was pissed he had not gotten enough respect in the past, knew he had NBC by the balls and squeezed pretty damn hard "after the deal, NBC still made a lot of money from the Tonight Show - but not as much as we used to"). Most important piece of information (though not new) was the CBS Late Night VP explaining why Dave (even in second place) is so important (CBS went from losing something like $70 Million to making something like $70 Million). Actually not too much on the recent Dave vs Conan. I thought Çonan came off looking pretty good on 60 Minutes - they really seem to have signed up with Team Coco (Steve Kroft: "Everybody knows you got screwed"). Conan came as close to implying as he legally could that Leno shouldn't be able to sleep at night because of what he did. I wish one or both of the programs would have addressed directly the thing that bugs me the most: NBC and Leno consciously set about re-writing history as it was being made, constructing the <false> narrative that Conan was replaced as host of the Tonight Show because his ratings were so low. They have been substantially successful with this strategy - with even pro-Conan commentators spending most of their time refuting or starting from this premise. But the premise is false, and should be ignored. Conan was replaced as Host of the Tonight Show because Leno's ratings were so low at 10:00. Period. If the ratings of the JLS were 15% higher, Conan would still be hosting the Tonight Show on NBC, regardless of his ratings. All discussions of the change of Leno's re-claiming of the Tonight Show chair should begin with, and be centered in the context of, Leno's failure at 10:00. The question I would have asked Conan is, was there any way NBC could have kept him besides promising him the Tonight Show in 5 years? If the answer to that question is no, then I think it provides the answer to the key question in this whole affair, which is, are the NBC guys idiots or assholes? My sense is that they really were not too stupid, but that they were huge assholes. They wanted to make sure that their Tonight Show remained the top rated talk show, and did not create another network competitor. Everything they did was designed to make sure that is what happened - and that is what is happening. If there was someway to have kept Conan at NBC while never giving him Leno's job in the first place, then they were idiots not to have tried that, but assuming Conan would have had an 11:00 or 11:35 show competing against Leno if they had let him walk, NBC probably got the best possible outcome they could for their late night franchise. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
