Leno took back his Tonight Show chair after the last Winter Olympics 4 years ago. In the aftermath of that whole debacle, he ultimately must be counted as one of the losers. He got four more years, but his reputation suffered and he only stayed long enough to actually get fired a second time, still exiting the stage before Dave, and forever occupying basically the same space as the Beverly Hillbillies (another program cancelled with great ratings because it did not appeal to a lucrative demographic). If he had refused the primetime show, or even accepted its failure with grace, and just transitioned to elder stand up comic statesman and done 4 NBC comedy specials a year, his legacy would have been far shinier.
Conan of course is the big loser from all of that; I suppose he is happy enough at TBS, and TBS is probably happy with him, but if NBC had kept its word to him and Leno had not participated in the coup, he would be the Tonight Show host for another 15 years or so, and would likely be the ratings leader for most of that time. Kimmell certainly would not have been able to position himself as some kind of insurgent alternative to the corporate suck-up at Tonight if Conan were there, and maybe would even have stayed at 12:05. In any case Kimmell is the #2 winner in all this, entering the new era as hipper than CBS and more experienced than NBC. Dave is pretty much a wash, unless he or others count outlasting Leno as a win (I confess I kind of do - Dave started before Leno and finishes after him). He enters the new era as unambiguously the old guy, and the pressure will no doubt built on CBS to go younger, though unless and until a compelling candidate emerges I don't expect that pressure to get too intense for a while. He probably is a marginal winner, in that if NBC had stayed with Conan and Kimmell had moved to 11:35, the pressure to replace Dave with someone younger would have built earlier. Fallon obviously is the huge winner here. If NBC had not prematurely dumped Leno in the first place, he never would have gotten the 12:35 show (and if that gig were just opening now, one doubts it would go to him), and he is only getting the biggest chair in late night because NBC screwed the pooch with Conan. He has a nice and likable enough persona that he should do okay, though I would expect more dispersion among the audience, and netflix may actually be the biggest winner of all this. -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
