JosephBurke.com

Battle of Late Night

// January 15th, 2010 // Joe's Blog

This whole debacle with Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno just seems a little too much for me. Almost like a ploy set on by the executive wizards at NBC to boost ratings for “The Tonight Show” branding. I totally disagree with the way NBC is handling the announcement of Conan’s removal of host of The Tonight Show, and the replacing of Jay Leno. Conan was just getting his feet wet in the time slot, had a gorgeous stage and good skits, and then NBC decides to recoil on their decision making just after a mere 7 months. I watched The Tonight Show just this evening, and even he seems a little overwhelmed and very uncertain about what to do, how to act, respond etc. I personally never liked Jay Leno as much as Conan. Originally, I watched Jay Leno because he consistently had Blue Man Group on, which to me was main focus of watching. I slowly became a moderate fan of his, but his redundant skits and cheeky humor just got old after a while. That’s when around 2005, I started watching a lot more Conan and I became instantly addicted to his crazy skits, wild antics and total randomness as a talk show host. Conan represents a lot of fresh qualities the execs at NBC need to realize, and the announcement of this his upcoming removal after the Winter Olympics is just a little slap in the face to not only the staff, crew, musicians and Conan himself, but the fans of his show. I just don’t know. If it wasn’t for shows like Heroes, Family Guy, The Simpsons, House M.D. and Hell’s Kitchen, which all are on FOX except Heroes, I wouldn’t watch much TV at all. It’s times like this The Daily Show with John Stewart becomes the focus of my night time news parody.