If you don't really know (or care), NBC's "late" late night host, Conan O'Brien, finally completed the five-year waiting period to move up into the clean-up spot as host of The Tonight Show. This puts him in direct competition with the man he replaced once upon a time, CBS stalwart David Letterman. The man who retired from Tonight only to almost immediately regret it, Jay Leno, entertained a mega-offer from ABC but ultimately took a spot in NBC's primetime lineup at 10 PM. With a more home-spun, drama-free style built on Leno's super nice-guy person, Tonight regularly led the pack in viewership and cache among celebrities looking to plug their latest books and films.
O'Brien, despite being at 46 the oldest man to ever assume host duties on the Tonight show, pulls a much younger audience with his more subdued, almost nerdy style of humor. Perfect for the niche audience of college kids who need a laugh in the middle of an all-nighter, worrisome for a network that still counts on 60-year olds in Missouri to stay tuned after the late local news. O'Brien wisely took a poke at his apparent youth-skewing comedy during his second week on the show:
Now come the super-early returns on the changing of the guard in American TV. As expected, the curiosity factor piqued Conan's ratings to the tune of record levels, but there was sharp decline every day last week and by Tuesday of this week, Letterman was out-drawing the new kid on the block (relatively speaking - O'Brien hosted the Late Night show for 16 years, the same amount of time Letterman has been on CBS) and panic was - or at least should - have hit the streets. The 21st-century's answer to Walter Winchell, Nikki Finke over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, apparently has enough data to render a verdict:
It's the nightmare scenario for GE/NBC Universal that everyone but boss Jeff Zucker thought would happen: the network's cash cow The Tonight Show, once safely No. 1 in the ratings with Jay Leno as host, now can only hope to seesaw in the ratings with Letterman's Late Show. And it's all Zucker's fault. You'd think that NBC would be in a flopsweat over O'Brien's ratings slide during his first and second week as host of The Tonight Show. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Now, most network suits would be spending every minute of every hour of every day brainstorming how to make the show more popular. But this is NBC where, when the going gets rough, the executives go golfing. That's right, Conan's longtime executive producer Jeff Ross is getting his money's worth out of his spankin' new membership at Riviera Country Club because he was on the golf course not only two weekends in a row -- but both Saturday and Sunday last weekend even after Conan's ratings began to fall.I think the first problem here is that Nikki has obviously never played The Riv - neither have I for that matter, but I did get in a good walk there during the '08 Northern Trust Open - because once she's seen the place she'll never hold it against anybody for sneaking in a weekend 36 holes. More to the point, what precisely is somebody supposed to do between Friday and Monday that's gonna solve the problem for a show that runs every night of the week, almost every week of the year? It's this kind of over-the-top reactionism (INSTANT SUCCESS! INSTANT FAIL!) that I miss the least about Los Angeles. Actually, I'd say that comes in third behind the smog and the epic stupidity of the public transit department.
The story here isn't that viewers are deserting NBC in droves for David Letterman (they're deserting NBC for plenty of other reasons), but let's not let that get in the way of a good public dress-down from the relative safety of the internet. The numbers shift with O'Brien is in fact pretty predictable, and it's going to take more than 7 nights of shows to gauge if he's actually squandered the fanbase. Moreover, he brought his own fanbase with him, as the spin doctors were out in force today telling anybody who would listen, "Hey, even if his audience is smaller - and we're not conceding it is - it's far and away the top audience for coveted 18-49 demo!" In normal people terms, that means that more adults from age 18-49 watched Conan than any other late night show (significantly more, as it turns out: 156% more than Letterman. When you narrow the window to viewers 18-34, the margin becomes even more lopsided: 236%.)
How they actually determine this stuff is a process only about 11 people locked away in the Nielsen ratings bunker understand, but the network suits eat it up just the same (or spit it out, depending on the circumstances). The raw audience sizes have tilted to Letterman for the moment, but the key slices of the population advertisers drool over (young urban types with money to spend) have come to the 11:30 hour along with Conan. And in case anybody forgets - he's been on the job for seven days! Can I be the only one who wants to gag when an NBC press release calls him "the new king of late night" at the same time Hollywood's most influential internet honk is tearing his production a new one?
To solve the conundruum, I did something really bold: I actually watched the two main pugilists (Leno's 10 PM presence will make for an interesting wild card come fall) for a segment apiece last night. Conan...let's just say he's done better. It was an uneven monologue trying to mix in jokes about the Fiat purchase of Chrysler, Krispy Kreme, Jamba Juice, and Spencer Pratt (a nightly riff on Pratt has quickly become the signature sign-off move of Conan's monologue). I laughed, but more than a few times it was simply mild amusement at Conan's very breezy brush-off a joke that just couldn't quite connect.
So I switched over to Letterman just in time to catch his apology to Sarah Palin. Given the former VP candidate's appearance in New York, Letterman had (as comics are wont to do) cracked wise at her colorful family history and the governor took offense. Letterman took a moment during his show to clarify and apologize...kinda. As only a superbly skilled, well-timed comic host could possibly do, he seemed to mix genuine empathy over hurt feelings with an all-too-obvious "Are you f&*kin' kidding me?" indignation. It was the kind of brilliant high-wire act that only somebody with 30 years of savvy in the late night game could've produced, simultaneously apologizing while milking the absurdity for all it was worth. Conan's just not there yet - he's the equivalent of a valued baseball prospect, groomed to perfection at Triple-A and finally receiving the call to the big leagues. He's supposed to have the gig down pat after 7 days? Whenever I try to take this seriously, I'm reminded about just how much the dirty business of show business is like nothing else in America.
Thank God.
Note - if you're in the mood for perfectly understated humor, here's the Letterman "apology" in its entirety:
0 comments:
Post a Comment