A Generation Gap

It could be merely a sign that I have far too much idle time to kill, but I find myself strangely invested in the ongoing late-night "wars", such as they are, with Conan, Dave, Jimmy, Jimmy, Craig, and a soon-to-be-revived Jay doing their subtle back-and-forth from across the airwaves. So this is what all the adults were gabbing about in the summer of '92 like it was some big deal! Here I thought it was just about the Olympics Triple-Cast! (If you have no idea what this is, I suggest you read up here. The OTC was further proof that genius is always one generation ahead of its time, because today we take for granted that any sporting event above junior-college football will be given the full-on treatment by no fewer than five networks. Observe the ongoing US Open - you can watch on ESPN, NBC, the USGA website, ESPN's website, your iPhone, ESPNNews, or any one of several stationary channel cameras on DirecTV. It's enough to make you think you're in the control truck on site at Bethpage! But back in 1992, the concept of extra channels providing exclusive start-to-finish coverage of sports was so revolutionary...they wanted you to pay for it through the nose. As a result, by my count, more people have signed up as followers of this blog - look to the right, we've hit seven! - than did for the OTC. If you couldn't have already guessed, I remember this all vividly because we actually had the Triple-Cast. And at the time, bragging about being able to watch four different channels of Olympics coverage was akin to claiming a Unicorn was on your front lawn. People heard about it but never saw proof it existed. NBC got a few maniacs like us on board, but still wound up $100 million in the red -yet they paved the way for the all-access coverage we demand out of today's sport media.)

But with the long aside about the Triple-Cast out of the way, I turn back to the current state of affairs in late night TV. The numbers keep rolling in, and they keep showing David Letterman and Conan O'Brien jockeying for the pole position in total viewers, with Letterman coming out in front most nights. Conan retains a vice-like grip on the younger audience though, and the younger the age-window, the more lopsided the comparison is. I could do a long-winded exegesis on what these TV preferences say about the gap between generations, but I think the material speaks for itself. Witness Conan's leveraging of his own set for comedy's sake:


NBC is banking getting the best of both worlds - the generation that grew up with Nintendo follows Conan to 11:30. Their grandparents come back to NBC in September to watch Jay Leno at 10pm and tune out David Letterman, just like they did before the Tonight Show transition. Everybody in Universal City goes home a winner. You know what they say about best-laid plans, though...