Conan Says "Goodnight"

Congratulations, NBC: You suck. Been out a few days, but in case you somehow missed it, Conan and NBC reached a buyout agreement, Jay is still trying to present himself as a victim in all of this, and January 22 saw The Tonight Show with Conan O'brien come to an end waaaay too soon. Of course, O'brien and the gang didn't go quietly; he defiantly ripped NBC up through Thursday night before bowing graciously and thanking NBC (but not Leno, mind you) on Friday night, had plenty of great guests and surprise appearances, and highlighted some of the best moments from his short stint as host of The Tonight Show. And then came one of the coolest things I've ever seen on television. After saying his goodbyes (for now), Conan closed out his version of one of the most storied and respected franchises in all of media with a goofy all-star jam rendition of "Freebird" that was at times just flat-out weird. It featured Max Weinberg and the rest of the Tonight Show Band, Ben Harper, Conan, Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top), and Beck, with none other than Will Ferrell leading the way - and he brought his cowbell! Not sure that it was funny or that it even served any purpose, but it was pure Conan:

Goodnight, Conan. See you soon...

More on last night:

Evidently a lot of people were watching, and Jimmy Fallon and The Roots did a pretty awesome tribute at the top of their show:

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Taiwanese Late Night Explanation, Throwdown Style

I like this version better, especially the computer-animated brawl at the end:

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Jay's Side of the Story

Earlier this evening, NBC released a transcript of Jay Leno's monologue from tonight's Jay Leno Show. In it, Jay attempts to explain his angle on this mess. As far as the probability of a potential shuffle and the termination of The Tonight Show with Conan O'brien, "inevitable" seems to be the word:

“I thought maybe I should address this. At least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let’s start in 2004. 2004 I’m sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, listen, Conan O’Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don’t want him to go, so we’re going to give him ‘The Tonight Show.’ I said, ‘well, I’ve been number one for 12 years.’ They said, ‘we know that, but we don’t think you can sustain that.’ I said, ‘okay. How about until I fall to number two, then you fire me?’ ‘No, we made this decision.’ I said, ‘that’s fine.’ Don’t blame Conan O’Brien. Nice guy, good family guy, great guy. He and I have talked and not a problem since then. That’s what managers and people do, they try to get something for their clients. I said, ‘I’ll retire just to avoid what happened the last time.’ Okay.
So time goes by and we stay number one up until the day we leave. We hand… [applause here] No, no. Okay, but I’m leaving before my contract is out. About six to eight months early. So before I could go anywhere else, I would be at least a year or 18 months before I could go and do a show somewhere else. I said to NBC, ‘would you release me from my contract.’ They said, ‘we want to keep you here.’ Okay. What are your ideas? They said, ‘how about primetime?’ I said, ‘that will never work.’ No, no, we want to put you on at 10:00. We have done focus groups. People will love you at 10:00. Look at these studies showing Jay’s chin at 10:00. People will go crazy. Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. I said, ‘alright, can I keep my staff?’ There are 175 people that work here. I said, ‘can I keep my staff?’ Yes, you can. Let’s try it. We guarantee you two years on the air, guaranteed. Now for the first four or five months against original shows like ‘CSI’ you’ll get killed, but in the spring and summer when the reruns come, that’s when you’ll pick up. Okay, great. I agree to that.
“Four months go by, we don’t make it. Meanwhile, Conan’s show during the summer, we’re not on, was not doing well. The great hope was that we would help him. Well, we didn’t help him any, okay. They come and go, ‘this show isn’t working. We want to let you go.’ Can you let me out of my contract? No, you’re still a valuable asset to this company. How valuable can I be? You fired me twice. How valuable can I be? Okay. So then, the affiliates are not happy. The affiliates are the ones that own the TV stations. They’re the ones that sort of makes the decisions, they’re not happy with your performance and Conan is not doing well at 11:30. I said, ‘what’s your idea?’ They said, ‘well, look, how about you do a half hour show at 11:30?’ Now, where I come from, when your boss gives you a job and you don’t do it well, I think we did a good job here, but we didn’t’ get the ratings, so you get humbled. I said, ‘okay, I’m not crazy about doing a half hour, but okay. What do you want to do with Conan?’ We’ll put him on at midnight, or 12:05, keeps The Tonight Show, does all that, he gets the whole hour. I said, `okay. You think Conan will go for that?’ Yes, yes. [laughter from the audience] Almost guarantee you. I said okay. Shake hands, that’s it. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have an agent, that’s my handshake deal.
“Next thing I see Conan has a story in the paper saying he doesn’t want to do that. They come back to me and they say if he decides to walk and doesn’t want to do it, do you want the show back? I go, ‘yeah, I’ll take the show back. If that’s what he wants to do. This way, we keep our people working, fine.’ So that’s pretty much where we are. It looks like we might be back at 11:30, I’m not sure. I don’t know. [applause] I don’t know. But through all of this — through all of this, Conan O’Brien has been a gentleman. He’s a good guy. I have no animosity towards him. This is all business. If you don’t get the ratings, they take you off the air. I think you know this town, you can do almost anything. You get ratings they keep you. I don’t get ratings, he wants. That was NBC’s solution. It didn’t work so we might have an answer for you tomorrow. So, we’ll see. That’s basically where it is.”

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Leno's 2004 Announcement

Um, wow:

Jay's 2004 Announcement - watch more funny videos

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Late Night War Round Up...

The good news? Apparently, this thing could be winding down. The bad? Unfortunately it sounds like it's not going to end well. The latest reports have NBC buying out Conan and Leno returning to The Tonight Show. Evidently every single NBC executive is either blind and deaf, or they're a bunch of stubborn old people (although I suppose those things aren't mutually exclusive). Either way, they're making a decision that flies in the face of the popular consensus - that Leno is the bad guy who should step aside and do the right thing - and the ratings, which have recently spiked for Conan. In fact, Tonight Show ratings have actually eclipsed that of Leno's show even though he's on during prime time - kind of a big deal. But who cares, the old rich guys think Jay is funny, or something.

The A.V. Club has a great rundown of everything that's gone down so far here. Check it.

Edit/Update: Ken Tucker @ EW.com posted this today on Dick Ebersol, the NBC exec. who's leading the "anti-Conan" charge. He's also the same guy that almost single-handedly wrecked SNL in the early 80s and thought (former SNL & Seinfeld writer and current Curb Your Enthusiasm star) Larry David was a talentless hack. Tucker makes several other excellent points as well, and they all point to one thing: NBC is making a joke of itself.

Also of note: Conan and NBC may reach an agreement by the end of the weekend. Needless to say, it'll be interesting to see what O'brien does with his last week should that actually come to pass; he's been relentless as-is...

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Jimmy Kimmel on Leno

Kimmel gets some pretty good shots in on "Jay-the-Terrible" here, although this is mostly just awkward...

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Conan: I'm a Boss

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over the in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Showinto the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of theTonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Update: Leno is talking about walking, too.

Also, here's Conan making the best out of a dumb situation last Friday night:

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The Late Shift, Cont...

NBC is moving forward with their next great idea, and moving Jay Leno and his big dumb Harley back to 10:35 (CST)... Conan will be backed up to 11:05, and then Jimmy Fallon will begin @ 12:05. Evidently this will all take place after the Winter Olympics conclude. Although it sucks Conan is being kicked all over the place for the sake of a guy who isn't really funny at all, there are a few silver linings here. For one thing, O'Brien won't have to compete with the Colbert Report anymore, which is surely affecting Tonight Show ratings right now. In addition, this creates the opportunity for NBC to actually put real shows on @ 9:00 again, which, despite opening the door for more awful reality garbage, hopefully ensures that shows like Chuck don't go the way of Life (I'm still steaming about that). Finally, this should mean that someone will have to take over Carson Daly's spot at the top of the list of people who least deserve to have their own late-night talk show (I vote Chelsea Handler). Last call, Carson!

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NBC Mulls Moving Leno Back to the Tonight Show... Sort of

I'm going to say this as nicely as possible: NBC is the DUMBEST network television station there is. I've voiced my disgust with their knee-jerk reactions before; they get the worst ratings of any of the four major networks with good reason. Now, after gutting their entire line-up to give Leno a show that was doomed to failure from the very beginning, they're considering this. Unbelievable. Stay strong, Conan!

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Good News...

According to Entertainment Weekly, Andy Richter is gonna drop whatever the hell he's been doing and get down with Conan on the new Tonight Show. Thank you, NBC!

In even better news:

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The Potty Dance & Conan's Last Week

I'd like to meet the mastermind behind this:




Also, this is Conan O'Brien's last week hosting Late Night before taking over The Tonight Show. Conan's always been my favorite late night host; I still remember watching his first show with my dad when I was about 12 years old...

Over the past few weeks, they've been replaying some of Conan's best bits, and last night they played excerpts from his dinner with an associate producer. Conan gets more funny as the clip progresses (and as his wine glass gets less full). Here's hoping the Late Night crew can translate its awesomeness to an earlier time slot:

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