We’ve all moved on from Conan-Jay-Dave already, BUT…
I’ve been watching a lot of old Letterman and Conan bits via youtub. A handful of Carson bits as well. I decided to edge back and read the press on the unveiling of the various competitors against Carson — beginning, I guess, with Les Crane, initial entry in the “show molded to fit wider audience” problem.*
An observation for Team Coco. Watch this Conan montage, aired during his his going away toward the end of his 12:30 run, of “Robots, Bears, and Lincolns” and three things about Conan at play. First of all, why the initial reviews of Conan were so very brutal — and there is something weirdly disporportionate about the reviews to the thought that in the wee hours of the night / morning, something a tad ameturish and not fully formed was being produced. But also wrapped up there, is how he found his audience for the night. The thing that confronted the tv reviewer was that here was something that Conan was trying to do, but not quite suceeding yet — which on first glance to a lot of people just seemed to suggest that he wasn’t really doing anything. But surely, that audience came in to this dead of night, outside the prying eyes of normal society. By the third year, the line on Conan was that “Conan is the new Dave” — that hip energetic television sensation that is more fun than sleep. But, I have to say, I am sick of hearing the word “edgy” to describe Conan O’brien — which denotes an item of offensiveness that does not pass muster here — perhaps jagged fits better, maybe?
Then the question comes when moving to that 11:30 time-slot. How do you adjust around with a bigger budget and stage with the need to bring in a broader audience, for the time slot that is less “appointment (and narrower reach) television” as 12:30 is and a broader “tune out and fade to sleep” time slot? The Robots, Bears, and Lincolns had to go. I guess the Bears had been whittled down to “The Masturbating Bear” anyway — brought on for a quick show at 11:30 just because he was brought back in the news due to the claims of “Intellectual Property Rights” by NBC and as an odd little suggestion that — well, Jay’s going to host The Tonight Show again, but it’s a Tonight Show that once had on… The Masturbating Bear, so, really…
Watching old Letterman clips, I’m remembering that he was once far more entertaining. That being said, I hold the corralary rule to the statement that “Band X’s old stuff was better “– yes, true, but what is worse than “Band X’s” old stuff is the sound of Band X if they were trying too hard to just duplicate their old stuff. I guage Letterman as slumping a few years into his 11:30 CBS run, regaining some panache some years later. For instance, in his evolution, he’s brought in new angles — for instance, he’s gone to a bit of Jack Paar with prominent politicians as guests and questions more meaningful than usual talk show banter. I can ascribe this to a certain theory of Dave’s neurosis to performance: He lost it when his ratings fell to Jay, and found some perspective at his triple by-pass surgery. Maybe.
Leno. The toruble with Leno’s 10 o’clock “experiment” comes through, I think, in the Jimmy Kimmell knock of his “10 at 10” appearance. Jay Leno worked ratings for the ratings level demand for 11:30, and the peculiar watching habit of 11:30. Fade to sleep with a perfectly mainstream vehicle for the most broadly popular stars to plug their latest projects. Pluck this in to 10 o’clock. They apparently brought Jimmy Kimmel in for a go around of perfectly irrelevant, safe, non-confrontational or controversial questions. “Junk Food weakness!” 10 o’clock demands higher ratings than 11:30, and Jay’s formula for 11:30 can arrive at the ratings desired for that slot, but not much broader. You can’t round the edges any further before there is left no trace of definition.
I do not really know what the perfect vehicle for Conan is at this point. I suppose he’ll have that Fox television show, quite possibly. It would not churning into that vehicle for “Robots, Bears, and Lincolns” as his 12:30 show was, nor the show business revue demands of an LA Tonight Show. Nor can it be afraid to slide somewhere to third in the ratings.
* Fun fact. In 1967, Carson had quit the Tonight Show (as it turned out, temporarily), prompting some contract negotiations from NBC. Joey Bishop, a former fill in host for Carson, had set up a talk show on ABC, and on the night Carson returned he had on as his guest … Jack Paar. Negative quote found here — go down to “Paar mentioned an article about Johnny Carson”.