late night wars, part 3 or 4?

I suppose we can view the latest iteration of the “Late Night Wars” as following the dictum — it first played out as Comedy, then as Farce, and now as Tedium.  (To review … Leno / Letterman of the early 1990s can’t really be taken seriously; NBC trying to save Conan got too cute in moving Leno to 10 and then found out Conan wasn’t worth saving, and now — well, it’s Leno remaining terribly unhip but leading in the ratings and with Jimmy Kimmel now beating Letterman in the ratings they see an immediate future where their late nights are as screwed as the rest of the day… so they want to jump Fallon in now?)

There is, I guess, a pre-history worth mentioning.  I note that a blog post on the history of Johnny Carson’s competition gets relatively higher notice than the rest of this unread blog.  And we continue to have a “sub-plot” where Fox is mentioned as a ground for — first Conan and now Leno — might land.  Then again, this presents a weird problem of Fox’s demographic profile not matching the Leno.  Also, Fox’s late night problems pre-date the network weirdly enough, and you do get the feeling that Fox’s affiliates are right in not wanting a talk show to rein in their long time popular programming of … sitcom reruns from six years’ ago.

Musing, without any other place for Leno to go, I have an idea.  He can be put in after Letterman and moved into Letterman’s slot when he retires in a couple of years.

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