{"id":5446,"date":"2010-02-12T10:22:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T17:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=5446"},"modified":"2010-02-12T10:22:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T17:22:27","slug":"the-continued-scrubbing-of-conan-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2010\/02\/12\/the-continued-scrubbing-of-conan-obrien\/","title":{"rendered":"the continued scrubbing of Conan O’brien"},"content":{"rendered":"

And so<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently Conan’s contract did indeed stipulate 11:30 (or 11:35, rather) slot.<\/p>\n

There have been arguments for and against, but a revelation from The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Conan O’Brien’s contract for ‘The Tonight Show’ did specify the 11:35 time slot. It’s good to know that Conan did, in fact, learn from David Letterman’s mistakes.\u00c2\u00a0 The only leg NBC had to stand on was the belief that Conan’s contract did not specify the time. It didn’t, but only in a 2004 amendment to an original 2002 contract (which makes it a seven year wait, not five). It was assumed by all parties that the amendment supporting the wording in the original article. NBC, being evil, tried to take advantage of this. Truth was the first casualty of the Second Late Night War.<\/em><\/p>\n

All this time we’d heard that the network would not be punished for a 12:00 slot, supposedly stuck in the slot to work around the occasional sports events.\u00c2\u00a0 But this all explains why Conan walked away with roughly the amount his contract obligated him in the event that the network canned him.\u00c2\u00a0 The great mysteries of the “Late Night War 2010″… solved.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, “The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien” has been utterly scrubbed from the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I was expecting this from NBC’s website and hulu, but I am a bit taken aback from the clips removal from youtube.\u00c2\u00a0 Old Late Night clips remain on youtube.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently not for that long, though — I see notes that NBC is planning on scrubbing those stray Late Night clips — more concerted than Letterman.
\nPretty soon, the 16 and a half year NBC career of Conan O’brien will be a strange underground sensation.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, maybe as the years go by NBC will let up — I have to wonder if the Internet were as it is now back in 1993 if they’d take the same scapel they are to Conan but aren’t to Letterman and take a hardline against Letterman.<\/p>\n

Interesting to note Letterman appears to be ready to bear, I guess feeling a competitive desire to beat Leno in his second chance.<\/a><\/p>\n

Letterman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bookers have put out the call, celebrities, if you sit down with Leno, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t call us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll call you. \u00c2\u00a0Right now\u00c2\u00a0 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s off limits to any cross over\u00c2\u00a0 guest for the Late SHOW with David Letterman.<\/em><\/p>\n

This may be good news for the viewers, these shows have turned into late night info commercials , \u00c2\u00a0guests promoting their books ,films or any other \u00c2\u00a0services \u00c2\u00a0they are pitching. […]<\/em><\/p>\n

The same actors and actress just doing the rounds, the networks are giving us nothing in return, maybe this will force David and Jay to retrench and get with it, and now for something completely different.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, for the love of lard…
\nActually hereabouts you get to a crux of a matter with these late night talk shows.\u00c2\u00a0 One advantage the 12:30 programs have over the 11:30 programs is a generally more interesting guest list.\u00c2\u00a0 Ed Koch, a default regular guest-list of the early Conan years, is a more interesting personality than, say, Harrison Ford.\u00c2\u00a0 And these days, Letterman has guarded himself completely from the possibility of another Madonna interview.\u00c2\u00a0 His formula has been winded down to the pre-pared “Anecdote #1, Anecdote #2, Anecdote #3, plug your project.”\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, for More interesting guests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Dave is cleaning up in the ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 In the absence of any competition.\u00c2\u00a0 Looks like he’ll rise again.<\/p>\n

About a week ago, I watched the two shows — Dave and Conan, clicking back between the two.\u00c2\u00a0 Conan’s was, of course, a rerun — from just after the NBA Championship — Kobe Bryant was a guest.\u00c2\u00a0 The post-monolouge bit was nothing particularly outstanding — a mildly amusing example of what you get in this format of “grind something out 5 episodes a week; go to whatever well you can find” — he ran out to the studio back lot and set up\u00c2\u00a0 a giant discarded statue on the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 The strange tenants of late night — the show is the show, you’re filling a schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 Before NBC scrubbed all presence of Conan from hulu, I picked about and shifted through the seven months of material.\u00c2\u00a0 There was Pee Wee Herman.\u00c2\u00a0 Norm Macdonald was worth his few interviews — apparently Macdonald was ready to serve as a go-to-guest.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m tending to stray toward the comedy bits in these things.<\/p>\n

Hey!\u00c2\u00a0 Tonight is the final broadcast of such a thing as “The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien”.\u00c2\u00a0 I remain convinced that as we become more fractured in terms of entertainment options, in the years ahead, the networks will look back at Conan’s disappointing ratings as high ratings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently Conan’s contract did indeed stipulate 11:30 (or 11:35, rather) slot. There have been arguments for and against, but a revelation from The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Conan O’Brien’s contract for ‘The Tonight Show’ did specify the 11:35 time slot. It’s good to know that Conan did, in fact, learn from David Letterman’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5449,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446\/revisions\/5449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}