Leno or Conan?

I love my son unconditionally and always will.  That’s why when we sat together at an FSU baseball game today, we could have a discussion that was very generational without getting loud or coming to blows!  Sometimes we agree to disagree and then we generally laugh at our opposing passions for a particular subject.  We laughed a lot today!  The Noles were soundly beating their opponents from out of state, so we started talking about ordinary everyday subjects.

At some point, my son brought up Conan O’Brien and that he has 250,000 tweeters and growing.  Evidently, Jay Leno has 35,000 tweeters and growing very, very, slowly.  Birds tweet and I don’t, so forgive me if Conan’s tweeters do not impress me!  I’ll bet Jay has more gray heads as fans than Conan, and the gray heads are the fastest growing demographic! Conan and your tweeters, BEWARE!

I still feel very passionately that Jay took the brunt of the bad press about late night television through no fault of his own.  The NBC geniuses that moved Jay to an early retirement, out of late night to prime time, are at fault!  Jay had #1 ratings for years on the Tonight show and Conan did not come close in his admittedly short run.  My son did make a good point about The Jay Leno Show at 10 PM did not bring the audience to Conan that other prime time shows brought to Jay. Wah, wah, wah!

The trouble I have understanding the “Tonight Show” (exit, entrance, exit etc.) is the way that Dave Letterman and Conan O’Brien only partially blamed the NBC execs.  The late night comedians made personal attacks against Jay in their monologues and everyone seemed surprised when Jay Leno used his wit to strike back.  Conan O’Brien left the Tonight Show with a multimillion dollar paycheck and a release to work for other networks this fall!  It’s hard to feel sorry for him in this bad economy.  David Letterman lost the rating race to Jay Leno for years and his stabbing monologues perhaps showed how he worries that he’ll once again have competition at Late Night!

By the way, the Super Bowl commercial with Jay, Oprah, and Dave was OUTSTANDING!  Conan missed a great opportunity to show some classy humor. I guess, he’d rather tweet!

“The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” returns this Monday, and I look forward to its success!