Tag Archives: Conan O’Brien

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Conan! (Updated)

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In case you were wondering why I haven’t been blogging lately, I’ve been busy vacationing. Last night, my wife and I saw Conan O’Brien’s “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” show, and it was terrific. Special guests were Bears player Brian Urlacher and actor John C. Reilly. Reilly sang a little off-script number that went like this:

Missed Jay Leno last night
His jokes just make me snore
Awfully different without you
Don’t watch the Tonight Show anymore

And the crowd roared. It was surprising to hear a blatant anti-Leno joke, considering that Conan is prohibited from making fun of Leno or NBC under terms of his severance. But as Reilly explained, he (Reilly) isn’t prohibited from saying anything. I’ll share more later. It was a fantastic show.

Continue reading Conan! (Updated) →

General News

Conan is going on tour

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Yes, I know this has nothing to do with Peoria. But I’m a fan of Conan O’Brien, and I thought I’d mention that he’s just announced he’ll be taking his act on the road to thirty cities. He’s calling it: “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour.” It’s billed as “A night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence.”

You can get tickets at http://teamcoco.com/. Closest date to Peoria: Chicago (of course) on May 19 at the Chicago Theater. Tickets are $39.50, $59.50, and $79.50. I’m going.

UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune is reporting that “sidekick Andy Richter and the former ‘Tonight Show’ band will join O’Brien” for the tour.

UPDATE 2: Conan just announced via Twitter, “We are now adding a second show in both NYC & Chicago. For that second show, I’ll be doing all Liza Minnelli songs.”

UPDATE 3: If you haven’t already gotten tickets, you’re too late. The Chicago Tribune now reports, “Chicago tickets sold out on Ticketmaster.com within a couple hours.” Good thing I had the day off today!

Television

Leno’s effect on WEEK’s late news “minimal”

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I don’t generally cover entertainment news on my blog, but for whatever reason, I’ve been obsessed lately with the whole Tonight Show debacle on NBC.

As you probably know, Jay Leno left The Tonight Show last year and Conan O’Brien took over. Then NBC tried putting Jay Leno on a comedy show at 9 p.m. leading into the news — and it bombed. It was so cheap to produce that NBC was still able to make money even though the ratings were terrible. However, the terrible ratings hurt local affiliates because if people aren’t watching Jay at 9, they don’t watch that station’s news at 10. So affiliates demanded that NBC cancel The Jay Leno Show and go back to scripted programming that will bring in more viewers who will carry over to the late local news.

That got me wondering: how has this affected our local NBC affiliate, WEEK-TV 25? I asked the station’s general manager Mark DeSantis. He said local Peoria stations don’t subscribe to Nielsen, but they’re able to gauge viewership by information they receive from national advertising firms. DeSantis says that “while the average national decline in prime and late newscasts for NBC affiliates was in the 30% range, WEEK sustained less than a 10% decline with Leno at 9pm.” In short, “The effect on our late news was minimal.”

Unlike other affiliates who complained to NBC about the 9 o’clock programming, “WEEK made no demand of the network that Leno be cancelled.” But like many observers, DeSantis felt it was a “serious mistake” for the network to take Leno off The Tonight Show in the first place. Now, of course, NBC is trying to put the genie back in the bottle — that is, they’re trying to put Leno back at 10:35, much to Conan’s displeasure. DeSantis believes NBC has “mishandled the announcement” of that decision, “making this issue a real mess for all concerned.”

But he isn’t taking sides. He says he also sympathizes with O’Brien. “[Conan] is getting the short end of the stick after doing what he was asked and contracted to do.” The latest rumor is that Conan’s last Tonight Show will be next Friday, and that Jay Leno will be reinstated as host after the Winter Olympics. Many speculate Conan will get his own late show on the Fox network.

“At this point, my preference is to get through this change quickly so we can move on and stabilize late night once again,” DeSantis concluded. In the meantime, it’s hilarious to hear all the late-night comedians ridicule NBC executives for their dismal handling of the situation.

As for me, I’m on Team Conan.

Television

Dumbest late night idea since “Thicke of the Night”

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According to the venerable New York Times, Jay Leno is tanking at 9:00, so the network is punishing Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon.

The network has a plan in the works to restore Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 [10:35 CT] each weeknight for a half-hour, while pushing the man who replaced him, Conan O’Brien, to a starting time of 12:05 a.m. [11:05 p.m. CT] Mr. O’Brien would then have a full hour. […] The third NBC late-night star, Jimmy Fallon, has shown some promising ratings with younger viewers. He would then begin his show at 1:05 a.m. [12:05 a.m. CT], the executives said.

Conan’s show would still be called “The Tonight Show,” thus avoiding a breach-of-contract penalty for NBC. The stupidest thing is their reasoning:

Mr. O’Brien, meanwhile, has had his ratings suffer on “The Tonight Show.” He has trailed the “Late Night With David Letterman” on CBS by about two million viewers a night; Mr. Leno had easily been the winner in that time period previously.

Well, it’s amazing what 15 years does for your ratings. A better comparison would be to see how well Leno did his first year on the job. Answer: third place — behind Letterman and Nightline. This is a knee-jerk reaction to top all knee-jerk reactions, and will result in even more viewers being lost.