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Pop&Circumstance Blog: Quittin’ Time

By Blair Thill, blairthill, on January 13, 2010 12:05 AM

By Blair Thill, Gavel Blogger – (Photo Courtesy of The Brooks Files)

Is there anyone else out there in TV land that would like to quit? Any other shows that NBC would like to cancel? I’m giving you one last chance. Because frankly I’m exhausted. This week has been a hailstorm of behind-the-scenes drama for the television industry.

First, speculation surfaced about NBC’s possible cancellation of The Jay Leno Show and a subsequent retooling of the late-night lineup. Then the next day, Simon Cowell decided to kick NBC while they were down and steal even their negative press by announcing he’s quitting American Idol. And now today, Conan O’Brien stole that spotlight back with a statement he released saying he can’t stay at NBC if they push The Tonight Show back one half hour.

So seriously, is there anyone else who would like to get anything off their chest? Katherine Heigl, would you like to finalize your departure from Grey’s Anatomy? Simon Baker, would you like to take your good-looking self away from The Mentalist despite boffo ratings and pursue a life of crime? Now would be the time. Then maybe Conan, Simon, Katherine, and the other Simon could start their own talk show for NBC’s 10 o’clock hour that’s destined to fail before it starts, too.

I’ll be honest, I wanted The Jay Leno Show to fail. I have nothing against Jay Leno himself – I enjoyed flipping on The Tonight Show while he was the host. “Jaywalking” was my favorite. Come on, who doesn’t love to see how dumb our fellow Americans can be? Who doesn’t love finding out that these dunces are third grade history teachers? But Jay showing up at 10 p.m. made my hatred that much easier.

Because what would have happened to primetime television if the show had been a rousing success? It would have taught the Big Four networks to give up on original, scripted programming for talk shows that are half the price. You can’t blame NBC for trying – their development department wasn’t yielding great results, so of course they thought it was a good idea. And all of America (well 18 million of us anyway) tuned in the first night to see if this experiment would pay dividends. And then all of America realized that Leno didn’t want to be in primetime. His monologue had lost its trusty one-liners, the guests didn’t seem to understand their purpose, even “Jaywalking” was lacking its startling display of stupidity. Ratings plummeted. Affiliates started complaining about the dwindling numbers of their late local newscasts (aka the affiliate bread and butter).

So yes, the cancellation of NBC’s unoriginal experiment wasn’t a huge shocker. Their solution to make everyone happy, however, was rather surprising. Suddenly NBC was publicizing a brand-new Late Night lineup without getting confirmation from its major players. Jay would be moved to 11:35 p.m.. Conan O’Brien and The Tonight Show would be moved to 12:05 a.m. for the first time in its 60-year history. And poor Jimmy Fallon, who is finally finding his range as late-night host, was doomed to take the graveyard shift at 1:05.

Conan’s statement makes it clear that not only does he find this arrangement disrespectful to him, but disrespectful to the Tonight Show franchise. Reading the statement, I can’t say I disagree with Conan’s assessment. He hasn’t been given enough time to grow into Johnny Carson’s shoes. But I also think that if Conan is indeed lying and really is considering jumping ship to Fox, he’s never going to get the ratings that he could garner following Leno on NBC because he doesn’t have a shot of beating Leno or Letterman. Poor Jimmy Fallon hasn’t spoken out on his stance yet, but I would venture to say he might be rooting for Conan to leave so he can keep his current standing.

Throughout this process, I was just happy that American Idol would be back to comfort me this week – provide a sense of stability. I had just decided that I would embrace Ellen as a judge despite my initial hesitation. Then Simon Cowell had to go and quit. No doubt AI will go on without him, but is AI without Simon really AI at all? I’m honestly not sure.

Of course, the show is about the undiscovered talent – without them the judges would serve no purpose. But if the show was just about the singers, we could catch the clips on YouTube the next day and merely watch the results show. The judges give us a reason to tune in to the performance show. It used to be a mixture of “What will Simon say?” and “How drunk will Paula be tonight?” Season nine took away the second question, and now Season 10 is the great unknown – not that Cowell is leaving us for good. He’s going to try to adapt his UK sensation The X Factor as another massive hit for Fox. It might even work. But will the X Factor judges panel have the same chemistry the original Idol panel did? Doubtful.

Here’s a link to Conan’s goodbye statement:

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2010/01/12/conan-obrien-nbc-tonight-show/