I'm with Coco, for several important reasons (or at least important to me). Before reading my list - you might want to read up on the current
Late Night battle that is being waged by NBC.
- Leno is an ass - is he not? Of course people will be dumbfounded when you attack them in the streets with bright lights and a camera crew. And who really cares about typos in advertisements, I spend my day copy editing stuff, I really don't need to see it as entertainment. I want to see funny, edgy sketch comedy. Convince me that Jack Paar or Johnny Carson would have done "Jay Walk All Stars".
- Leno moving to the 10 o'clock spot on NBC canceled my favorite TV show "Life". That alone made me want to hurt Leno in a bad way. They killed several shows in the Leno decision, but "Life" was a refreshing crime drama, well produced, yet quirky. Damien Lewis - from Band of Brothers fame - was a real delight to watch, the story was well crafted and the technical work of filming was top notch. If you cancel a good show it shouldn't be because someone is upset that he made a mistake six years earlier.
- Conan deserves to be treated better. I would think NBC would learn from their mistakes with how they treated Letterman, ousting him initially for Leno in the Tonight Show spot. Letterman went over to CBS and has really given NBC a run for their money with the late night crowd. The situation now with Leno and Conan seems like a repeat of that mistake. Take a young, talented, popular late night personality and screw them. What's going to happen - Conan goes to Fox and makes NBC look like a bunch of fools, or better yet, creates YouTube channel and continues the demise of the broadcast networks for on demand content.
- Jimmy Fallon deserves to be treated better. Here's a guy who is extremely young, in touch with a new generation of late night audience and you want to push him even farther back into obscurity by ruining that franchise as well. C'mon NBC, do you actually think you'll attract any A-List talent if you treat your two young demographic stars this way? Plus Jimmy loves the muppets...how could you treat a guy so badly who loves the muppets?
- Cut the baby boomers loose. Advertising is king in network TV right? Who has a larger disposable income, retirees or 18-35 years olds?
- Leno is an ass - yes, it completely comes down to that. A guy has a golden goose gig, signs up for planned retirement, then has cold feet, gets a show based on fears that he'll go compete with NBC, then gets cancelled and tries to muscle into his replacement's gig. That's about as lame as show business gets.
