Originally Posted by Zeeboe (Post 2903207)

I think the reason why Letterman is pissed is because he is still bitter over losing The Tonight Show. He also knows when Jay comes back, he'll be bringing in the ratings again.

I think in due time, this will all just be a bad memory, but things will go back to the way they use to be. Jay will be making jokes about all this again one day when he finally retires, and another host takes over, but before then, people will forget all this hopefully. NBC wants $$$$, and ratings, and they want it now. They had no other choices back in the 90's when they gave Jay time to make the show a hit, but they had options this time, and waiting two years or more for Conan to get his act together is not doing smart business in my view.

Originally Posted by thedamndest (Post 2903749)

You can definitely trust Jay Leno's side.

Originally Posted by Juan (Post 2903774)

None of this would have happened if Leno would have retired like he said he was going to.

Originally Posted by Juan (Post 2903792)

Wasn't there talk of him going over to FOX or ABC? I don't think he was under contract

Originally Posted by Jay Leno

“I thought maybe I should address this — at least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let’s start in 2004 — 2004, I’m sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, ‘Listen, Conan O’Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don’t want him to go, so we’re going to give him The Tonight Show.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been No. 1 for 12 years.’ They said, ‘We know that, but we don’t think you can sustain that.’ I said, ‘Okay. How about until I fall to No. 2, then you fire me?’ ‘No, we made this decision.’ I said, ‘That’s fine.’ Don’t blame Conan O’Brien. Nice guy, good family guy, great guy. He and I have talked, and not a problem since then. That’s what managers and people do; they try to get something for their clients. I said, ‘I’ll retire, just to avoid what happened the last time.’ Okay.

“So time goes by, and we stay No. 1 up until the day we leave. We hand… [applause here] No, no. Okay, but I’m leaving before my contract is out. About six to eight months early. So before I could go anywhere else — I would be at least a year or 18 months before I could go and do a show somewhere else. I said to NBC, ‘Would you release me from my contract.’ They said, ‘We want to keep you here.’ Okay. What are your ideas? They said, ‘How about prime time?’ I said, ‘That will never work.’ ‘No, no, we want to put you on at 10:00. We have done focus groups. People will love you at 10:00. Look at these studies showing Jay’s chin at 10:00. People will go crazy.’ Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. I said, ‘All right, can I keep my staff?’ There are 175 people that work here. I said, ‘Can I keep my staff?’ ‘Yes, you can. Let’s try it. We guarantee you two years on the air, guaranteed. Now for the first four or five months against original shows like CSI, you’ll get killed, but in the spring and summer when the reruns come, that’s when you’ll pick up.’ Okay, great. I agree to that.

“Four months go by; we don’t make it. Meanwhile, Conan’s show during the summer — we’re not on — was not doing well. The great hope was that we would help him. Well, we didn’t help him any, okay. They come and go, ‘This show isn’t working. We want to let you go.’ ‘Can you let me out of my contract?’ ‘No, you’re still a valuable asset to this company.’ ‘How valuable can I be? You fired me twice. How valuable can I be?’ Okay. So then, the affiliates are not happy. The affiliates are the ones that own the TV stations. They’re the ones that sort of make the decisions; they’re not happy with your performance and Conan is not doing well at 11:30. I said, ‘What’s your idea?’ They said, ‘Well, look, how about you do a half-hour show at 11:30?’ Now, where I come from, when your boss gives you a job and you don’t do it well… I think we did a good job here, but we didn’t’ get the ratings, so you get humbled. I said, ‘Okay, I’m not crazy about doing a half hour, but okay. What do you want to do with Conan?’ ‘We’ll put him on at midnight, or 12:05, keeps The Tonight Show, does all that, he gets the whole hour.’ I said, ‘Okay. You think Conan will go for that?’ ‘Yes, yes. [laughter from the audience] Almost guarantee you.’ I said okay. Shake hands, that’s it. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have an agent, that’s my handshake deal.

“Next thing I see, Conan has a story in the paper saying he doesn’t want to do that. They come back to me and they say, ‘If he decides to walk and doesn’t want to do it, do you want the show back?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I’ll take the show back. If that’s what he wants to do. This way, we keep our people working, fine.’ So that’s pretty much where we are. It looks like we might be back at 11:30; I’m not sure. I don’t know. [applause] I don’t know. But through all of this — through all of this, Conan O’Brien has been a gentleman. He’s a good guy. I have no animosity towards him. This is all business. If you don’t get the ratings, they take you off the air. I think you know this town, you can do almost anything. You get ratings, they keep you. I don’t get ratings; he wants. That was NBC’s solution. It didn’t work, so we might have an answer for you tomorrow. So, we’ll see. That’s basically where it is.”

Originally Posted by LoDownM (Post 2905068)

Leno should just tell NBC he's not going to do a 30 minute show or the Tonight Show.

Originally Posted by FearedSanctity (Post 2906137)

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Originally Posted by Zeeboe (Post 2903389)

I think a lot of people never gave Leno a real chance, but once they saw him when Hugh Grant was on there, they realized Leno was funny.

In regards of Carson/Letterman - It was NBC's show, not Carson's, and NBC was, and still is trying to target the younger audience, and Jay brought in younger viewers at that time. I'm not sure if he is now, but back then, Jay was the guy younger people wanted to watch.

This is just an opinion, but Letterman has always had an old people vibe to his CBS show. I watch his show sometimes, and for years, I seriously feel like I'm back at my grandparent's house.

And with nothing but the highest respect to Johnny Carson, towards the end, his show was a Grandma and Grandpa show, which is why NBC kept hinting for him to retire.

I don't wanna come across as bias, but since I was a kid, I felt Jay's show had that young vibe to it. Maybe because the lighting on his show is darker, and it gives it a nightclub vibe to it, and even the colors are nightclubish colors. Whereas Letterman's lighting is all big and bright, like a bingo hall....

....Plus, Jay has Kevin and his mostly all black band, and black people (no matter how old they are) are rad. :y:

Originally Posted by What Would Kevin Do? (Post 2907481)

That was great, but the 1.5 million dollar sketch was amazing.