Thursday, January 14, 2010

I for one would like to see Steve Allen return as the Tonight Show host

"This program is going to go on forever."

You know, I was feeling bad for Conan O'Brien right up until the minute he went and wrote that letter which, honestly, took forever to get to the point (will he stay or go?) and put forth a series of fairly weak arguments -- he's been a faithful employee who "worked long and hard" (hasn't Jay Leno been at NBC just as long?), his show had only been given 7 months to work (didn't he have, by virtue of that famous 2004 contract, 5 years to prepare for the job?), and he had a weak prime-time lead-in (were there never bad prime-time ratings during the Carson years?).

Anyway, yeah: I'm out of the habit of watching any post-nightly news talk show. I feel like with SportsCenter, The Daily Show, TMZ, or whatever, everyone's been out of that habit for a long time and there must be some other reason people care about this conflict. I don't know exactly what it is though.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke: "NBC Universal, faced with Conan O'Brien's defiance, is taking what insiders tell me is 'a super tough threatening position.'" Super tough? Do these insiders happen to be 15-year old girls? And this isn't at all overwrought: "It's dastardly, it's cowardly, and it could be damn effective."

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