Game Over

Well, say one thing for it -- Comcast may be creating a monster, but at least it's getting rid of quite a few monsters in the process.

First it was Zucker, now Ebersol and his leviathan ego.

Somewhere out there I get the impression Conan O'Brien is having his son baptized.

New York Magazine: Dick Ebersol Is a Casualty of Kabletown/5.19.11

Read It and Weep

You know, I was completely prepared to back off Heather Havrilesky for a little while because, I gotta admit, her piece in Salon yesterday on the whole Conan O'Brien thing was pretty good. In it, she praised Conan for standing his ground and not taking the sage advice of that comedic genius, Dick Ebersol, who basically told him that he should dumb down his act on The Tonight Show, one would assume to be more like the pied piper of the lowest-common-denominator, Jay Leno. (This from a guy whose dumbing-down of Saturday Night Live almost killed it in the early 80s; interestingly, he wasn't immediately judged an "astounding failure" by some arrogant asshole near the top of the NBC food chain and was given the freedom to make mistakes.)

Here's the quote that I honestly thought might be a come-to-Jesus moment as far as my opinion of Heather is concerned:

"And now, a word to the budding (and established) comedians, writers, editors, publishers, entertainers, actors, musicians, poets, dancers, teachers, professors, philosophers, ministers, scientists, mathematicians, businesspeople of this country who struggle every day to nurture their own odd ways of doing things, their own unconventional or unusual designs or artistic notions, their own original, risky approaches, to those who look at what America currently believes, enjoys, expects, embraces, and say, 'I have a different idea of what this could look like'? Keep sticking to your guns. The day you listen to the know-it-all in the gray suit is the day your soul dies. The most brilliant and original novels and works of art and theorems and discoveries of recent history were all greeted as idealistic, impractical, bizarre, delusional or utterly wrong at one point or another. This is how good things come into being: Someone listens politely to the opinionated blowhard, shakes his hand, and forgets all of that priceless advice within seconds."

Hell yeah, Heather. Way to go.

But then this morning, fully prepared to nurture this budding seed of respect that my nemesis had planted in my mind not a full day earlier, I read the first paragraph or so of her review of the new season of 24. And, to paraphrase Radiohead, everything was once again in its right place.

As you read this, note two things: 1) She goes through the entire column never actually telling you what the hell she thinks of the show, then suddenly at the very end realizes how confused you must be by all the dizzying, Havrileskyan digressive gymnastics and says, "Oh yeah, and about whether that new season of 24 is any good..." and, 2) thanks to Heather, at least Jack Bauer has a new way he can torture people who won't tell him what he wants to know.

Salon: "Jack Bauer Goes Soft" by Heather Havrilesky/1.16.10

Big Dumb Animal

Thanks to Votar for making me realize how much NBC's Dick Ebersol resembles "Harry" from Harry and the Hendersons.


Of course Harry strikes me as being quite a bit smarter than Ebersol and he was the linchpin of at least one production audiences actually seemed to enjoy.

As for what they have in common: The humanity of each remains only the stuff of myth.

Dick

I'm honestly sorry to keep harping on this, but I can't stress enough how badly the NBC name is being defamed and tarnished by the people whose responsibility it is, ostensibly, to keep it safely above reproach.

In an interview with the New York Times, long-time NBC executive Dick Ebersol says that Conan O'Brien's jokes about Jay Leno are "chicken-hearted" and that it's "gutless to blame a guy you couldn't beat in the ratings."

Ebersol goes on to say, "What this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan."

I've said this in the comment section, as have others, but it really has to be repeated on the main page: If Leno hadn't been given the chance to breathe a little and grow into his role as host of The Tonight Show when he took the reins back in 1992, he wouldn't be in the seemingly bulletproof position he's in right now. If you were to judge it by the same yardstick being used to judge Conan -- ratings and only ratings -- then Leno's tenure on the show was an outright failure for three years. He had The Tonight Show for three years before he overtook Letterman in the ratings. During that time, for those who don't remember or weren't paying attention, NBC executives behind the scenes hemmed and hawed and bitched and moaned over whether they'd made the right decision and given the show to the right guy. And then Leno found his footing, made a couple of adjustments to the show, scored at least one big interview -- Hugh Grant -- and turned the tide indefinitely.

Conan was never given that chance because just six months after being handed the show, Zucker panicked and pulled him. That's the sign of a myopic, quick-fix leader -- which Zucker has always been -- and it's why NBC is in the mess it's in right now. All the temporary stopgap measures Zucker's taken throughout the years -- the cosmetic changes he's made and the band-aids he's put on tiny cracks that were always destined to grow larger -- have ultimately led to this nightmare. His peacocks have come home to roost, so to speak.

But of course a megalomaniacal turd like Ebersol would side with his fellow NBC executrash. And of course Ebersol understands successful comedy, being that he all but ran Saturday Night Live into the ground in the early 80s during Lorne Michaels's absence.

Though he is in charge of NBC's Olympics coverage -- and that's the funniest stuff on television.