Fuck You, Conan

No, I'm not going to write anything lengthy on this because I already have. Many, many times, it seems, but certainly recently.

Here's the official word from late night TV authority Bill Carter over at the Times:

"'The Tonight Show' will begin a new era in February when Jimmy Fallon succeeds Jay Leno as host of the most storied and successful program in late-night television.

NBC plans to announce on Wednesday its plan to install Mr. Fallon as the show’s sixth host at the conclusion of the network’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics from Sochi, Russia. NBC also is to confirm reports that it plans to shake up the axes of the television industry by moving the show from its longtime home in Los Angeles to its birthplace, New York.

The announcement comes after weeks of news media reports that the changes were imminent and speculation about behind-the-scenes friction between NBC and Mr. Leno. Tensions between the two stretch back to Mr. Leno’s first departure from “Tonight” in 2009 and the tumultuous transition to Conan O’Brien that followed. That move ended with Mr. O’Brien leaving the network after eight months on the show and Mr. Leno resuming his role as host.

But Mr. Leno said in an interview: 'The main difference between this and the other time is I’m part of the process. The last time the decision was made without me. I came into work one day and — you’re out.' This time around 'there really aren’t any complications like there were the last time,' he added. 'This time it feels right.'"

There's no reason to hammer Leno any more than he's already been hammered, but suffice it to say that there's one problem with his assessment of the situation: It doesn't allow for that inevitable pang that he's going to feel as the time of the transition gets closer. Leno lives for the job. He always has. I guarantee you he can't imagine a life in which he wasn't waking up and going to work at Tonight every morning before the rest of the staff has even arrived. It's just who he is.

Granted, he could certainly tour to satisfy that inexhaustible work jones, but there's always the possibility that he could, at the last minute, begin talking to another network about a show in competition with NBC. No one's saying anyone would go after Jay hardcore at this point in his career, but it's not out of the question. I'm betting that, despite their regular demonstrations of mind-boggling incompetence, NBC's upper managers have already made Leno sign a non-compete, just to cover their asses.

Anyway, there's always the possibility that this is a "here we go again," but I think everyone's just sick as hell of that by now, including Leno himself. As for Fallon, he's the ultimate NBC lapdog, so I can't see him doing anything at all to screw this up -- including getting himself involved in any kind of resulting drama.

The Tonight Shove-Off

Today's Daily Banter column is all about the news that The Tonight Show is once again about to undergo some major changes.

Here's the opening shot:

"It looks like Jimmy Fallon will be the next challenger to step up and try to knock Jay Leno off his throne on The Tonight Show. If you believe Bill Carter over at The New York Times, and there’s no reason not to given Carter’s unparalleled expertise on the subject, NBC is planning to once again attempt to rid itself of the Fidel Castro of late-night TV, this time in 2014. Supposedly, the deal’s already been scribbled out in pencil and a very quiet transition is now underway behind the scenes at both 30 Rock and Burbank that would send Leno on his way once and for all and not only christen Fallon as the new host of Tonight but move the entire show back to New York City, where it was uprooted from in 1972 at the request of a more West Coast-friendly Johnny Carson.

The New York relocation is hugely important because it’s something NBC isn’t doing just to change things up."

Read the Rest Here

Like a Boss

Yes, I know -- Jeff Zucker was just named president of CNN worldwide.

The thing is, there's no sense in my banging out anything new on this subject because I actually wrote about it a few months ago, when Zucker's name first came up as a possible replacement for the departing Jim Walton. It was then that I made all the points you'd probably expect, the ones that if you have even a cursory understanding of network television and news in particular you're probably making yourself right about now.

So with that in mind, I think the only thing left to do before reposting that column from this past June is to introduce you to the one person who not only thinks that Zucker's latest "fail upward" will be good for CNN, he thinks it's a stroke of pure Five Diamond brilliance that will align the stars and bring the favor of the gods down upon Atlanta. Because Zucker is, you know, a genius.

In his regular column today, long-time Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik calls the hiring of Zucker a "wise and winning" move right off the bat -- and then gets more and more detached from the reality you and I exist in as he goes along.

A few choice excerpts:

"Of all the major executive, talent and programming moves that CNN has made in the last few years, the expected announcement of Jeff Zucker as the president of CNN Worldwide looks like one of the best."

"Zucker's record, from his long and winning stint at NBC's Today, to the sound and classy syndicated production he built for Katie Couric, shows that he knows how to make money without shredding standards."

"Zucker is also steady, credible and tough. CNN needs all that right now in a president. You can bet Zucker, who is hardly press-shy, won't let the PR departments at other cable channels shape media reporters' perceptions of CNN as they do now without hitting back."

Okay, so was Zurawik a guest of honor at Zucker's kid's bar mitzvah or something? That little assessment of Zucker's abilities and history goes beyond glowing into the realm of hagiographically hallucinatory. I don't need to remind you of what really happened at NBC under Zucker's now infamous stewardship because I've done so many, many times and besides you can read about it anywhere.

A few choice details just for the hell of it: Zucker took NBC from #1 to a dismal #4 and made it a global punchline. He gave us Ben Silverman and Donald Trump. He lost NBC a billion dollars in ad revenue in one year. He was personally behind one of the most embarrassing prime-time clusterfucks in broadcast television history, that being the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien debacle. He was unceremoniously fired in the wake of the multi-million-dollar merger he almost singlehandedly scuttled. Four words: To Catch a Predator.

The one thing Zucker's good at, as Zurawik alluded to, is creating his own mythology through a relentless personal PR campaign to other outlets -- and it's served him very well. I'd love to believe that Zucker will do right by CNN and finally bring the network back to life. Unfortunately, there's just one problem: his proven record so far.

Adding: This ringing endorsement...



I rest my case.

"Welcome Back Zucker" (Originally Published, 6.12.12)

Here’s a little something just about everyone in the television business knows: Once you become a high-powered executive, it’s almost impossible to fuck yourself and your reputation so badly that you’ll never work again.

Let’s say you’re some poor mid-level schmuck, doing whatever it is you do right now for a living, and you almost single-handedly make, let’s say, some gargantuan mistake that turns your company into a worldwide laughingstock and threatens to crater an upcoming multi-million dollar merger that’s going to make it the most powerful organization of its kind in the world — there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be radioactive for about the next hundred or so years. Not in television, though — and not if you’re an executive.

Case in point: Jeff Zucker, the former boy wonder of NBC Universal whose breathtaking arrogance and bottomless reservoir of short-sighted quick fixes and dumb-ass gimmickry turned the once-mighty NBC into a perennial last-place loser and whose name became synonymous with epic failure. It was Zucker who was personally responsible for the now legendary clusterfuck that turned NBC’s prime time inside out, led to an affiliate rebellion and eventually culminated in the ugly public departure of Conan O’Brien, all in the name of keeping Jay Leno fat, happy and, most importantly, safely in place at the network. Zucker ultimately left NBC in disgrace, but the important thing to remember is that disgrace is a stench that washes off damn quickly in the amoral world of the television suit.

Zucker’s got name recognition. And he’s got a reputation for putting clever ways of bringing in revenue above actually putting decent programming on the air — and that’s really all anybody cares about anymore in TV. Which is why his name is apparently now being bandied about as a possible candidate for not one but two stratospheric television news positions. Turner President Phil Kent is reportedly considering Zucker as a replacement for CNN Worldwide CEO Jim Walton, whose contract is up in December; Walton’s renewal is on very shaky ground in the wake of an almost staggering drought of ratings, with CNN pulling in record low numbers for months now. Meanwhile, Tribune Co. might also be considering Zucker to help lead the company out of its own wasteland, one brought on by a 2008 Chapter 11 filing that it’s now trying to emerge from.

Actually, the Tribune job would at least make a minor amount of sense given that Zucker’s forte is conjuring short-lived financial success out of thin air through the implementation of all kinds of silly schemes, cheap on-air trickery and relentless cross-pollination. But when it comes to CNN, here’s the thing: The network is already making money. In fact — it’s still turning an impressive profit even as its ratings tank. CNN could easily not worry one bit about how many people are watching it because it’s feeding off plenty of healthy revenue streams besides the traditional ones cultivated by good ratings. Obviously, though, CNN has a reputation to uphold and being the number three cable news network doesn’t exactly jibe with how it’s been perceived in the past and how it would like to be perceived now and going forward — but bringing somebody like Zucker on board to try to bring in those ratings seems more than a little misguided.

Either way, it looks like we haven’t seen the last of Jeff Zucker. You could’ve predicted from the beginning that there would always be somebody willing to put his special brand of spoiled milk back in the refrigerator in the hope that it’d taste better later. That’s just how things work in corporate television.

End of an Error 2: The Zucker Years

Same drill as with Klein, only this time I'm reposting only one piece -- one which I think sums up my position on Zucker and what he did to NBC.

"My City of Ruins" (Originally Published, 1.12.10)

Maybe it's time I made something clear.

Back when I was a cocky 23-year-old producer at WSVN in Miami, I was heavily courted by a guy named Don Browne who at the time was the general manager of NBC's owned and operated station in Miami, WTVJ. He badly wanted me to jump ship and become his 11pm producer and he was willing to blow big, billowing clouds of smoke up my ass to make it happen; among the compliments he lavished on me during one particular power lunch between the two of us was a claim that he saw in me the next Jeff Zucker. Now in 1993, Zucker was considered NBC's new boy wonder -- named executive producer of the Today Show at just 26-years-old. So even though I had basically stumbled into TV and had yet to take the entire industry the least bit seriously, I understood that a big-gun at NBC -- and Browne was a Jedi Master in the ways of the Peacock, having been the executive VP of news for NBC at one point -- mentioning me in the same breath as Zucker wasn't the kind of flattery you simply shrugged off. And I didn't -- even though I made the choice to stay at WSVN briefly before heading to Los Angeles to work for KCBS.

I say that I didn't shrug it off because I always kept Browne's praise in the back of my mind and in late 1997 when it became clear that I had allowed myself to become little more than comfortable in my discomfort at KCBS, I put out feelers to Don Browne -- who had expressed a genuine desire to keep in touch with me and promised to always take my call if I felt like I wanted to talk about my career, the business, whatever -- and sure enough, he welcomed the idea of making room for me at WTVJ. As it turned out, the station was going through a regime change, with another NBC wunderkind, 28-year-old Ramon Escobar, having just taken the reins as news director. Browne flew me to Miami, had me meet with everyone and made me an offer I honestly couldn't refuse -- which kind of befit his status as an intimidating Godfather within the NBC power structure.

I'll always be glad I made the decision to go to WTVJ, as it remains one of the best work experiences of my career -- the people there more like family than coworkers. The thing to keep in mind, though, is that one of Don Browne's major selling points during his attempt to draft me was that I wouldn't be working for just anyone -- I'd be working for NBC. To hammer that reality home, he even flew me to New York City to visit 30 Rock; sit in on the Today Show; make it crystal clear that I was going to be a part of something extraordinary. The entire experience was exhilarating -- and it marked the first time that I truly appreciated the career that I had stepped in by accident, the abilities that I had largely taken for granted up to that point.

Bottom line: I was proud to work at NBC. So proud in fact that I continued to work for the company when I moved back out to L.A. with the wife that I had met at WTVJ. So proud that I couldn't have been more thrilled that my shot at personal and professional rebirth and redemption in the wake of 9/11 came from MSNBC and my former news director, Ramon Escobar.

I can occasionally be a bit of a feisty pain in the ass as an employee -- I believe that most decent newspeople are -- but that doesn't mean that I didn't spend years thinking of NBC as my home. It was, to me at least, a shining beacon of terrific programming and rock solid journalism, and one that I felt honored to be a part of.

I bring this up because it should be obvious by now that I pick on NBC quite a bit in the stuff that I write here and at the Huffington Post. Many regular readers have noticed and even confronted me on the seemingly curious fact that I take aim at NBC Universal far more than I even do Fox News Channel.

So I guess I felt like it was time to explain myself: Call it tough love -- borne mostly out of sadness, frustration and, occasionally, outright anger.


Over the past few years, I've watched NBC go from being the network I believed was consistently devoted to excellence above every other consideration -- committed to the notion that, as Don Browne used to say, "First be best, then be first" -- to one that will sacrifice not just quality but any and all ethical considerations in a relentless pursuit of profit. Don't get me wrong, as a company NBC is in the business of making money and there's nothing at all wrong with that -- it just used to achieve that end by offering audiences the best programming and news coverage on television. It was best, which is why it was first, which is why it made money. But somewhere along the line network executives -- particularly and ironically Jeff Zucker, who was named CEO of NBC TV in 2005 and then CEO of the NBC Universal empire in 2007 -- decided that cash would be the only consideration, that it could be amassed without even earning it by means of great shows and a consistently above-the-board news operation at the highest levels of management, and that the rise of cable and non-traditional media provided the perfect excuse for making this kind of major paradigm shift. The shareholders likely thought Zucker was brilliant for expanding NBC's properties across several platforms then turning each into a giant promotional machine for the others until "NBC product placement" was all any NBC show or network was good for; for hiring a worthless, self-obsessed hack like Ben Silverman to dumb down prime time; for bringing in bags of money while slashing costs, culminating in the cynical for-profit-only ploy that put Jay Leno in prime time five nights a week. Unfortunately, while get-rich-quick schemes tend to work well in the short-term, they can be devastating long-term -- and Zucker's not so myopic that he shouldn't have realized this about the business model he'd adopted. There was no meat in the tasty-looking sandwich he was serving day after day, and with the collapse of the Leno show, the impending unceremonious exit of Conan O'Brien and the P.R. cataclysm both have caused for the network, almost everyone, maybe even the mighty shareholders looking down from Olympus, can now see that.

What's happened at NBC -- already a perennially anemic network -- over the past week has been, quite simply, one of the most shameful fiascoes in the history of modern broadcast television. We're talking one for the ages. Pushing out Leno to keep Conan O'Brien was questionable enough a move; giving Leno a prime time slot despite the threat of rebellion from the affiliates whose revenue stream you'd be damming up, just because it'd be a corporate cash cow, was worse; pulling the plug to save a giant deal with Comcast Cable was worse still. Now this: taking back the show that was given to Conan to keep him from jumping ship all to keep Leno from jumping ship -- forcing Conan to gracefully and humbly bow out because he refuses to tarnish the good name of a legendary NBC brand, one that NBC itself apparently has no compunction about making radioactive. It's breathtaking, sociopathic incompetence. It doesn't even make good business sense because, once again, the short-term fears of the twitchiest suits might be salved -- Leno's deadly show at 10pm is six feet under and Conan's underperforming stint on The Tonight Show is cut short -- but the chilling effect that this will have not only on audiences but on any young talent from which you might hope to cultivate loyalty is utterly decimated. Why should anyone trust anything an NBC executive says from here on out?

This is the problem NBC Entertainment Chief Jeff Gaspin is facing right now as he tries to clean up the mess and duck the fire caused by the spectacular implosion of NBC's 10pm and late night lineup (to say nothing of what was left of the network's tattered reputation) and the exit of one of its marquee talents -- the disaster that "boy wonder" Jeff Zucker essentially created. And where is Zucker while all this is going on -- while Gaspin's head is in the crosshairs? Who knows. He hasn't made a public appearance or granted an interview since the crap started rolling downhill last week; I'd like to think that he's in a bunker somewhere honorably falling on his sword, but given that his contract was just bafflingly renewed for another three years, that seems an unlikely scenario. Make no mistake, though -- that's exactly what needs to happen.

I'm willing to concede that Jeff Zucker's meteoric rise was made possible only by his seemingly bottomless reservoir of creative short-term fixes for whatever problems he was confronting at any particular moment, and that the shareholders had demanded that he cut costs and increase profits. But a willingness to take potentially profitable gambles, while admirable, comes with an inherent risk: Somebody needs to pay when a poorly thought-out experiment -- a shockingly obvious "quick fix" -- fails to the tune of millions of dollars, the loss of a bankable star, and a public relations nightmare that has the potential to threaten a proposed mega-merger. And there's no doubt that the person who should pay for this instantly legendary clusterfuck is the man at the top who instigated the whole thing: Jeff Zucker.

That likely won't happen, of course. In fact, if you believe what David Carr of the New York Times posted on Twitter yesterday, behind the scenes Zucker is walking around blaming Conan for letting him down by delivering a low-rated show. If this is true, it's astonishing while, strangely, not the least bit surprising -- and it makes Zucker the personification of all that's wrong with corporate America these days. No one takes responsibility; everyone passes the buck; it's always the fault of the victim; and when everything falls apart and the whole thing goes to shit while you're in charge, you get to keep your high-paying job and arrogantly pretend like nothing ever happened.

Here's how it should work: You roll the dice and lose -- you pay up and leave. It feels like anything but a coincidence, though, that neither the guy who created this disaster -- Zucker -- nor the guy who will immediately benefit from it on the air -- Leno -- has the good sense to put humility above ego and step aside. Neither, apparently, will accept the consequences of his actions or an unlucky turn of the cards.

For Leno it's really no surprise: He's a good guy but he's been coasting on ironically aimless ambition, unable to tell you why he wants what he wants only that he wants it, for years. But Zucker shouldn't be able to delude himself; the wreckage piled around him is simply too deep to ignore. NBC is now in ruins, and it happened under his watch and because of his actions.

I never did turn out to be Jeff Zucker, obviously. I was never as focused, didn't have the Harvard education and generally didn't care as much about the business of television as he did. True, I unfortunately didn't get to be a CEO and make ten million a year. But I also won't go down in history as the man who destroyed NBC.

All I'll do is be heartbroken that it happened.

The Downward Spiral

I rarely repost a piece within just a few months of its initial release on this site or at the Huffington Post, but this morning I want to republish the wrap I did on the whole Conan/NBC/Leno debacle from January for one important reason: The story is back in the headlines in a huge way, and once again the main players in this drama are taking sides and accusing each other of all sorts of malfeasance. Take for instance NBC, which is now claiming that Conan O'Brien lied during his 60 Minutes interview last Sunday night when he said that it would've cost the network more to buy out Leno than it would have to simply move him back to his old time slot and give the "new guy" the boot. It's amusing at face value that NBC management thinks anyone should trust anything it has to say at this point, given recent history, but there's no underestimating the effect that all that rarefied air at the top of the New York City skyline tends to have on what were once ostensibly just average guys in suits. That said, two things should never be forgotten: A) the original decision to move Leno to 10pm was never about producing quality or even ratings but was instead all about making money on an unbelievably dirt cheap show, and B) Unlike Conan, Leno was allowed to fail during his original run on The Tonight Show for years before he finally found his footing and turned into the unfunny and apparently indestructable juggernaut he is today. This piece, by the way, as it appeared at HuffPo, is generally the first thing that pops up if you Google my name -- which means, I guess, that somebody's been reading it.

"My City of Ruins" (Originally Published, 1.12.10)

Maybe it's time I made something clear.

Back when I was a cocky 23-year-old producer at WSVN in Miami, I was heavily courted by a guy named Don Browne who at the time was the general manager of NBC's owned and operated station in Miami, WTVJ. He badly wanted me to jump ship and become his 11pm producer and he was willing to blow big, billowing clouds of smoke up my ass to make it happen; among the compliments he lavished on me during one particular power lunch between the two of us was a claim that he saw in me the next Jeff Zucker. Now in 1993, Zucker was considered NBC's new boy wonder -- named executive producer of the Today Show at just 26-years-old. So even though I had basically stumbled into TV and had yet to take the entire industry the least bit seriously, I understood that a big-gun at NBC -- and Browne was a Jedi Master in the ways of the Peacock, having been the executive VP of news for NBC at one point -- mentioning me in the same breath as Zucker wasn't the kind of flattery you simply shrugged off. And I didn't -- even though I made the choice to stay at WSVN briefly before heading to Los Angeles to work for KCBS.

I say that I didn't shrug it off because I always kept Browne's praise in the back of my mind and in late 1997 when it became clear that I had allowed myself to become little more than comfortable in my discomfort at KCBS, I put out feelers to Don Browne -- who had expressed a genuine desire to keep in touch with me and promised to always take my call if I felt like I wanted to talk about my career, the business, whatever -- and sure enough, he welcomed the idea of making room for me at WTVJ. As it turned out, the station was going through a regime change, with another NBC wunderkind, 28-year-old Ramon Escobar, having just taken the reins as news director. Browne flew me to Miami, had me meet with everyone and made me an offer I honestly couldn't refuse -- which kind of befit his status as an intimidating Godfather within the NBC power structure.

I'll always be glad I made the decision to go to WTVJ, as it remains one of the best work experiences of my career -- the people there more like family than coworkers. The thing to keep in mind, though, is that one of Don Browne's major selling points during his attempt to draft me was that I wouldn't be working for just anyone -- I'd be working for NBC. To hammer that reality home, he even flew me to New York City to visit 30 Rock; sit in on the Today Show; make it crystal clear that I was going to be a part of something extraordinary. The entire experience was exhilarating -- and it marked the first time that I truly appreciated the career that I had stepped in by accident, the abilities that I had largely taken for granted up to that point.

Bottom line: I was proud to work at NBC. So proud in fact that I continued to work for the company when I moved back out to L.A. with the wife that I had met at WTVJ. So proud that I couldn't have been more thrilled that my shot at personal and professional rebirth and redemption in the wake of 9/11 came from MSNBC and my former news director, Ramon Escobar.

I can occasionally be a bit of a feisty pain in the ass as an employee -- I believe that most decent newspeople are -- but that doesn't mean that I didn't spend years thinking of NBC as my home. It was, to me at least, a shining beacon of terrific programming and rock solid journalism, and one that I felt honored to be a part of.

I bring this up because it should be obvious by now that I pick on NBC quite a bit in the stuff that I write here and at the Huffington Post. Many regular readers have noticed and even confronted me on the seemingly curious fact that I take aim at NBC Universal far more than I even do Fox News Channel.

So I guess I felt like it was time to explain myself: Call it tough love -- borne mostly out of sadness, frustration and, occasionally, outright anger.


Over the past few years, I've watched NBC go from being the network I believed was consistently devoted to excellence above every other consideration -- committed to the notion that, as Don Browne used to say, "First be best, then be first" -- to one that will sacrifice not just quality but any and all ethical considerations in a relentless pursuit of profit. Don't get me wrong, as a company NBC is in the business of making money and there's nothing at all wrong with that -- it just used to achieve that end by offering audiences the best programming and news coverage on television. It was best, which is why it was first, which is why it made money. But somewhere along the line network executives -- particularly and ironically Jeff Zucker, who was named CEO of NBC TV in 2005 and then CEO of the NBC Universal empire in 2007 -- decided that cash would be the only consideration, that it could be amassed without even earning it by means of great shows and a consistently above-the-board news operation at the highest levels of management, and that the rise of cable and non-traditional media provided the perfect excuse for making this kind of major paradigm shift. The shareholders likely thought Zucker was brilliant for expanding NBC's properties across several platforms then turning each into a giant promotional machine for the others until "NBC product placement" was all any NBC show or network was good for; for hiring a worthless, self-obsessed hack like Ben Silverman to dumb down prime time; for bringing in bags of money while slashing costs, culminating in the cynical for-profit-only ploy that put Jay Leno in prime time five nights a week. Unfortunately, while get-rich-quick schemes tend to work well in the short-term, they can be devastating long-term -- and Zucker's not so myopic that he shouldn't have realized this about the business model he'd adopted. There was no meat in the tasty-looking sandwich he was serving day after day, and with the collapse of the Leno show, the impending unceremonious exit of Conan O'Brien and the P.R. cataclysm both have caused for the network, almost everyone, maybe even the mighty shareholders looking down from Olympus, can now see that.

What's happened at NBC -- already a perennially anemic network -- over the past week has been, quite simply, one of the most shameful fiascoes in the history of modern broadcast television. We're talking one for the ages. Pushing out Leno to keep Conan O'Brien was questionable enough a move; giving Leno a prime time slot despite the threat of rebellion from the affiliates whose revenue stream you'd be damming up, just because it'd be a corporate cash cow, was worse; pulling the plug to save a giant deal with Comcast Cable was worse still. Now this: taking back the show that was given to Conan to keep him from jumping ship all to keep Leno from jumping ship -- forcing Conan to gracefully and humbly bow out because he refuses to tarnish the good name of a legendary NBC brand, one that NBC itself apparently has no compunction about making radioactive. It's breathtaking, sociopathic incompetence. It doesn't even make good business sense because, once again, the short-term fears of the twitchiest suits might be salved -- Leno's deadly show at 10pm is six feet under and Conan's underperforming stint on The Tonight Show is cut short -- but the chilling effect that this will have not only on audiences but on any young talent from which you might hope to cultivate loyalty is utterly decimated. Why should anyone trust anything an NBC executive says from here on out?

This is the problem NBC Entertainment Chief Jeff Gaspin is facing right now as he tries to clean up the mess and duck the fire caused by the spectacular implosion of NBC's 10pm and late night lineup (to say nothing of what was left of the network's tattered reputation) and the exit of one of its marquee talents -- the disaster that "boy wonder" Jeff Zucker essentially created. And where is Zucker while all this is going on -- while Gaspin's head is in the crosshairs? Who knows. He hasn't made a public appearance or granted an interview since the crap started rolling downhill last week; I'd like to think that he's in a bunker somewhere honorably falling on his sword, but given that his contract was just bafflingly renewed for another three years, that seems an unlikely scenario. Make no mistake, though -- that's exactly what needs to happen.

I'm willing to concede that Jeff Zucker's meteoric rise was made possible only by his seemingly bottomless reservoir of creative short-term fixes for whatever problems he was confronting at any particular moment, and that the shareholders had demanded that he cut costs and increase profits. But a willingness to take potentially profitable gambles, while admirable, comes with an inherent risk: Somebody needs to pay when a poorly thought-out experiment -- a shockingly obvious "quick fix" -- fails to the tune of millions of dollars, the loss of a bankable star, and a public relations nightmare that has the potential to threaten a proposed mega-merger. And there's no doubt that the person who should pay for this instantly legendary clusterfuck is the man at the top who instigated the whole thing: Jeff Zucker.

That likely won't happen, of course. In fact, if you believe what David Carr of the New York Times posted on Twitter yesterday, behind the scenes Zucker is walking around blaming Conan for letting him down by delivering a low-rated show. If this is true, it's astonishing while, strangely, not the least bit surprising -- and it makes Zucker the personification of all that's wrong with corporate America these days. No one takes responsibility; everyone passes the buck; it's always the fault of the victim; and when everything falls apart and the whole thing goes to shit while you're in charge, you get to keep your high-paying job and arrogantly pretend like nothing ever happened.

Here's how it should work: You roll the dice and lose -- you pay up and leave. It feels like anything but a coincidence, though, that neither the guy who created this disaster -- Zucker -- nor the guy who will immediately benefit from it on the air -- Leno -- has the good sense to put humility above ego and step aside. Neither, apparently, will accept the consequences of his actions or an unlucky turn of the cards.

For Leno it's really no surprise: He's a good guy but he's been coasting on ironically aimless ambition, unable to tell you why he wants what he wants only that he wants it, for years. But Zucker shouldn't be able to delude himself; the wreckage piled around him is simply too deep to ignore. NBC is now in ruins, and it happened under his watch and because of his actions.

I never did turn out to be Jeff Zucker, obviously. I was never as focused, didn't have the Harvard education and generally didn't care as much about the business of television as he did. True, I unfortunately didn't get to be a CEO and make ten million a year. But I also won't go down in history as the man who destroyed NBC.

All I'll do is be heartbroken that it happened.

Quote of the Day

"The bottom line is that Leno suffered. At this moment in time, there are way too many people who are not fond of him."

-- Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations, which monitors "Q scores" and has seen Jay Leno's negative rating jump by almost ten points since the Tonight Show debacle began back in January

Related:

DXM: My City of Ruins/1.12.10

DXM: The Late Shift (Again)/1.10.10

Bland Ambition

Clear your schedule, everybody. The guest list has been revealed for next week's triumphant return of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

And who will Jay be welcoming?

Olympic athletes Apolo Ohno, Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn, country star Brad Paisley, the cast of Jersey Shore and -- Sarah Palin.

Truly, the best man won in the battle between Leno and Conan.

Fuck you, NBC. Just fuck you.

End of an Error

Just a reminder that tonight marks the final episode of The Jay Leno Show.

Which means you've only got one night left to completely ignore it.

Bonus Quote of the Day*

"It's kind of funny, you know, celebrities usually go on Oprah with these intense, serious interviews to get support from the public after they had sex with their father or married Bobby Brown or something. Jay Leno went on because they gave him The Tonight Show back. So please, keep him in your prayers."

-- Jimmy Kimmel

The Huffington Post: Leno on Oprah: Is Jay Leno Permanently Damaged by Tonight Show Battle?/1.28.10

Update, 11:38am: This is great. My favorite thing about it, oddly? The flagrant, gleaming American flag pin.



*Because it's Friday and I'm all about hassle-free content.

Quote(s) of the Day

"You know what's good for tarnish, a mixture of vinegar and ammonia. That'll bring it right back."

-- Jay Leno, when asked whether he felt his image had been tarnished by the late night battle that saw the exit of Conan O'Brien from The Tonight Show, and proving that, truly, the funniest man came out on top in this whole thing

"Spectacular failure has been the wind beneath his wings."

-- Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker on NBC Universal CEO and Boy Wonder Jeff Zucker

Taking It On the Chin

I promise I'll leave the whole NBC-Conan-Leno thing alone soon, but a couple of amusing developments this morning:

First, here's something you could've seen coming a light year away: The requisite Jay Leno Image Rehab Tour begins in earnest this Thursday on -- wait for it -- Oprah. How they're gonna fit Jay's chin, Oprah's ass and both of their egos into the studio will be one for the books.

Meanwhile, NBC Uni's profits plunged 30% in the last quarter under the, ahem, "leadership" of Boy Wonder Jeff Zucker. The victory party will be held tomorrow from 11:00am to 11:15am at the Hale & Hearty Soup in the basement of 30 Rock. Get in line early.

Quote of the Day

"There’s a reason why the otherwise antithetical Leno and Conan camps are united in their derision of NBC’s titans. A TV network has become a handy proxy for every mismanaged, greedy, disloyal and unaccountable corporation in our dysfunctional economy."

-- Frank Rich (the New York Times's most potent voice of reason), basically making the same argument I made here and at the Huffington Post last week, in a really good piece in today's Times on the fallout from the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts

Quote of the Day

"Mr. Leno sounds less like a fuzzy fellow worthy of Middle America and more like a dangerous beast from Middle-Earth—not unlike, say, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic tale, Gollum is a once noble animal who (like Leno is his early days as a stand-up comic) was beloved by his peers. But then Gollum takes possession of an incredibly powerful ring, which not only extends his life but also gradually saps him of his humanity. Alone with no family or friends, continued possession of the ring becomes Gollum’s only purpose in life. Gradually, his proto-self 'Smeagol' disappears and is replaced by a nasty, treacherous personality, which leaves him two-faced to the world. In 'Slinker' mode, he comes across as servile, toothless and eager to please. But as 'Stinker,' he lurks quietly in the shadows, hiding in the closet, ready to bite off the finger of anyone who tries to get between him and his 'precious.'"

-- Felix Gillette in the New York Observer

Case in point: While it's true that there's been a near-constant barrage of mortar fire exchanged between Conan, Leno, NBC and the guy who's taking a substantial amount of pleasure in watching all of this -- David Letterman -- Leno's always tried to have it both ways. He's wanted to keep his squeaky clean, nice-guy image while secretly working behind the scenes to put himself back in place on The Tonight Show, what's ostensibly been Conan's gig, and getting off his fair share of below-the-belt shots at those he feels are wronging him. It came to a head last night when Leno, who's already almost universally disliked by his peers and whose public image may in fact be permanently tarnished, made a crack about Letterman's wife.

Meanwhile, Conan and NBC have reached a $45-million dollar deal for Conan to leave The Tonight Show. His final show will be tomorrow, but ramping up to that he's been doing a whole lot of hilariously corrosive bits aimed right at NBC. The latest, last night, involved hitting the network where it's been proven to hurt most -- spending a hell of a lot of NBC's money, supposedly $1.5-million, on just one sketch.

Quote of the Day

"Obviously in hindsight, perfect information leads you to that conclusion, that it was a mistake. And I think it’s the sign of a leader to step up and have the guts to reverse it. The worst thing to do is to let that mistake... linger. We tried to correct something that didn’t work."

-- NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker on Charlie Rose last night, begrudgingly admitting to a mistake while still hedging his ass off (to say nothing of patting himself on the back for his "leadership")

Mediaite today makes the argument that a least one point made by Zucker during last night's interview -- namely that by promising Conan O'Brien The Tonight Show in 2004, he kept a money-making team in place until the last possible minute -- is a fair one. I agree -- if you're thinking only in the short-term, which as I've said before is Zucker's personal bête noire when it comes to his ability to manage. Yes, Zucker kept two winners satisfied for five years so that they could make loads more money for the company, but at what cost? As usual, he put a band-aid on a crack in the dam that was guaranteed to quietly grow in size until things finally reached the breaking point. And that's exactly what happened a week or so ago. The long-term effects of the very public black-eye this entire debacle has caused for NBC can't be downplayed, regardless of the money that was made right up to the point where Zucker's quick-fix collapsed and the devil came calling to collect on the deal he'd made.

Zucker basically bullshitted everybody to keep things running smoothly and hoped everything would somehow work out in the end. But anyone who's ever been in any sort of relationship knows the dangers of putting off an inevitable conflict for the sake of temporarily keeping the peace.

(Update, 11:55am: You know, there's something that I think really needs to be made clear here, and it's something I've touched on before: No one should forget the fact that Zucker's essentially lying his ass off. He's continuing to misrepresent the real reason the Leno "experiment" was launched in the first place. He never could come right out and admit that moving Leno to prime time was a purely profit-driven enterprise and that NBC never planned on the show being a success in the traditional sense -- that is, by pulling in even passable numbers. Zucker knew going into it -- from the very beginning -- that Leno would be judged a failure; he didn't care because he knew the show would make money hand over fist for NBC since it cost the company nothing to produce. The only "mistake" Zucker made was misjudging the strength of the affiliate rebellion and the potential impact it could have on the proposed deal with Comcast. If the locals hadn't risen up with torches and pitchforks, Zucker would've continued secretly claiming victory at 10pm while publicly pretending to be concerned over Leno's low numbers, as if notions like quality programming that people tuned in for still mattered.)

In the Company of Wolves

Right now, if all is going according to plan, dozens of draftees to the "I'm with Coco" movement are converging on NBC offices across the country to stage a series of rallies in support of Conan O'Brien. The Chicago Tribune did a little preview piece on these events in today's edition and it features one quote that really caught my eye -- mostly because I think it hits on something largely overlooked by those who've been endlessly debating the NBC-Leno-Conan miasma.

Obviously, there are plenty of people out there who've asked the very legitimate question, "Why should I care about what happens to any of these multi-millionaires? So Conan's gonna be paid a fortune to walk away from a job -- so what?" There's no reason to argue with this sentiment because it makes complete sense. But the fact that's inescapable is this: A lot of people do care what happens to Conan; he wouldn't be getting paid all that money if they didn't. In our culture, we care about movie and TV stars, musicians, comedians and athletes, which is exactly why they're rich; they're paid in direct proportion to how entertained we are by them -- how well we think they can act or sing or make us laugh or throw a football down a field (and on a side note, I'm willing to bet that quite a few of the people complaining about the injustice of late night talk show hosts making millions are the same ones who cheer their asses off for guys like A-Rod, Peyton and LeBron).

Yes, in the great scheme of things, it really doesn't personally affect anyone that Conan O'Brien's getting screwed by NBC -- but that's where the quote in the Tribune comes in. When asked about the reasoning behind his passionate crusade for Conan, Mike Mitchell, a 27-year-old from Los Angeles who, through social networking, instigated today's protest, said, "A lot of people have really crappy bosses; they can relate."

And you know what? He's absolutely right.

What makes the story of NBC's underhanded treatment of Conan O'Brien resonate with so many isn't simply that they enjoy his brand of humor more than Jay Leno's; it's that in a flatlining economy, where imperious corporate robber barons have swindled the little guy blind and laughed all the way to the Hamptons while doing it, when millions are out of work and many of those lucky enough to still have jobs are struggling three times as hard thanks to staff cutbacks, when almost everyone really can relate to the feeling of being crushed under the wheels of the cold-blooded corporate culture and the bosses who espouse it -- this is when the executives at mega-media giant NBC decided to ruthlessly end the career of a guy who's been loyal, humble and classy even as he's been at the mercy of the most Machiavellian of machinations. On top of that, they had the balls to actually bad mouth him in public. And they did all of this knowing full well that they could. That there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. Sure, a lot of Americans like Conan O'Brien. But even more are just plain tired of heartless company liners getting away with this kind of crap. The average person really can't identify with Conan O'Brien per se; but they sure do know what it's like to have management stab you in the back while a conniving co-worker who wants your job twists the knife.

And that's what it all comes down to, and it's really an incredible thing when you think about it. NBC has managed to do the seemingly impossible: make a multi-millionaire look like a victim, a little guy everyone can relate to and get behind. What's more, NBC executives of all people should've seen this coming. After all, that's why they were paying Conan so much in the first place -- because people liked him.

New View Review

If you've read Night of the Gun you know that, by all accounts, David Carr of the New York Times shouldn't even be alive much less be able to formulate a coherent thought -- but damn if he isn't one of the sharpest weapons in the Times's arsenal these days.

In today's edition, he argues that the "failure" of Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show is more the fault of a new generation of viewing audiences than anything else. His point is basically that unlike the days of Carson, when one person had the power to bring an entire country together and could be a kind of human zeitgeist, our popular culture is now endlessly fragmented because the media is now endlessly fragmented. You don't have to watch an entire episode of Conan or Jay or whomever at whatever specific time it happens to air, and even if you do, by the time a late night talk show host gets to put his or her spin on the day's news events, they've been spun to death across the internet by a million separate outlets. The country doesn't gather around the TV anymore the way it used to; it doesn't need to.

What Carr doesn't get into, though, is why Conan is hamstrung by this brave new world while Leno seems less affected. It all comes down to the average age of their respective audiences. All you have to do is look at Leno's brand of humor to know that he skews much older; his audience is 55+, people much more likely to still take in TV the old-fashioned way rather than go looking for a requisite dose of snark or the pertinent clips from their favorite shows on the internet every hour on the hour. Conan's audience, meanwhile, is made up of younger people, many of whose brains' addiction centers would scream bloody murder if they found themselves detached from their iPhones, Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts or DVRs for longer than a couple of minutes. The irony, though, is that it's these younger viewers that are most prized by advertisers, so although Leno had a larger audience during his Tonight Show gig than Conan has been pulling since he took over, Conan's crowd could easily generate more money in the long run for the people paying NBC's bills.

Too bad there won't be a long run.

Either way, Carr's piece takes a smart look at what's quickly become a very ugly situation -- and one that says more about our media culture as a whole than you might think.

The New York Times: "It's Not Jay or Conan. It's Us" by David Carr/1.18.10

Quote(s) of the Day

"It's not rain, it's just God crying for NBC."

-- Tina Fey at last night's Golden Globes

"Let's get on with it before NBC replaces me with Jay Leno."

-- Ricky Gervais at last night's Golden Globes

"This week you didn't need Cinemax to see someone get screwed on TV. So how did NBC let it come to this? Well, I think I can explain it. Let's say you're married and it's the number one marriage in the country, but then you meet someone else who sweeps you off your feet, so you say to her, "I want to marry you, in five years," and she says, "Yes, I will wait five years to marry you." So then you go home and you tell your current wife, "Honey, in five years we're getting a divorce." Now you might think your current wife would be super cool with that and thank you for being honest, but it turns out she's actually super mad and as the five years pass she gets in really good shape. So when the time comes for the divorce, she's looking better than ever. She looks so good that you see other people looking at her and you get jealous, so you come up with an awesome plan: you'll still marry the second person, but you'll also stay married to the first. So you tell the new wife, "Good news! We're totally married, but every night when I get home I'm gonna spend a half hour with my first wife first -- but then I'm all yours." And before you even see how she feels about it, you hold a big press conference and tell people you've changed the future of marriage. Now if you think the new wife is cool with this plan, she's not. She's super mad. And the first wife is also acting weird because, you know, you have two wives. But then, just when you think you're stuck, you come up with a perfect plan to solve all your problems: You kill your second wife."

-- Seth Meyers on Saturday Night Live

Screw what NBC is saying publicly right now. There's no way the company's people at the top (or the bigshots at Comcast for that matter) are enjoying the constant barrage of abuse they're taking on their own network. For God's sake, last night the Governor of California took a shot at NBC live on NBC's air. I was honestly expecting that by the end of the Golden Globes show they'd lower little Jeff Zucker down into the middle of the ballroom like a pinata and give everybody baseball bats.

Quote of the Jay

"I said, ya know, there's really only one person who could've done this into his 60s and that was Johnny Carson, and I think it's fair to say I'm no Johnny Carson. So I called up my buddy Jerry Seinfeld and I said what do you think, and Jerry quit his show when it was the most popular and I'm proud to say this show has been number one, we will keep it number one, and then in '09 I'll say, 'Conan, take it over, it's yours." Cause, ya know, you can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher or you can get out when you're still doing good... This is not tomorrow. It's five years from today and I want to say that I don't think there's a better choice, because, ya know, when I took this show over, boy, there was a lot of animosity between me and Dave and 'who's gonna get it?' and, quite frankly, a lot of good friendships were permanently damaged. And I don't want to see anybody ever have to go through that again, 'cause this show is like a dynasty: You hold it and then you hand it off to the next person, and I don't want to see all the fighting and 'who's better?' and nasty things back and forth in the press. So right now, here it is. Conan, it's yours. See ya in five years, buddy."

-- Jay Leno in 2004, announcing that he would be stepping down as the host of The Tonight Show in 2009 and handing the reins to Conan O'Brien

Faulty Powers

"We live in a society today that loves a soap opera. Three months ago it was David Letterman, six weeks ago it was Tiger Woods’ problems. Today it’s NBC’s problems."

-- Jeff Zucker in an interview with the New York Times yesterday

The story that features this quote is in today's Times; it essentially chronicles NBC's downward spiral, making a lot of the same points that I've made here and at the Huffington Post over the past week. What's astounding, though, despite the fact that it shouldn't be at this point, is the level of thickheaded hubris on display in the article from both Jeff Zucker and NBC News's painfully smug president, Steve Capus. Both are so thoroughly detached from reality and unwilling to accept responsibility for the mess NBC is currently in that the only argument they can make is that the entire thing is much ado about nothing. Zucker blames the public for stopping to gawk at the trainwreck while refusing to acknowledge that there is a trainwreck and that he caused it; as a reader noted here recently, it would be like shooting someone then blaming that person for getting blood on your carpet and the police for having the temerity to make a big stink and arrest you.

Capus's decision to get involved and comment, meanwhile, makes me honestly wonder if he's in immediate need of a little "rest and relaxation," preferably in a place where he can be watched by doctors 24/7. First of all making the transparently opportunistic claim that there are more important things right now for the American public to be paying attention to -- specifically the situation in Haiti -- is a laughable conceit, especially considering the fact that he's saying it to a reporter from the New York Times who's there to cover the NBC story; it takes balls of titanium for an ostensible journalist to imply that news coverage is a zero-sum game and to basically tell another journalist that he's wasting his time and should be off doing something more "important." What makes Capus's horseshit argument even more egregious is that it's coming from Steve Capus, the man who played ethical Twister on national television a couple of years back in an attempt to defend the indefensible -- namely his decision to air excerpts of Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho's videotaped manifesto, giving Cho the posthumous forum he counted on and rubbing salt in the wounds of the victims' families. Allowing Capus to make a ruling on what is and isn't news is like taking dating advice from Ralph Nader.

And think about this: Steve Capus, a guy who most days is in the business of distracting you with all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, has the chutzpah to suddenly and pompously complain that you're being distracted.

Zucker and Capus can delude themselves all they want; they can dismiss the terrible numbers and the loss of millions in revenue, the resentment from the NBC rank and file and the very public drumbeat calling for change at highest levels of management; they can ignore the laughter of those who are reveling in a kind of mass Schadenfreude, the jokes of insiders and outsiders like Jon Stewart, who called Zucker "the Cheney of television" because he "(shoots) shows in the face"; they can fiddle their asses off while Rome burns (and if ever there was a "Rome" of television networks, it was NBC). They can pretend that nothing's wrong and that if there is, it's no one at the top's fault anyway.

Or they can just read the article in the New York Times -- you know, that paper that apparently is just rubbernecking at a soap opera -- and see what network vet Fred Silverman and even Bob Wright, who just a few years ago was doing Zucker's job only infinitely better, have to say about the state of NBC right now.

Guys like Zucker and Capus aren't just asleep at the wheel -- they slept right through the car crash.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It's official:

The Daily Beast: Conan's Exit Confirmed/1.15.10

Conan O'Brien is now the George Lazenby of Tonight Show hosts.

What's worse -- there are very big rumors currently circulating that NBC will pull Conan off the show as early as tonight (classless and undignified yet all-too-standard operating procedure).

Maybe the last word as far as NBC and Jay Leno are concerned should come from Leno's competition -- and right to Leno's face. Behold one of the most brilliantly uncomfortable public take-downs to come along in many, many moons.

The Huffington Post: Jimmy Kimmel Destroys Jay Leno on His Own Show/1.15.10