The current iteration of the Late Night wars has been thrashed to death, but being a long-time connoisseur of Late Night television, let me add my two cents here.
I remember when Jay Leno used to appear on Letterman way, way back in the day, usually once a month, and the guy was knock-down hilarious. Seriously, look up some of those clips. Jay was genuinely funny.
Then he got the Tonight Show and became amazingly unfunny. Too “middle America,” bland, uninteresting and worst of all, all his signature bits? “Headlines”? Ripped off from Letterman. You talk to other comics, and they are all flabbergasted about how Jay could go from this sharp, cutting-edge comic to the hack you see on TV overnight.
Now, I only know Jay and Dave from watching them on TV, and I’ve always been a Letterman fan – he’s the man to blame/thank for much of what I call my sense of humor, but the amount of vitriol and, to be honest, clearly genuine hatred Dave has for Jay, a man who was once a very good friend of his – something had to happen besides just losing out on the Tonight Show.
To be honest, Jay got the Tonight Show originally because he was willing to schmooze and go the extra mile for local affiliates, something Dave wasn’t. He just got outworked there. It’s certainly possible that Dave is still nursing a lot of anger and bitterness over that, and that’s the source of the vitriol. Or…maybe Jay isn’t this nice-guy everyman he likes to say he is. The man’s been in Hollywood long enough to know how the game works, and he may have the long knives at the ready.
Case in point: If I had been in Jay’s position, and the network said, “we’re cancelling you and moving you back to late night,” and given that I already had bajillions in the bank, I would have told NBC to take the proverbial long walk off the short pier and just quit. Screw you, NBC.
And yet, Leno always made it known, in a passive-aggressive way, that, “sure, if NBC wanted me back on the Tonight Show, I’d do it.”
There’s something going on behind the scenes, methinks, that meant Conan was doomed from the start.
In actuality, this means very little. Odds are, Leno will get a little bump when he returns to the Tonight Show but remain #2 behind a resurgent Letterman, NBC will continue to look like bumpkins, and once Conan starts in Fox in a few months, he’ll sink to third place.
Me, however, I’m more of a Daily Show/Colbert Report watcher, so I really won’t care.
I will miss the Masturbating Bear, though.
