Dissecting the O-Jay interview, lie by lie
I’ll admit that I didn’t know what to expect when I sat down Thursday to watch Jay Leno in a gauzy-lensed hour with Oprah Winfrey. Was this going to be mea culpa or self-defense?
Neither, as it turns out. The O-Jay Hour was nothing more than a PR stunt to promote the return of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Leno revealed nothing while continually spouting the NBC line, which as far as I can tell is the following: Everything is the network’s fault, except the parts that are Conan’s fault.
I’ll try to keep the invective and sarcasm to a minimum as I go through the “Oprah” transcript. Frankly, I think the facts can speak for themselves, and they tell a very different story than what I heard yesterday.
Mr. LENO: I was in my office and one of the executives came and said, “Listen, you know, Conan's getting offers from the other networks. We don't want to lose him. We want to give him the show, and we're asking you to leave,” essentially. And that was pretty shocking.
WINFREY: This is 2004?
Mr. LENO: This is 2004, yeah.
WINFREY: Had there been a prior discussion that at some point, you would hand the show over to Conan or that…
Mr. LENO: No.
WINFREY: …you'd have the show for a while?
Mr. LENO: I assumed that...
WINFREY: That the franchise would be handed over?
Mr. LENO: I assumed that as long as you're keeping something number one, you remain number one. And then when you start to slip or indications that you're slipping, that's when you step down.
He begins with the Claude Rains defense — that he was shocked, shocked to discover somebody wanting the “Tonight Show” besides himself. It’s a defense that would be slightly more plausible had Leno not been one of two main players in an identical drama 12 years earlier.
But let’s assume that, at the beginning of 2004, Leno wasn’t thinking of Conan O’Brien or his ambitions, hadn’t added it up yet that the guy who’d played second banana to him for a decade might be itching to move up. If that was actually the case, then after the 3,100-word story appeared on the cover of the Arts & Leisure section in the Sunday New York Times dated April 4, 2004, Leno was left with no excuse. (The man may not have a manager, but he does have a publicist or two.)
Conan was feeling “a little bummed,” wrote Bill Carter, after noting O’Brien’s triumphs as Emmy Awards host and his 10th anniversary special. Conan says, “It's like when you go back to third grade and suddenly you notice the water fountain is like 4 inches off the ground.” Carter: “It's plain that Conan O'Brien, who has always been exceedingly tall but has lately become indisputably big in the world of late-night television, is aching to stretch.” And then the money quote: “A big question is looming,” said O’Brien. “It's the elephant in the room that no one is talking about.” Carter: “He utters the question somewhat reluctantly, knowing that even that could be enough to stir up a lot of unwanted attention. But utter it he does.”
Conan: “What's next?”
I don’t think Bill Carter could have set it up more plainly. If you could read the Times on an iPad back then, maybe the Beverly Hills edition would have a colorful blinking highlight around that paragraph: ATTENTION JAY LENO. SOMEONE IN NEW YORK WANTS YOUR JOB.
Mr. LENO: It broke my heart. It really did. I was devastated. This is the job that I always wanted and it was the only job that ever mattered in show business to me. It's the job every comic aspires to. And it was just like, "What’s--why-- what is it?" "Well, we're getting pressure here and Conan's people want to make this announcement and to make sure you do leave we want to announce it right now, you know, prior to the five years." And I said, "Can we at least wait and as I said the other night on my show, couldn't we wait until I’m number two and then say, ‘Okay, he dropped to number two, that's the reason we're moving you.’”
WINFREY: So in your mind this happened or that move happened, because Conan wanted that spot?
Mr. LENO: Yeah.
WINFREY: And...
Mr. LENO: Well, what happened was Conan's contract was up and ABC I think and some other networks were making overtures.
WINFREY: To Conan.
Mr. LENO: NBC didn't want to lose him.
WINFREY: So they asked you to move out in order to make room for Conan to promise Conan "The Tonight Show" slot.
Mr. LENO: Right. Right.
WINFREY: Even though your show was number one at the time?
Mr. LENO: Mm-hmm.
WINFREY: So that broke your heart?
Mr. LENO: Yeah, it really did. I mean it was--I was devastated. I’m not a person who carries my emotions on the sleeve, but you know something? I’m happy with what I had, it was a tremendous success up to that point, I’m going to do the best I can to keep it number one for the next five years.
WINFREY: Okay. So were you planning at the end of that five-year period, 2009, you were--what were you going to do?
Mr. LENO: Well, I did tell a white lie on the air, I said I’m going to retire. It just made it easier that way. But I assumed I would find a job in show business somewhere. If I kept "The Tonight Show" number one...
WINFREY: Did you think you'd go to another network?
Mr. LENO: I assumed that’s what would happen, yeah.
I thought Oprah did a pretty good job of poking at Jay on some key points and not taking his usual evasiveness for an answer. But one big lacuna in this conversation is the two-year period beginning in 2006, when Leno stops being Chatty Cathy with the news media and radio silence descends over Burbank.
Here was the question as I put it to then-NBC entertainment chief Kevin Reilly on July 21, 2006. From the TCA transcript:
QUESTION: There have been a couple of reports that Jay Leno is reportedly having seller’s remorse about signing this deal that will have him out in 2009, and that he may be talking to other parties. And he stopped talking to us, which is really unusual. Have you had any conversations with Jay about his future after 2009?
KEVIN REILLY: Yes, we have. I mean, it was a ways off, so there was nothing substantial. Jay, as you know, is a workhorse. He works seven nights a week, and he often does — as you well know, he leaves his show and often gets on a plane and goes and does a gig and comes back to do the next show. He is tireless. We never thought for a second Jay was just going to go start gardening. So he has an appetite to continue. We want him to continue with us. We are already talking about certain ideas. And I hope we come to agreement on that. Contractually, nobody can officially talk to him for a couple of years. So nothing official will happen for quite some time.
And nothing did. But it’s useful context to know that Leno was privately stewing for three years about the arrangement he had agreed to. What makes this period of silence more problematic is that it belies all of the happy talk that immediately followed the 2004 announcement. This goes well beyond what Leno called a “little white lie.” Here is what he told his audience that night (click the video to hear it yourself):
“I don't want to see Conan go anywhere else ... There's only one person who could do this into his 60s and that's Johnny Carson. ... There was a lot of animosity between me and Dave (over) who’s going to get it, and quite frankly, a lot of good friendships were permanently damaged. I don’t want to see anybody ever have to go through that again. This show is a dynasty. You hold it, and then you hand it off to the next person. So here it is, Conan!”
Back to our program...
Mr. LENO: Well, the fly in the ointment was, uh-oh, we were number one right up until the day we left. In fact, they had me leave seven months early before my contract was up because this would preclude me from going somewhere. And plus, I have 175 people that work for me. So I thought well, the best way to keep things smooth was NBC came up with this 10:00 idea, and you know, I said...
WINFREY: When did they come up with the 10:00 idea?
Mr. LENO: I guess it was in the fall of 2008. And they had their charts and the graphs. "Well, you see people would love to see you at this time." They had all these things about why it might work at 10:00. And I said, "Well, can I keep my same staff? Can we keep--maybe take a month and a half off or so and then bring everybody back in a smooth transition?" And they said, "Yeah, we can do that." I said, "Okay, let's try it."
He’s already brought up his staff, 175 strong, on two occasions. So let’s deal with that mythology.
First, Jay’s staff and crew don’t work for Jay. They work for NBC. Which has put on a broadcast every weeknight after the affiliates’ late local news for 60 years. Presumably this franchise, called “The Tonight Show,” would still be on the air after Jay left. After all, it is a dynasty, or so I am told.
How many crew and staff do you think made the move with Conan O’Brien from New York to Burbank? About 60. So that means the producers had to scare up about 100 additional people to work on the “Tonight Show with Conan” at Universal Studios. Where do you think they were going to find them? The “Tonight Show with Jay” would be a good start.
Second, they had five years’ warning! Leno acts as though it’s a heartless decision to abandon his staff, when as I’ve already noted, the vast majority of them would slide into jobs at Conan’s show, and the rest of them at least had the forewarning that few people have about their jobs ending.
And third ...
Mr. LENO: Well, going to another network, boy, it's a lot of work. I mean you don't know where you're going, you don't know who you're dealing with. I’ve been at this network since 1984 in one form or another. I know the lighting guys, I know what lighting guys I want, I know the makeup--I just know--I’m comfortable here. I’m not someone who jumps around.
... Leno tells Winfrey he would rather stay at NBC and do a totally risky, unprecedented prime-time program instead of going to another network where he could offer his crew the security of a long-term deal at a late-night program that wasn’t expected to win its time slot.
And staying at NBC helped his staff? Really?
Mr. LENO: Oh, yeah, I most certainly did.
WINFREY: So was it against your better judgment to do the prime time show?
Mr. LENO: Well, I chose to do it, so I take full responsibility.
Note this is the only time Leno takes responsibility for anything. And he does it right after agreeing with Oprah’s assessment that he was “disrepected by the NBC executives.”
So to summarize: Leno feels disrespected by the network in 2004. He knows that ABC will take him on if he leaves NBC. (By the way, I argued here that it wasn’t in ABC’s long-term interests to kill off “Nightline” for Leno, and I think that argument has prevailed. But ABC certainly would have made money off Leno.) And if ABC takes him, the odds of continuing to provide employment for those 175 beloved staffers — or at least those not already offered jobs with Conan — are considerably better than working on an unprecedented prime-time unscripted venture.
And he picks NBC anyway. Why? Because he’s “comfortable here.” He’s not “someone who jumps around.” Way to put your staff first.
Mr. LENO: I did it because it's an interesting challenge.
WINFREY: How did you feel as the date was approaching for you to say your final goodbye on "The Tonight Show?" How difficult was that last night?
Mr. LENO: It was difficult, you know. You know, paradise is the ability to know you're in it before you're cast out of it, and that's the way I look at life.
That line is so uncharacteristic of Jay, I can only assume he picked it up from Mavis. Bear it in mind when he tells Oprah later on that he thinks of himself as “a standup comedian who happens to have a television show.”
WINFREY: Doing "The Tonight Show?"
Mr. LENO: Yeah. The greatest.
WINFREY: So saying goodbye that night was really difficult?
Mr. LENO: Yeah, it was tough. That was tough. And it was fun because I’d say 60% to 70% of my staff had never worked in TV before and they were all single, most of them, and it was fun to watch different staff members intermarry and have children, and that's when we brought those kids out, the 64 kids that came out at the end. That was so much fun for me.
WINFREY: Yeah, because the show becomes a family.
Mr. LENO: It really does. I’m not one--because usually when an employer says we're a family here, that means they want to pay you minimum wage, put your picture on the wall once a month. But it really was like a family. And it was fun. And the idea of being able to keep all those people together and try something at 10:00, okay, let's do it.
[teasers, break, video clips]
WINFREY: Did you think that Conan had what it took to take over "The Tonight Show?"
Mr. LENO: Yeah, I think he did. Yeah. He followed me successfully for 16 years and was number one, and we were number one, and it was a good team. I mean, even though that situation happened in 2004, Conan and I talked, and this was a network decision. This is what the network wanted.
Here is where the network’s strategy for Jay begins to emerge. He will bang on it again and again in the interview. Don’t blame me, blame the network. You might wonder what the network thinks about being blamed. The network couldn’t care less. By constantly singling out a faceless corporation for ridicule, Leno is deflecting criticism and keeping people from tarnishing his own brand — which as far as NBC is concerned is the important thing. They sided with him, now they want his audience to follow him back.
Mr. LENO: Oh, yes, very much.
WINFREY: So you and Conan talked after that first announcement.
Mr. LENO: Yeah, we talked many times after that. Because you know, the odd thing about this is there's only a half a dozen people in the United States that know what this experience is, and you can really only share it with them.
But he hasn’t talked to Conan recently — when it might have made a difference.
Mr. LENO: No, not at all. Not at all.
WINFREY: …he was going to be taking over your spot?
Mr. LENO: No, not at all. Because I took over the spot from someone else as well. I mean, he was my last guest. You know, I wished him luck and asked the audience to please watch and tune in.
WINFREY: And meant well by it?
Mr. LENO: Oh, very much so, yeah.
WINFREY: Okay. So the other question is going to the prime time show, did that sort of make up for losing "The Tonight Show?"
Mr. LENO: Yeah, in a way it did. There’s nothing like that. I mean you're going into unchartered territory, actually, and it's a lot more competitive. You know, when you're on late night, I know I’m against Dave every night.
WINFREY: Right.
Mr. LENO: And I know if he has Oprah on that night.
WINFREY: And you were beating Dave.
Mr. LENO: Yeah. And I know if he has Oprah that night, I’m in trouble. But I know he's got so-and-so, I know I’m okay. So we could book against it, you know, to try and book against the CSI ‘evil twin’ episode, that’s going to be very hard to do.
This is a nonsense argument. First, if you’re trying to save the jobs of your 175 beloved staff members, you don’t take on any show with “CSI” in the title. Second, as he well knows, even with CBS’s massive ratings advantage on Mondays and Thursdays, Letterman was making no inroads versus him in late nights. Here was the final tally for the 2008-2009 season:
NBC “Tonight,” 5.2 million viewers
CBS “Late Show,” 3.8 million viewers
ABC “Nightline,” 3.9 million viewers
And in the all-important 18-to-49-year-old demo:
NBC “Tonight,” 1.4/6
CBS “Late Show,” 1.1/4
ABC “Nightline,” 1.1/4
(Again, you could make two paradoxical predictions with this data: that Leno would be better off seeking employment at ABC, and that ABC would be giving up a valuable franchise to accommodate him.)
Mr. LENO: Of course the other guys want you to fail. The unusual thing was they actually boycotted us. And they actually said that in the trades, that it was a calculated effort…
WINFREY: To not send their people?
Mr. LENO: …to keep their guests off our show. But I get that. That’s fine. That’s not an excuse for why the show failed. It's just another level of competition that did not exist.
WINFREY: So it made it more difficult to do, yes.
Mr. LENO: Oh, way more. Oh, yeah. Way more difficult.
WINFREY: Way more difficult?
Mr. LENO: Oh, yeah, yeah. "Please welcome the animals from the San Diego Zoo, ladies and gentlemen." You know, I mean, it's hard to get those stars.
This is Leno at his disingenuous best. As anyone who remembers Late Night War One readily recalls, this was precisely the blood sport that Jay Leno’s staff engaged in during 1992, the first year of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Who can forget that magical cinematic moment when Kathy Bates — as Leno’s foul-mouthed manager-slash-executive producer Helen Kushnick — screams over the phone at Ken Kragen in the HBO “Late Shift” movie, “You and I will be in this town for a long time and we’ll see each other, and we’re never going to talk again!” Payback’s a bitch.
Also, “The Jay Leno Show” had one fewer guest a night than “The Tonight Show with Jay” did, and guest bookings were the least of his problems.
Mr. LENO: Well, that's not necessarily a good thing, but yeah.
WINFREY: Did you read this article? [holds up James Poniewozik’s terrific analysis in TIME]
Mr. LENO: I did read the article. Yes, surprisingly I did read the article.
WINFREY: Okay. Did you belief that article?
Mr. LENO: I thought it was a fair, yeah.
WINFREY: Okay.
Then did you read this article? [Holds up EW cover “TV’s Biggest Bombs!” with a Photoshopped Jay, hair wild, clothes in tatters, still smoldering from the blast]
Mr. LENO: Yeah, that's another one. Yeah.
WINFREY: Four months later.
Mr. LENO: Yeah. You know, I think in show business, you try not to believe the good stuff and you try not to believe the bad stuff. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle.
WINFREY: Yeah.
Mr. LENO: Yeah.
WINFREY: Okay. Why do you think the show failed?
Mr. LENO: Well, I think the show failed, because it was basically a late night talk show at 10:00. I mean, you're competing against dramas that are $3 million to $6 million an episode.
WINFREY: When the numbers started to drop, was your ego bruised by that? Because you're used to being number one.
Mr. LENO: I wouldn't say my ego was bruised. I felt bad for everybody on the show and I felt bad for our affiliates. A couple weeks ago I called the head of the affiliate board and I said listen, they're the ones that canceled us, and I said, "I'm sorry I let you guys down. I mean, you guys supported us, you went along with the decision. I'm sorry our show wasn't successful for you."
WINFREY: Because if it had worked, it would have saved millions of dollars.
Mr. LENO: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the odd thing is, it was making money for the network, it wasn't for the affiliates.
WINFREY: The other side of that, many people say that your going into prime time five nights a week, it took away thousands of jobs from other people who would have been working on dramas...
Mr. LENO: I’ve got to admit, that was not something I even realized until we went on the air. But they're not wrong. I have to admit, that one did catch me. We were on the air when I realized, wow, I have to admit, that one I didn't know about that.
WINFREY: Because you weren't thinking about…
Mr. LENO: No, I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
WINFREY: …the shows that would have been on had you not been on.
Mr. LENO: Right. Right.
Huge fib! The plan was announced Dec. 8. A highly-publicized writers' meeting two days later ripped the plan. Peter Tolan of "Rescue Me" and Chuck Lorre of "Two and Half Men" were particularly vocal and vicious. And Leno himself addressed the matter in August at TCA!
Thanks to an alert reader not connected to the current mess for pointing that out.
Mr. LENO: No, I was given enough time. You know, I got it. I mean, I’m a big boy. It didn't work. You know, it's a TV show that got canceled. I'm actually surprised that this got this much attention and it made me laugh when I would open the paper and for the last six months I've been in the paper every day. Every day, I'm almost on the front page. And it just sort of makes me laugh and I'm on there for not sexual innuendos or drunk driving. I’m on there because of a TV show. And it just sort of--I chuckle to myself a little bit about that.
WINFREY: Well, part of the reason I think that you're on there because, and it's so fascinating to me, that America has taken sides, and a lot of people are not on your side...
Mr. LENO: Yeah, I understand that.
WINFREY: And they're not on your side because they think that you've been selfish in this. Do you see in any way how you've been selfish? They think that you took the job away from Conan.
Mr. LENO: Well, it all comes down to numbers in show business. If you're getting the ratings--I mean, think of this. This is almost a perfect storm of bad things happening. You have two hit shows, "The Tonight Show" number one, "Conan" number one. You move them both to another situation, and what are the odds that both would do extremely poorly? Now, if Conan's numbers had been a little bit higher, it wouldn't even be an issue, but in show business, there's always somebody waiting in the wings.
All right. Now the gloves are off.
First of all, Jay, if I may address you directly, in your insulated corner of show business, there are NOT people “waiting in the wings” to take your job. Yes, if your 10 p.m. show fails, there are lots of people — many of them SAG and Writers’ Guild members — “waiting in the wings.” But that’s not why you were allowed to hang around in the lobby — to borrow David Letterman’s wonderful phrase from the other night — after you agreed to quit “The Tonight Show” and then were fired from “The Jay Leno Show.”
The whole reason you were given yet another chance to screw over Conan is because there are precious few people in the world who can do the job that you and Conan have done so well for so long. The person “waiting in the wings” WAS YOU.
The whole reason ABC wanted your services — the reason Fox will want Conan’s — is that it is hard to do this job. Which is why, when NBC asked you to retire, you should have accepted your demotion to ABC. You would have done just fine there, and you might have even stayed on longer than you will at NBC once your demos start to fade. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s turn now to the “extremely poorly” line. It is true that Jay Leno, with his five million viewers and 1.4 demographic, was a hit in late night and a dud in prime time. But what about Conan?
Mr. LENO: I never expected this to happen. People think you're behind the scenes pulling strings. There's no strings to pull. I have a show that's been canceled. So why would I have any power to go, oh, I want that? What happened was NBC came to me and they said, "Look, your show was down 14%, Conan's show was down 49%. We have a plan. We want to keep you both" because I asked, I said, "Can I be released from my contract?" And they said no.
Actually, what Leno’s boss, NBCU entertainment chief Jeff Gaspin, told us on Jan. 10 at TV critics’ tour was that the 10 p.m. hour (9 Central) had declined 30 percent year-to-year. The 14 percent figure, obviously, is Leno comparing his old 11:35 numbers to his 10 o’clock numbers, which is pointless, and comparing total audience figures instead of the demo, which is doubly pointless.
He also compares his old 11:35 numbers to Conan’s 11:35 numbers, which would be acceptable except that, again, he is measuring the total audience figures for “The Tonight Show,” which went from 5 million under Leno to 2.5 million under O’Brien. NBC has not used total audience figures in any meaningful way since the 1990s, when it began pushing aggressively for advertisers to rely on the 18-to-49 demographic. So this is a bogus comparison in several ways.
The correct way to measure is 18-49, comparable time period, year to year. And as I wrote last week:
Conan’s “Tonight Show” rating among adults ages 18-49, a key group for advertisers, has declined by the same amount, 30 percent, as NBC’s rating at 9 p.m. (10 Eastern), when “The Jay Leno Show” airs.
In other words, Conan was being hurt by his low-rated, non-traditional lead-in ... the star of which was then asked to take Conan’s place at 11:35. And people wonder why he's pissed.
I have had multiple conversations with people in the know the past year about how this transition would play out. Without getting into specifics, because these were background interviews, there was broad consensus on these three points:
Late-night is a long-term investment, so patience will be exercised with Conan.
It’s expected that he will lose the total-viewers race to Letterman, but as long as he doesn’t lose the demo, he’s golden.
Even if he loses the demo at first, in the long term he’s in a much better position than Letterman or Leno would be, since he appeals to a younger viewer.
You will not find anyone in the industry who would argue with the soundness of these points. And NBC just betrayed all of them.
Mr. LENO: On the prime time show.
WINFREY: When did you ask that, Jay?
Mr. LENO: I asked maybe a day after we got canceled. And I said, "Well, can I move on?" "No, you're still a valuable asset." I said, "You fired me twice, how valuable can I be as an asset?" "Oh, no, we want to keep you." I said okay. And they said, "Here's our plan...
WINFREY: Okay. Okay. Stop right there.
Why didn't you then just say, "All right, you fired me twice. I'm out of here, guys?" Because that seems like the ultimate in disrespect to me.
I know I’ve been a bearer of bad news around Oprahville, but really, she is a house on fire at this point in the interview. Leno is backpedaling. It’s quite a sight to behold.
WINFREY: "You're out of here."
Mr. LENO: "Pack your bags."
WINFREY: So at the time that they told you that your show is canceled, the prime time show is canceled, did they offer you in the same breath an opportunity to go back to "The Tonight Show?"
Mr. LENO: No. What they said was, "Here’s our plan. We'd like you to do a half- hour at 11:35 and Conan would do an hour at 12:05." And I said, "Conan keeps "The Tonight Show" and all the, you know, glitter and star power that goes with it?" And they said yeah. I said okay. I said, "That's okay for me."
WINFREY: So what's your show going to be called? What’s the 11:30 show?
Mr. LENO: …it would still be "The Jay Leno Show," and I would do a monologue and maybe one comedy piece. And I thought, "Okay, I'll do a half-hour at 11:30 and Conan an hour." And I remember saying to one of the executives, "Do you think Conan will go for that?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s not a problem. We are 75% sure Conan will take this deal." I said okay. We shake hands. Again, I’m not a big contract guy. We shake hands. "I'll do a half-hour, Conan does an hour. Let's see what happens."
WINFREY: Was there any part of you that thought, "You know, let me think about this. Let me have a conversation with Conan. Let me see if Conan wants to take the hour?" Was there any part of you that thought, "You know what? I've already done that enough let's move on."
Mr. LENO: Actually, it wasn't my place to call Conan and say, you know, they made this offer to me, and I said, "Do you think Conan will go for this?" and they said, "We'll ask him tomorrow." I said, "Okay, let me know what happens." And then the next thing you know, I guess Conan had his article in the paper and that was that.
Actually, five days transpired between Thursday, when the news leaked out that Leno was done at 10 p.m. and had been offered a deal to stay, and Tuesday, when Conan issued his “People of Earth” farewell letter. In fact, Leno talked to his audience about it on Thursday’s show.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be his place to call his “friend” Conan. Would Craig Ferguson and David Letterman talk about an offer from the network? As we saw earlier this month, Jimmy Kimmel and Carson Daly talked over Daly’s future — and they don’t even work for the same network.
No, here’s the real reason he didn’t call Conan. He wanted him to fail. Read on:
Mr. LENO: Well, if you look at what the ratings were, it was already destructive to the franchise.
I want everyone to keep that breathtaking statement in mind when Leno’s 18-49 demographic slides down to 1.0, as it inevitably must do. Jay’s audience isn’t getting any younger, and with each passing year another few hundred thousand turn 50. He may even hit 1.0 by the end of his current four-year deal with NBC.
And when it does, let’s see where Conan’s 18-49 rating is.
Mr. LENO: Well, there was no discussion on it. You know, the last discussion I had was it looks like he was going to go for it, and then he publicly said no. And by that time, it had pretty much hit the fan and everything was all over the place and there wasn't a lot of talking going on.
WINFREY: But then it got ugly. We'll be right back.
[BREAK]
WINFREY: You've made a living making jokes about other people.
Mr. LENO: Mm-hmm.
WINFREY: During their difficult times.
Mr. LENO: Right, right.
WINFREY: So did you--you thought you were fair game?
Mr. LENO: Right.
WINFREY: Even for Jimmy Kimmel when Jimmy Kimmel was on?
Mr. LENO: Again, I had Jimmy Kimmel on my show, and yeah, I got sucker punched.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
[GRAPHICS: THE JAY LENO SHOW JANUARY 14, 2010]
Mr. LENO: You're known for pranks. What's the best prank you ever pulled?
JIMMY KIMMEL: I think the best prank I ever pulled was I told a guy that five years from now, I'm going to give you my show, and then when the five years came, I gave it to him and then I took it back almost instantly.
Mr. LENO: Ah. [cut to]
Mr. KIMMEL: Conan and I have children. All you have to take care of is cars.
Mr. LENO: That's right.
Mr. KIMMEL: I mean, we have lives to lead here. You've got $800 million. For god sakes, leave our shows alone.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Mr. LENO: It's my show. I could have edited it. But I said, no, no, put it out there. I walked into it.
WINFREY: Did you know he was going that far?
Mr. LENO: No, no, I didn't. No, I didn't.
WINFREY: Yeah, the jokes about the cars...
Mr. LENO: But that’s okay, that’s okay. I got sucker punched. But, you know, when you get sucker punched, you just get right back up again.
Apparently Jay Leno has never been told about Kimmel’s performances at the ABC upfront. (Here’s audio from 2007.)
WINFREY: Have you talked to Conan in person throughout all this?
Mr. LENO: No, I haven't.
WINFREY: Did you want to pick up the phone?
Mr. LENO: Yeah, but it didn't seem appropriate.
WINFREY: Why?
Mr. LENO: I don't know. I think let things cool down and maybe we'll talk, you know.
WINFREY: Were any of the things that he said about you hurtful?
Mr. LENO: No, they were jokes. And that's okay. I mean...
WINFREY: So jokes don't hurt you?
Mr. LENO: It's what we do, you know. You can't--it's like being a fighter and say when you got punched in the head, did it hurt? Well, yeah, but you're a fighter, that's what you do.
WINFREY: So when you, in the privacy of your own thoughts in your own home, you go home with Mavis at the end of the day you don't say, "You know, I thought that was kind of rotten or I thought that went a little too far?"
Mr. LENO: Well, you know the odd thing is it's all your conscience. If you think you played a role in it somehow, then you get a guilty conscience and then you feel bad, but nowhere in my wildest dreams did I think that they would ask me to go back. It just didn't seem plausible.
I just spoke to a showrunner today who reminded me that he had predicted exactly this scenario a year ago. I doubt he was the only one. I’ll admit that I gave NBC and Jay the benefit of the doubt again and again and again. But I don’t have millions of dollars riding on my gut reactions. NBC has arguably made a second “billion-dollar mistake” by letting Conan walk (third, if you count Dick Ebersol overpaying on the current Olympics rights deal). And it all could’ve been prevented by letting Jay walk instead.
Given the long record of disingenuous statements by Leno on these matters, it’s hard to resist adding that one to the list.
Mr. LENO: No, because again, this is an affiliate decision. The affiliates felt the ratings were low. This was the first time in the 60-year history of "The Tonight Show" that "The Tonight Show" would have lost money and that's what it comes down to. It's really just a matter of dollars and cents. If the numbers had been there, they wouldn't have asked me. And they only asked me after Conan turned down moving it back half an hour.
Jon Casali writes: "In the interview, Leno says that there were affiliate problems, but he identifies those problems as existing with the Leno Show and Conan's Tonight Show. However, the only mentions of affiliate issues I have been able to find are regarding the 10 o'clock Jay Leno Show providing a lackluster lead-in to the local news. I haven't found any information about the affiliates being unhappy with Conan's Tonight Show, and I can't find any explanation as to why the affiliates would care about Conan's Tonight Show other than the general ratings concerns they would have with any NBC show."
You are right. Their only concern was getting Jay out of prime. Where he wound up, they didn't much care. So that was misleading. But that's nothing compared to what he said next.
When Leno says that Conan’s “Tonight Show” lost money, there is no way he is being truthful. I’ll stop short of calling him a liar, because what he’s doing is passing along NBC’s lie. Which we will now dissect.
First, By all internal accounts, Conan’s ratings in the demo were right where NBC expected them to be. In his last season doing “Late Night,” his 18-49 demographic rating was 0.8. That was good for first place at 12:35. In order to tie David Letterman in the demo, he needed a 25 percent boost. And he got it, despite having a lead-in that was 30 percent worse in the demo than Leno had enjoyed a year before. That millstone of a lead-in, again, was “The Jay Leno Show.”
So if Conan was hitting his numbers, was NBC’s plan all along for Conan to lose money? I think not.
Second, did you notice all those sponsored bits on the show? O’Brien was far more liberal in allowing product placements on his show than Leno had ever allowed NBC to be. Sponsored bits by Kodak, Intel and Lexus come to mind.
Third, since NBC was making a long-term investment in O’Brien, it would almost certainly expect him to be on the air a decade or longer. So, you amortize his rather hefty start-up costs over a period of several years and voila, not losing money. But instead, we got another case of Hollywood Math (“Making Winners into Losers Since 1920").
Mr. LENO: I was ready to do the half-hour and he could keep "The Tonight Show." That was fine with me.
WINFREY: So no part of you thought, "Enough already, I've done it?"
Mr. LENO: You know, if you're a gunfighter, you like to die in the street.
WINFREY: [laugh] I don't know. I'm a gunfighter. I might like to die at home in the comfort...
Mr. LENO: No, you're not, you're a gunfighter. Oprah, you still are--how many times are you going to retire.
WINFREY: No. I am...
Mr. LENO: You're still on.
WINFREY: I’m telling you what...
Mr. LENO: You'll be there, baby.
WINFREY: No, no. I am just saying this. I am asking this question--I am asking this question...
Mr. LENO: You and I will go down together.
WINFREY: No.
Mr. LENO: You and I will hold hands and walk out into the sunset together.
As she did by getting Leno to admit his myopic stance on writers, actors, and his crew’s long-term fortunes, Oprah is trying to point out that there is another way to handle a network coming to you and saying, “Hey, maybe it’s time to move on, old man”?
And again, Jay is clueless.
Mr. LENO: You're not going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere.
WINFREY: Yes, I am. I’m asking you this question as somebody…
Mr. LENO: Go ahead.
WINFREY: …who has made a decision that for this show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," as it is, done with that. Twenty-five years, done with that.
Mr. LENO: We'll see.
WINFREY: You don't believe that.
Mr. LENO: I believe you believe it.
WINFREY: Okay. No. So I'm saying, having made that decision, I understand that coming to grips with--and this is the real question here…
Mr. LENO: Yeah.
WINFREY: …who am I without a television show when I've had a television show for 25 years? Who are you without a television show?
Mr. LENO: Oh, first of all.
WINFREY: Because you've had a television show for 17 years.
Mr. LENO: I'm a standup comedian who happens to have a television show. I mean, this is the thing people have asked me for years, and I always tell them I live on the money I make as a standup comedian. The money I make on television I bank and I have a little foundation. I don't touch it. I live on the money I make--I consider myself a standup comedian, because I consider TV to be so volatile. You never know when you'll have a job.
A fatuous observation coming from the man who held down the least volatile talent job in television (and, repeating our top story, could have secured another one at a different network for himself and his beloved staff of 175.)
Mr. LENO: No. It had nothing to do with me.
WINFREY: Mm-hmm.
Mr. LENO: I mean, as I say, there's always someone waiting in the wings in this business to take your job. If you're not doing the numbers, they move on. It's pretty simple.
WINFREY: When you go back to the "The Tonight Show" do you think about rebuilding that audience and how you're going to do that?
Mr. LENO: Very much so. Yeah, very much so. It's on my mind every day.
My first reaction, which I gave to the AP’s Dave Bauder, was: Of course he’s going to rebuild his audience. In a heartbeat. Many of Jay’s fans have let me know they didn’t “get” Conan — or Co-NAN, as a lot of them seem to call him — and the only downside is that they now have to stay up really, really late to watch him again.
Eventually, of course, Leno will be a bad move for NBC, because not only will the younger viewers accrue to Conan, but over at Fox O’Brien will likely be asked to create two franchises: one at 11:30 (or 11) and one following his show. This is a once-every-20-years opportunity for Fox, which blew its last chance when it let Arsenio Hall walk out the door. It’s not going to miss out again.
But for the time being, I thought, Leno would do just fine back at 11:35. After this disastrous interview with Oprah, however, I’m not so sure. Maybe, finally, the NBC magic in late night is not going to cover his ass. I wouldn’t bet that way, but I wouldn’t be surprised, either.
Mr. LENO: I think you do it by doing the work. You find out what the elements are that worked on the show and you try to bring those elements to it. But it's really the idea of servicing the audience. You know, the reason I work a lot around the road is you tell a joke, if a joke works in Boston and Oklahoma City and Des Moines, Iowa, and L.A., it will work on TV. I would never call President Bush dumb. I would always say, "You know, I like President Bush. I don't think he understands the situation." And then you do the zinger joke. And then I would watch other comedians go out and go, "You know, President Bush is a big jerk." Well, now you've lost half the crowd just by being disrespectful and it's a matter of that fine balance.
WINFREY: Okay. Talking about fine balance, do you think that your fellow comedians lost the fine balance and that, perhaps, maybe you did too because letterman called you "I think the big jawed Leno, I think should just walk away."
Mr. LENO: Ooh.
WINFREY: And you hit back by talking about his infidelity.
Mr. LENO: Well, I did a joke about that, yeah.
WINFREY: Yes. And then the audience went ooh.
Mr. LENO: But it was a good joke.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
[GRAPHICS: THE JAY LENO SHOW JANUARY 20, 2010]
Mr. LENO: Letterman's been hammering me every night. Oh, going after me. Hey, Kevin, do you know what's the best way to get Letterman to ignore you?
KEVIN EUBANKS: What’s that?
Mr. LENO: Marry him. Okay? That’s the best way. He will not bother you. He won't look you in the eye.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Mr. LENO: Did you laugh when you heard it?
WINFREY: No, I did not. No, I did not laugh.
Mr. LENO: You're laughing now. Ah?
WINFREY: No, I thought, whoa. You know what? I thought that was beneath you, actually. I thought why did you step into that?
Mr. LENO: But how many jokes like that have I done? One. I did one joke in the middle of the week and I never did another one, because I said, there, I had a cheap shot thrown at me, I threw one cheap shot back and I moved on.
Because it backfired. You should have waited until Sunday and tried it out at Hermosa Beach.
And actually, the one-joke claim is not true! Longtime reader Jeff Hysen: “On Monday, Dave didn't say much, if anything, about Leno/O'Brien. However, that night, Leno started on Dave as he said something that referred to Dave sleeping with his staff (I think it was ‘I didn’t sleep with my staff for nothing’). Leno made the quoted crack on Wednesday. On Thursday, he was with Chelsea Handler, took her to a fake motel set so she could read from her book, and said (this quote may not be verbatim but it's close) ‘You know where I got this idea? From Letterman.’ So he made comments about Dave three times, not just once.”
Mr. LENO: Yeah, it's okay.
WINFREY: Do you feel you're being unfairly portrayed by the media?
Mr. LENO: Yeah, I think so. I think so. But I think you have to look for a bad guy. I mean, I think it's funny they have a picture of me and Roman Polanski. Somehow, these are quite similar, you know. You had a TV show, he had sex with a 13-year-old girl with Quaaludes. Eh, that’s about equal. Yeah.
WINFREY: Okay. So you've always been portrayed as the good guy.
Mr. LENO: Yeah, I guess so.
WINFREY: Yeah. And now you're being made to look like the bad guy?
Mr. LENO: It's big-time wrestling, yeah.
WINFREY: Do you feel that's unfair?
Mr. LENO: Yeah, I think it's a little unfair and I'm going to work hard to try and rehabilitate that image.
WINFREY: Do you think now that that has happened, you will be able to revive, rehabilitate "The Tonight Show?"
Mr. LENO: I hope so. I think so. Yeah. And I hope Conan gets a job somewhere else. I hope he gets on at Fox or somewhere and we all compete together. "Ooh, Conan's back on," and it raises the level of interest. And you know what happens? The best one wins. Maybe I'll get my butt kicked, maybe we'll win.
WINFREY: Mm-hmm. Does your gut ever tell you to--that the right thing to do would have been to say no to NBC's offer to go back? No part of you thought that?
Mr. LENO: No.
WINFREY: Was there part of you that thought let me just take--because you said to me earlier, you said just let me out of my contract. So when you said that, there was a part of you that thought just let me go.
Mr. LENO: Yeah, let me go and I'll ...
WINFREY: Take the check?
Mr. LENO: Well, I'll take my show somewhere else.
WINFREY: Mm-hmm. And now that this is sort of now settled itself, Conan's gone, you're going back March 1st…
Mr. LENO: Yeah.
WINFREY: Are you looking forward to that or is there part of you ...
Mr. LENO: Very much so. I think it will be fun.
WINFREY: So you're saying it wasn't your job then to think about, "Well, what's the other guy who has this job going to do?"
Mr. LENO: No. That wasn't my decision.
WINFREY: Do you think NBC could have done something differently to make this a win-win for everyone?
Mr. LENO: Anything they did would have been better than this. Anything. Anything they did. If they'd come in and shot everybody, I mean, it would have been people murdered, but at least it would have been a two-day story. I mean, yes. NBC could not have handled it worse, from 2004 onward, this whole thing was a huge, a huge mess, yeah.
So NBC is the fall guy here. NBC is a faceless entity full of people who can’t shoot straight. It’s a convenient target. The network’s PR strategy is for Leno to blame the network. It keeps people from blaming Leno and tarnishing the “Tonight Show” brand any further.
Mr. LENO: I thought, "Okay, they'll cut me down to two days, three days a week."
WINFREY: Is this the prime time show?
Mr. LENO: The prime time show. Never saw this coming. Came totally out of the blue.
WINFREY: That you're canceled?
Mr. LENO: No, no. That we would be asked to go back to "The Tonight Show."
WINFREY: To go back.
Mr. LENO: Because it wasn't even like I got canceled and I said, "Oh, well. Okay." And the next thing I know--what? Because you know, the interesting thing was we took all the attention off of "The Tonight Show" in terms of publicity and how they were doing. I think if our show hadn't been on, the story would have been the ratings of the "Tonight Show." But since our ratings were bad, we were the focus. So consequently they were kind of under the radar press-wise in terms of how it was doing. So I think that we got--and then when we got canceled--I mean I know it wasn't doing that well, but I had no idea that it had come to that. Nobody had said anything.
Self-serving right to the end.
The “Tonight Show” didn’t get “all the attention” probably because (a) David Letterman was doing a pretty good job of using up all the late-night oxygen and (b) Conan O’Brien wasn’t off on some cockamamie venture to “reinvent” the third hour of prime.
In fact, Conan O’Brien was doing what Jay Leno was doing in 1992 — and what Conan himself did in 1993. He was floundering. NBC’s late night history is full of rocky transitions. This was simply the latest one. (Ernie Kovacs was on the show for, like, four months before NBC unceremoniously yanked him. And then there was Jack Paar walking off his show one night.) To repeat what I and others have been noting: It took 23 months for Leno to overtake Letterman. At no point was his job in jeopardy — though he almost got canned the year earlier because he refused to fire his toxic manager.
One might well ask why Jay isn’t pointing out that he took “all the attention” off Jimmy Fallon, who squandered a huge chunk of Conan O’Brien’s audience at 12:35. Because, as any good network publicist will tell you, you don’t crap on your neighbor’s kitchen floor. You wait till they move out. Then you crap on their floor.
Many, many thanks to AllYourTV for posting the transcript and saving me time. The transcript resumes, starting at where my commentary ends, at this link. I also recommend you read Rick's well-argued piece for an opposite view, that going with Jay was the right move for NBC.
RESPONSES:
Great catches by the readers — thanks to all who wrote in. I'm still waiting to hear from a Leno fan who can raise the rhetoric above "I am, but what are you??"
Gary bothered to watch the after-show discussion on Oprah.com and writes: "Oprah's after show discussion with her audience was really sickening because after most of them declared themselves team CoCo, feeling that Conan got a raw deal, Oprah 'educated' them on how television really works and proceeded to make sure they all became team Leno by teaching them how Leno is at no fault at all and that it is all Conan's and NBC's fault. And we are right back to the basis of your article!"
Mark Morse: "I've enjoyed your take on the current fracas and like many, cannot believe the the hole Leno seems to be trying so hard to dig for himself with all of these ridiculous lies. The one that I haven't really seen him called out on is how getting the show back wasn't his idea, he didn't pull any strings behind the scenes and he never expected this to happen. Oh really? Jay started this whole ball rolling when he gave that Broadcasting and Cable interview back in November. It was then, when it was obvious his 10PM 'experiment' was failing (and getting progressively worse in the ratings week after week), that he told the publication he wished he hadn't left the 'Tonight Show' and he would gladly take back hosting duties if NBC asked him. That was the nugget he laid out for NBC, and that is surely when these talks began. Now he feigns surprise so he can be the good guy. As Dave would say, Vintage Jay."
Nathan Convey: "I'm not someone who holds Jay Leno completely responsible for what happened, that blame lies at NBC's door. But there have been so many times when he could have stopped all of this, and he didn't. And now he plays the victim in a really insincere and classless way, while not accepting any responsiblity for his actions? I believe Conan can't give an interview for 3 months, so I guess NBC are trying to get Jay out there in time for his 'triumphant return' in the hopes that people will have forgotten by the time Conan puts his side across? It's an unbelievably frustrating situation."
John Lavalie: "Before your column the only thing that bothered me about the interview was when he 'I got sucker punched.' Jay is friends with Adam Carolla who is friends with Jimmy Kimmel. No one was sucker punched. Jimmy was laughing all the way through the bit to take the edge off and 'leave our shows alone' is hardly biting satire."
