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She never once brought up how Leno's ratings were so low that NBC considered replacing him with Letterman in his first 3 years on the air nor the fact that for Conan's 45 million dollar settlement he gave 12 million to his staff.
Not to mention that when Leno's manager forced out Carson, he gracefully retired, and not meddled around with his affairs.
She never once brought up how Leno's ratings were so low that NBC considered replacing him with Letterman in his first 3 years on the air nor the fact that for Conan's 45 million dollar settlement he gave 12 million to his staff.
Not to mention that when Leno's manager forced out Carson, he gracefully retired, and not meddled around with his affairs.
Jay Leno Talks To Oprah, But He Still Doesn't Get It
By Eric Ditzian
I thought I was done.
Last week, Jay Leno was officially re-gifted with his "Tonight Show" gig, Conan O'Brien fluttered (at least temporarily) out of late-night on his golden parachute and I expected nothing else needed to be said until after the Winter Olympics (when Leno is set to return to "Tonight"). Then on Thursday (January 28), Leno appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," giving an interview that was equal parts whiny and disingenuous, a master class in oblivious victimology, an hour that will by no means heal his damaged public profile.
"It all comes down to numbers in show business," said the man I have dubbed Chinny McGimmeMyShowBack.
And therein lies the problem. This most mealy-mouthed of mea culpas — don't blame me, I'm just a cog in this vast Hollywood machine — displays both an inability on Jay's part to take at least a share of the responsibility for the late-night mess on NBC and a lack of understanding about the importance of "The Tonight Show." (That is, if we can even take Leno's statements at face value — as truths rather than spin.)
"Tonight" is not just a TV show, not just show biz, a point even Oprah got wrong. Booting Conan out of the studio is hardly akin to recasting the role of Will Smith's aunt on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." "Tonight" is an institution, one of the only ones left in pop culture, and it must be treated with respect, not just as a historical artifact but so that it continues to have a vibrant future.
Conan understood this, and decided to leave rather than futz with tradition. Meanwhile, Jay chose to seize back what he believed was rightfully his, and in the process disrupted the show in a way Johnny Carson never would have when he ceded the chair to Leno in the early '90s. On "Oprah," Leno spent an hour plausibly trying to present a case that he was some unsophisticated rube dumbly saying yes to every hare-brained scheme the fancy NBC suits threw his way. Jay has been in show biz for almost four decades, and one thing he is not is ignorant about the entertainment landscape. Is Jay really asking us to believe he's just a go-with-the-flow dude, moving from late-night to primetime back to late-night back to "Tonight" just because the network asked nicely?
If Leno didn't like NBC's plan to replace him, he shouldn't have agreed to it five years ago. If he still didn't like it in 2009, he didn't have to move to primetime. Once "The Jay Leno Show" was canceled, he could have walked away. What he couldn't do was the one thing he in fact chose: To retake his chair. Leno's back at "Tonight" for one reason and one reason only: He wants it. No one can fault Leno for having a high estimation of his own value; in this, he shares a trait with the rest of Hollywood. What he can be faulted for is being unable to suppress this ambition when it comes to a sacred entertainment institution. And, further, what he can be faulted for are gallingly transparent excuses to mask the truth.
It's hard to select the most damning exchange of the "Oprah" hour. Was it when Leno admitted it never occurred to him that airing his primetime show would put thousands of crew members ordinarily employed at 10 p.m. dramas out of work? Or when he argued that Jimmy Kimmel sucker-punched him on TV, as if one professional comedian zinging another professional comedian is an unfair fight? How about when he whined about being made the bad guy by the media? Or when he stated that Conan had already destroyed "Tonight" by coming in second in the ratings, as if Leno didn't suffer the same fate for years? Or when he suggested a sufficient programming decision would involve the mass murder of Conan's staff?
And so it goes. Unable to admit his true motives — or perhaps unaware of them — Leno's latest bit of crisis management served only to highlight the very things audiences and the media have taken issue with for weeks.
"[W]ho wouldn't take that job, though?" Leno wondered at one point on "Oprah," as oblivious as ever. "Who wouldn't do that?"
Well, Conan, for one, who declined an opportunity to chat with Oprah, instead choosing to let his final shows and his epic press release stand as his collective response to the "Tonight" debacle. As he wrote, "I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction."
__________________ nabs -Brianrietta are you trying to Mindbomber me? using big words to try to confuse me jasonturbo -Threesomes: overrated - I didn't really think it was anything special, plus it was degrading, marching to the bathroom to fart all that semen out Babykiller -And next to that, there's a little dot called a period. It's not the stuff you eat out of your sisters gash, it's a handy little tool for breaking up sentences so they don't look like nonsensical retard garbage.
^ news articles were saying conan declined the oprah interview citing that he had said everything he wanted to say about it on his final show.
everything about that interview was calculated carefully by leno. no studio audience means no backlash from people, negative reactions to his answers, or surprise questions/comments that might upset him (like kimmel did). most of his answers to questions sounded heavily rehearsed (nearly word for word with his comments prior to interview) and again, he's trying to pull off the innocent "it wasn't me" story. leno is a selfish piece of trash.
^ news articles were saying conan declined the oprah interview citing that he had said everything he wanted to say about it on his final show.
everything about that interview was calculated carefully by leno. no studio audience means no backlash from people, negative reactions to his answers, or surprise questions/comments that might upset him (like kimmel did). most of his answers to questions sounded heavily rehearsed (nearly word for word with his comments prior to interview) and again, he's trying to pull off the innocent "it wasn't me" story. leno is a selfish piece of trash.
/comment.
yeah i agree. I just finished watching the oprah thing, at the end of the episode it was mentioned that conans "people" said "it wasnt the right time" to appear on oprah.
and to follow up with my earlier comment, it would be nice to get someone from nbc on her show too
I would support a Pattie Cloverleaf Leprachaun redneck ginger freak over a grease-monkey wop deigo guinea mafioso tartface chin deformed high ego spaghetti and meatballs fatass like Jay Leno anyday! At least Conan and his people know what its like to be a fob and treated like shit by your own people in the United Kingdom. Jay Leno is just a gladiator roman empire jesus killer freakshow that makes old fart cliche jokes for dinosaurs who can't sleep at night. That is his target market. Whereas Conan is for young people and can take a joke against himself. Jay's ego is as big as his chin, and he never makes fun of himself. Headlines is the only thing he got that's funny...all his other stuff is total shit. Tell him to go fuck himself, drive all his hotrods and car collection totally wasted and into the pacific ocean pedal to metal, with his googatsa out!
why was my post deleted? I'm guessing mmmfreak is a mod's troll account?
Nope. You failed him already. No need to get on your soap box and whine about him. PM him or take it to fight club. This thread is about Conan O'brien, not 'people that piss MajinHurricane off'.
__________________ Revscene ADMIN elite
Sales and Installer at Certified Auto Sound
Maple Ridge, BC
(EW.com) -- EW talked to "The Late Show" executive producer Rob Burnett about David Letterman's surprising decision to include Jay Leno in a promotional spot during the Super Bowl.
Entertainment Weekly: Why did you decide to do this?
Rob Burnett: Well, the 10 seconds we did with Dave and Oprah for the Super Bowl in 2007 went pretty well and CBS came back and said we got 10 seconds again for this one. Nothing is more simultaneously exhilarating and fear-inducing than hearing you have 10 seconds in the Super Bowl.
We were banging heads together. How do we come close to topping the last one? Then Dave got this idea. My first call was to Oprah -- she got it right away -- and then I called [CBS Corp. Chairman] Les Moonves to make sure he was OK with Jay being on CBS.
I have to give Les credit ... he got it immediately. And then I called [Leno's executive producer] Debbie Vickers ... who said, 'Dave and Jay, in the same room?' She laughed for a good minute and said Jay would want to call. I hung up, and two minutes later it was Jay. He said 'This is the way show business should be.' Debbie then cleared it with NBC Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin and NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.
Entertainment Weekly: How did you manage to pull it off without the press catching wind of it?
Burnett: We began having logistical meetings that would make the CIA proud.
We had to figure out a way to keep it a surprise. NBC arranged to have Jay fly on the NBC jet at 7:30 in morning on February 2 and he was at the Teterboro Airport [in New Jersey] at 3:30 p.m. We snuck him through the front door on Broadway.
Jay wore a disguise ...a hooded sweatshirt, dark sunglasses and a mustache. Fifteen minutes later, Oprah arrived ... but not in a disguise. We shot it in the balcony of the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Entertainment Weekly: What was it like when Leno and Letterman first saw each other?
Burnett: It was great, very professional, very cordial.
We shot it in 25 minutes, and it went really, really well. It felt like one of those things where you wake up and say, "I had the strangest dream." There was no frostiness. We were focused on trying to execute the joke. It would have been a more taxing event had it been us all going out to dinner. If anything was awkward, it was how it wasn't awkward.
It's interesting... there was a lot of internal conversation about whether this was a good thing to be doing from a PR standpoint. Are we rehabilitating Jay's image?
Dave has a simple edict: If it's funny, we do it. When CBS says it needs 10 seconds, it's incumbent upon you to do the funniest bit you can do. Then we learned we had another five seconds. That may not sound like a really big deal but let's face it ... that's someone's college education [given how much the typical per-second spot goes for during the Super Bowl], so we were really thrilled about that.
Entertainment Weekly: You and Dave must have realized you had the potential to upstage the Super Bowl.
Burnett: Well, that's not our problem! [He laughs].
I've been asked the question more than once about all these advertisers who spent millions of dollars on their ads. My response is: They had a year, millions of dollars, and 30 seconds! We had one week, no money, and 15 seconds.
The bottom line is, if you're a comedian and you have the chance to do something funny in front of 100 million people, you should do it.
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