The Sunshine Empire

The Tonight Show is an American television institution first hosted by Steve Allen in 1954 and has been hosted by a total of five men. Jay Leno now has the distinction among them of being the only man to stab two people in the back to get the host chair on the show twice. The latest drama in his forcing Conan O’Brien out of the 11:30pm time slot shows what a talentless honor-less worm Jay Leno is. The National Broadcasting Company on the other hand is showing why they are the fourth place network among the major American broadcasters with their weak-kneed impatience with O’Brien.

When Johnny Carson retired in 1992, NBC was terrified of losing two late night stars despite the desire on Carson’s part to have David Letterman succeed him on Tonight. The tale of Leno waiting in a closet while his management pressured NBC to make him the Tonight Show host behind his “friend” Letterman’s back is well known and documented in movies. NBC was foolish enough to think that they could keep two men who both wanted the 11:30 slot happy, and they lost Letterman to CBS in the process. You would think that they would have learned from such a foolish mistake. They were smart enough to take a chance on an at-the-time little known comedy writer named Conan O’Brien though, and after having patience with his show development had another star. Five years ago they found themselves in the same predicament and applied none of the lessons of 1992. Leno signed off on the plan that would give O’Brien The Tonight Show and he would retire at that time. When that time rolled around Jay Leno proved himself to be the Brett Favre of late night television by letting everyone and the network know he’d changed his mind and wanted to remain. He left NBC holding the bag for a huge lump-sum payment if the did not give Conan O’Brien the show. NBC’s solution was doomed from the start, and with Leno looking over his shoulder O’Brien was almost set up to fail. As a Twitter feed I follow said yesterday of the possible move of The Tonight Show to 12:05am, doesn’t it stop being The Tonight Show if it’s no longer tonight?

The humor on Leno’s Tonight Show is the comedy equivalent of day-old oatmeal. It’s all the more shocking considering he’s been documented in his theft of bits and premises from The Howard Stern Show. Patton Oswalt says it best in this clip.

(Update: The video was removed. Trust me Patton was spot on.)

It is my fervent hope that Conan O’Brien leaves NBC and goes to Fox and beats Leno’s trite garbage.