Jay Leno Talks About Conan O’Brien and Late Night Issues

Last night on his show Jay Leno went into depth about the situation going on at NBC, and with the Tonight Show. While it sounds all very nice on paper, it seems like the machinations of a schooled politician. Leno talks about the fact that Conan wasn’t bringing the ratings, but doesn’t mention the fact that when he took over The Tonight Show, it didn’t have the top late night ratings either.

Read the transcript below:

“I thought maybe I should address this — at least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let’s start in 2004 — 2004, I’m sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, ‘Listen, Conan O’Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don’t want him to go, so we’re going to give him The Tonight Show.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been No. 1 for 12 years.’ They said, ‘We know that, but we don’t think you can sustain that.’ I said, ‘Okay. How about until I fall to No. 2, then you fire me?’ ‘No, we made this decision.’ I said, ‘That’s fine.’ Don’t blame Conan O’Brien. Nice guy, good family guy, great guy. He and I have talked, and not a problem since then. That’s what managers and people do; they try to get something for their clients. I said, ‘I’ll retire, just to avoid what happened the last time.’ Okay.

“So time goes by, and we stay No. 1 up until the day we leave. We hand… [applause here] No, no. Okay, but I’m leaving before my contract is out. About six to eight months early. So before I could go anywhere else — I would be at least a year or 18 months before I could go and do a show somewhere else. I said to NBC, ‘Would you release me from my contract.’ They said, ‘We want to keep you here.’ Okay. What are your ideas? They said, ‘How about prime time?’ I said, ‘That will never work.’ ‘No, no, we want to put you on at 10:00. We have done focus groups. People will love you at 10:00. Look at these studies showing Jay’s chin at 10:00. People will go crazy.’ Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. I said, ‘All right, can I keep my staff?’ There are 175 people that work here. I said, ‘Can I keep my staff?’ ‘Yes, you can. Let’s try it. We guarantee you two years on the air, guaranteed. Now for the first four or five months against original shows like CSI, you’ll get killed, but in the spring and summer when the reruns come, that’s when you’ll pick up.’ Okay, great. I agree to that.

“Four months go by; we don’t make it. Meanwhile, Conan’s show during the summer — we’re not on — was not doing well. The great hope was that we would help him. Well, we didn’t help him any, okay. They come and go, ‘This show isn’t working. We want to let you go.’ ‘Can you let me out of my contract?’ ‘No, you’re still a valuable asset to this company.’ ‘How valuable can I be? You fired me twice. How valuable can I be?’ Okay. So then, the affiliates are not happy. The affiliates are the ones that own the TV stations. They’re the ones that sort of make the decisions; they’re not happy with your performance and Conan is not doing well at 11:30. I said, ‘What’s your idea?’ They said, ‘Well, look, how about you do a half-hour show at 11:30?’ Now, where I come from, when your boss gives you a job and you don’t do it well… I think we did a good job here, but we didn’t’ get the ratings, so you get humbled. I said, ‘Okay, I’m not crazy about doing a half hour, but okay. What do you want to do with Conan?’ ‘We’ll put him on at midnight, or 12:05, keeps The Tonight Show, does all that, he gets the whole hour.’ I said, ‘Okay. You think Conan will go for that?’ ‘Yes, yes. [laughter from the audience] Almost guarantee you.’ I said okay. Shake hands, that’s it. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have an agent, that’s my handshake deal.

“Next thing I see, Conan has a story in the paper saying he doesn’t want to do that. They come back to me and they say, ‘If he decides to walk and doesn’t want to do it, do you want the show back?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I’ll take the show back. If that’s what he wants to do. This way, we keep our people working, fine.’ So that’s pretty much where we are. It looks like we might be back at 11:30; I’m not sure. I don’t know. [applause] I don’t know. But through all of this — through all of this, Conan O’Brien has been a gentleman. He’s a good guy. I have no animosity towards him. This is all business. If you don’t get the ratings, they take you off the air. I think you know this town, you can do almost anything. You get ratings, they keep you. I don’t get ratings; he wants. That was NBC’s solution. It didn’t work, so we might have an answer for you tomorrow. So, we’ll see. That’s basically where it is.”

If you haven’t seen it yet, here is an article from 1992’s New York Times about Leno’s Tonight Show:

Jay Leno Criticizes NBC on ‘Tonight’ Cliffhanger