NBC Is the Only Villain in O’Brien – Leno Spat

Negotiations are still underway, talks that will see Conan O’Brien out of The Tonight Show, while Jay Leno takes his place after NBC canceled his primetime show because of poor ratings. Ever since the workings at NBC blew up in the media, Leno has been portrayed as the villain, on the premise that he must be the one who’s out for O’Brien’s job and this couldn’t be further from the truth, the New York Daily News argues.

The bottom line is that neither Leno nor O’Brien has any fault in the entire brouhaha. Both did their job and did so to the best of their abilities, but as the saying goes, sometimes things just don’t work out. Not only did Leno’s new show fail to get the ratings the network had hoped for, but O’Brien too has made a lackluster host of The Tonight Show, also as far as ratings as concerned. Like any other network would have done, NBC is cutting losses and making changes, so vilifying Leno or O’Brien is completely pointless.

“Jay did a weak version of Tonight in prime time, while O’Brien, in moving to Tonight, lost the edge that made him successful on Late Night. But if you listen to Leno’s rivals for a half second, you’re left with the impression Leno was playing NBC head Jeff Zucker like a marionette. Unlikely. For his part, O’Brien is a talented, funny guy who has been hosed by NBC before. When he was picked for the Late Night job, NBC gave him only 13-week contract. And it wasn’t until he had a chance to leave for CBS that he got the Tonight promise,” the publication says.

Making of Leno the bad guy under the misconception that Leno gets what Leno wants is unfair to Leno himself. The same goes for saying that O’Brien got what he deserved because he wasn’t able to do the job he had agreed to in his contract. The reality of it all is that, despite media reports saying this is Leno’s fault and other television personalities doing the same, this is simply how the industry works.

“This is how it works in TV. Shows launch. Shows fail. Networks move on. It was NBC that found a solution – or what it hopes will be a solution – to a double mistake. Yet Leno is getting blamed. ‘Canceling shows is not new,’ Rosanna Scotto said on WNYW/Ch. 5’s Good Day New York. ‘If you’re not bringing in the ratings, you’re gone’,” the e-zine writes. In this light, not even NBC can be considered a “villain,” though it undoubtedly is the one that is making all these changes.