The late night landscape has been nothing to brag about for the last 10 years. Saturday Night Live has been awful. Leno has been in cruise control, adding an occasional stolen bit to freshen up the show. Letterman has similarly had very few notable moments. The Palin exchange was vintage Letterman, but then things were back to normal until the sex scandal hit. People thought this would damage Letterman, but in fact I believe it actually helped. Finally one of these hosts was exposing some kind of reality on his show. Feelgood stories about his heart operation and his fatherhood failed to sustain the interest. Now Letterman seems a little dangerous, and the recent late night wars episodes have further invigorated him with an anything goes attitude.
Leno's failure at 10:00 really amounted to one thing-Leno was a success because of his monologue. That monologue wasn't going to drive his show at this earlier time slot. Instead of having the option to watch Leno's show for the first 15 minutes before falling asleep, now they were forced to find something entertaining for the entire hour, something that Leno's show has never provided. With that in mind, there is no way that Leno was going to grow his audience at 10:00, which is what he needed to do if it was going to successfully lead in to the local news.
Conan's "failure" occurred for many reasons. Leno's lousy ratings at 10:00 led to a domino effect for the NBC shows later in the night. Never mind that Conan had to compete with Leno for guests. The guests that were booked on Conan were often exactly the type that were booked on Leno's Tonight Show-vapid starlets with nothing interesting to say. The edge was gone, replaced by a vanilla coating.
Leno's return to the Tonight Show might prove disastrous for NBC. A month after his return we will know what damage has been done to the Tonight Show viewership. A big fall in the ratings will receive a lot of press, and a loss to Letterman would be devastating. Even if Leno manages to recapture most of his viewers, it is still going to be a steady decline from here on out, as the lionshare of his viewers are over 50.
Most people are saying that it is a done deal that Conan will go to Fox. That might very well be true, but I don't know that this is the best move for him. First, the 11:00 slot will not be available on many Fox affiliates, as they already run lucrative shows like TMZ and Everybody Loves Raymond. Second, the lead in is not going to be that good at 11:00, thanks to an awkward prior hour where the news starts at 10:00 and a random syndicated show is sandwiched between the news and Conan. Why not go to Comedy Central? Conan would fit well with that channel's targeted demographic. Stewart and Colbert would have to air an hour earlier, but I think their ratings would hold up against the broadcast network dramas. The problem with Comedy Central is that they might not have the budget for this type of show. But this would be the most well known two hour block of programming outside of the broadcast networks and the news channels. I think it would work.
