...my plan for Conan...

I have an opinion on this whole late night thing, but I am having trouble formulating it. Here are the basic building blocks of how I get to my opinion:

 

1.       I think Conan is tremendously funny. I think he may be the best physical comedian of my generation, without even meaning to be that. I think he is a guy who is born to do something a bit different with the Tonight Show desk, and I can see myself growing old watching him, if I could stay up that late, which I can't.

2.       Jay Leno is nothing. He really is absolutely a zero to me. I never laugh at his jokes, his monologue is something that viewers and the audience have bought into, every night.  The people who write Leno can literally timeslot the jokes – "at 11:42 you'll make joke B, and it'll elicit laughter. At 11:44 you'll make joke C, and it'll elicit laughter, not to exceed that of Joke B. At 11:47, you'll make joke D which will exceed, in terms of laughter, B+C combined." 

3.       I think that Jimmy Fallon, however, may be the funniest of the bunch. Mostly b/c he tries new things, and he has always been someone who has not really minded failing, and is sorta good at making failing jokes. I think he is the best "actor" of the late night crowd – he knows how to play with an audience and his SNL training really has made him fight hard for honest laughs.

4.       All of these shows are on too late.

 

So the thing I am most excited about is the universal venom towards Leno right now, from Letterman, Kimmell, Fallon, and Conan. They all are openly talking about their disappointment in him.  People, aka NBC, point to Conan and say, "see, Conan is killing the Tonight Show," and they talk about $200mm in losses since he took over.  They are leaving out key facts:

 

1.       The Tonight Show desk was sacred when Carson was sitting there – completely sacred. It was Letterman's desk to have, and if you read The Late Shift, you'll see that Leno underhandedly stole the desk out from under him. He is a horrible person, I think people ignore that fact – read the Late Shift and listen to nearly every person he has known for more than 10 minutes and you'll hear a story of an evolution from a great comic to a robotic a**hole.

2.       Leno, not Conan, dismantled the Tonight Show desk.  I have to stop myself here and just say what I really want to say. Jay's delivery of jokes is embarrassing. He does this thing where he repeats himself after telling the joke while the pre-programmed laughter is graciously filled in by the crowd. It is a sign of comedic weakness, its something a new comic could never get away with, and time doesn't give a comedian the right to be a hack.

3.       NBC itself, and network television in general, have destroyed Late Night, not Conan.  They "overcommercial" everything, they have allowed themselves to become comfortable with really stale interview content, and it's sad.  Conan never bought into that, his interviews are funny, he is okay with being uncomfortable or awkward in an interview, not everything has to be "just ok", it can be great. Jay doesn't give a crap about great anymore.

Let me leave it with this one last thought.  Howard Stern is someone who I really admire as a comedian. His time with Sirius is up at the end of this year, and there are varying opinions of his success on his run at Sirius satellite radio. There are 2 truths, however, that you cannot argue about his time at Sirius:

1.       The guy changed Satellite radio forever.  Sirius and XM existed before Howard, and they'll exist after, but they exist in this grand scale now b/c of him.  The medium is struggling, but the medium is amazing. It is commercial free content that you pay for – and the content is amazing, which brings me to point 2.

2.       Howard's show, for fans especially, went to a completely new level at Sirius. You can look at it from a juvenile perspective and think its better b/c he can swear, but the truth is those dirty jokes/curses are less frequent than you can imagine.  Howard spent MORE time on juvenile behavior and graphic content while on the FM radio, and that was because people cornered him.  At Sirius, he is free to be himself.  The show  is flourishing right now, where 90% of his content is speaking about politics, the news, humor, religion, and not about the elements that people associate with the Stern name.

 

Now it probably sounds like I'm advocating for Howard to get a late night spot to fill in in all this mess – I don't think that at all. I think that Conan/Kimmell/Fallon can handle this well after Letterman leaves and Leno drops off the face of the earth. They have it covered.

However, I do think that Conan can take all of this disappointment, all of this anger, all of this energy, and primarily all of his talent, and take over for Howard when he leaves Sirius radio in December of 2010.  The medium of Satellite radio will need a new champion, one with more mass appeal, and Conan can do it.

I recognize that his physical humor will not be seen on a radio medium, but I think his wit, his bravery, his honesty with fans are the same exact qualities fans love out of Howard, and his more mass appeal could bring millions more to the amazing Sirius platform.

 

As much as it may not seem this way, TV needs Conan more than Conan needs TV. I literally wouldn't do more than shrug my shoulders if I heard that CBS, NBC and ABC were going under tomorrow. I don't care, who cares. What do they provide me? Entertainment? Okay, I can get plenty from elsewhere. My DVR is basically empty. I don't have allegiance to anything on TV anymore. SNL, sure its funny. Survivor, yah, I love it, but I can live without it.

Can I live without Sirius at this point? I'm not sure. The 25 minutes of commercials per hour on regular radio is embarrassing, its an assault on my sensibility, its demeaning, its degrading, its just brutal.   Can I live without the internet? No, it's the best way to get information that has ever been dreamt of.  Can I live without Cable TV? Probably not – I need my Celtics, and I need Mad Men, and I needed the Sopranos and Deadwood. I have Netflix, too, I can live my life just fine.

I feel like Conan has finally figured out what he needs to do – and getting distance from NBC and network TV is in his near future.