I'm with Conan

During that time, I jumped from The Tonight Show to The Late Show to get my Dave fix.  It certainly wasn't for Letterman's interviews.  He's terrible when it comes to the interview.  Letterman's innovation was to make the talk show less about promoting the guests and more about bringing in the entertainment.  Ultimately, we want our celebrities to give us The Right Soundbites about their promotion, a few personal remarks, and a 30 second clip.  Concentrate on the funny, less on the crap nobody cares about.  Conan O'Brien took this format and made it his own, and he brought it with him to the Tonight Show.  I would go on about how Craig Ferguson takes it even further, but this is post is mainly about Conan.

From 1993 to 2000 my late night schedule was catch the news on WAPT (ABC), flip over to WJTV (CBS) for Letterman, and then NBC for Conan, which meant sitting through a half hour of Cheers reruns.  In 2000 I purchased a DISH Network setup and pretty much immediately stopped watching the local news broadcasts in favor of The Daily Show on Comedy Central.  While I would occasionally flip over and watch the local news, I mostly skipped it in favor of reading local news on the web.  Even today I mainly use the web to consume the local news.  This changed in 2008 with Late Night with Conan O'Brien winding down in preparation for O'Brien's move to The Tonight Show as well as my acquisition of a DISH DVR.  I skipped the local news and Leno to watch Conan.  Sometimes live, but usually time shifted.  During the transitional period I caught a few episodes of Leno, and realized I didn't miss much.  Letterman also didn't get much love as he's aged a bit much and is best described as complacent, in the bad sense.  It's still infinitely greater than the new Leno show.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon premiered in March of 2009, and I caught it a few episodes in to its run.  It was okay, but around the same time Craig Ferguson had a Comedy Central special that got me hooked on his show.  By the time Conan took over The Tonight Show, Fallon was classic NBC Must See TV.  Combined with Conan's Tonight Show, I found myself watching WLBT, and hence NBC, from 10pm until 12:30am.  I would even occasionally watch the completely unwatchable Last Call if an interesting guest was announced.  Even more shocking, I would frequently find myself watching it straight through, completely negating the purpose of the DVR, and ruining my sleep schedule.  This is why a dual tuner DVR is great.  It solves the either/or problem when it comes to late night tv choices with "both".  Right now my late night ritual entails watching Late Night and The Late Late Show up to the start of the interviews, and then call it a night and watch the interviews when time permits.

Unfortunately those idiots at NBC decided to protect their fallen star, Leno, by mucking with their brightest.  Fallon is safe for now.  Conan will be fine, but it's virtually certain he'll be leaving NBC at the end of the week.  I can only hope the mentions of a move to Fox is a red herring, and Conan will actually replace Letterman.  Dave seems like he's the sort that would say, "I wanted to retire early but was keeping the seat warm enough long enough for NBC to screw you over so we could bring you here."  NBC had a million different choices for Leno.  Syndicate him.  Put him on an NBC-owned cable network.  Sell his contract to some other network.  Then again, they didn't want to risk splitting their viewership after losing half of it all after the new Leno show premiered.  Mix in a few egos and stubbornness and you're in this situation.

I don't really have any Leno hate, but I don't have any Leno love.  I can't stand his current show as it's completely boring.  I've attempted to watch it four times, three  of those at my parents' house.  I just can't bring myself to watch more than a segment or two before I get up to do something, anything else.  Sitting out in the freezing cold in pajamas is preferable.

No matter what happens, Conan will be fine.  There's one major network without a late night show.  There's another where the post-nightly-news slot has a guy who would like to retire.  They're not going to let a man and his entire crew where even a guy playing trombone in the house band has rabid fans slip away into obscurity.  NBC's idiocy will only serve to enrich everybody else and to further erase what few viewers it has left.