14 January 2010

Late Night Nonsense

I don't have a whole lot to weigh in on the current situation going on with respect to NBC's late night programming, other than to say, in my opinion, the ball was dropped in the mid-90s, when Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show instead of Letterman.  Fact: David Letterman is far funnier than Jay Leno.  I suppose there is something simple and non-threatening about Leno that appeases "those people" in America (the same "those people" who are afraid of Thai food and homosexuals and fans of Sarah Palin).  But as these past seven months have proven, "those people" have happily accepted Letterman as their late night leader.  Though Leno was the habitual "winner" in the ratings throughout his "competition" against Letterman, it was a competition NBC made for themselves by not giving Letterman the show in the first place.  I sincerely doubt Leno would have had the chutzpah to move to CBS (or any other network) against Letterman had Letterman been crowned Carson's successor, and NBC would have continued its unrestricted dominion over late night TV.  As it stands, NBC may have very well killed the Tonight Show, leaving Letterman the lone player on the field.  Watch the following clip and show me a Leno clip that is even remotely as funny.  It's a dare.

2 comments:

  1. We agree with your assessment completely! And this clip was great :) Personally, I am not a big fan of late-night (mostly because I can't stay up) but I do like Conan a lot better than Jay. Jay is only funny when he does Jay Walking because other people are being funny, he just sits and watches them.

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  2. While I think that Letterman and Leno are both equally funny, I'm just so upset for Conan. I mean, what can he do now? Imagine being in his situation. How embarrassing must this all be. And the worst part is, I think he's MUCH funnier than these other two guys. I seriously hope that all of the trash-talking from comics and TV personalities that has been going around about Leno has some sort of negative effect on his ratings once he gets The Tonight Show back.

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