Leno's Interview with Oprah Opens Up Ways NBC Could Have Avoided the Fiasco

I watched an interview by Jay Leno with Oprah. It was very enlightening and put the whole NBC fiasco into greater clarity.

Some key issues that came out during the interview:
1) Leno was canceled because of poor ratings at 10PM
2) NBC wanted to cancel Conan because his ratings were down 49% since Leno had run the show
3) Leno was told that Conan would go along with the changes proposed

Granted, there is a lot of "he said, she said" in this. However, it is becoming more clear that the executives at NBC are the real jerks here. Leno is being blamed for coming back to the Tonight Show. He did not ask to come back; NBC suggested making the changes.

As I have noted in a previous blog, I am not a big fan of Jay Leno. That, however, is inconsequential here. Leno might have said no to NBC and quit. It was the second time they had fired him (he was removed from the Tonight Show--he did not volunteer). He could have gone someplace else. However, he wanted to go back to the Tonight Show--the show he never wanted to leave in the first place,

What NBC did was to allow two of its stars to battle it out in the public eye, thereby damaging everything around. It was like a drive-by shooting--innocent by-standers were killed.

NBC could have come out and explained that Conan's ratings were below expectations and that the networks and affiliates were not happy with either the Leno Show or the Tonight Show ratings. They could have said that it was their decision and that it was a business decision, not one based upon personal preferences. They could have done many things that would be expected by a good management team. However, the NBC executives are not good executives; that seems clear. Instead of stepping in after the shooting between Leno and Conan started to assume the responsibility, they started calling Conan names. They thought he made them look bad. There is no way Conan could make the NBC execs looks any worse than they made themselves appear.

Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, said in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week that he is frustrated by his inability to do anything about this. All he can do is watch a future asset being hollowed out by lousy management. I hope that he can extract a better price during the acquisition and that he has the good sense to fire the NBC executives in charge of this situation immediately.