"It's All About Money"

Meant to post this last week when I first saw it (around 3:15):



Letterman hit the nail on the head. NBC's first mistake was five years ago, in pushing Leno out to ensure Conan would stay. Since Jay did not want to retire, NBC did not want to lose their late night powerhouse, and so finagled a way to keep him. But you can't have both.

As Tom Shales put it:

The feeble-brained executives should have heeded the "I don't care" rule propounded by the great CBS News President Bill Leonard when he had to decide whether Dan Rather or Roger Mudd would succeed Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair of "The CBS Evening News," another vaunted secular pulpit. Leonard had to deal with the reality that whichever one didn't get the job would go to a competing network.

Leonard thought and considered and decided: He didn't care if Roger Mudd went to another network because the damage to CBS ratings would likely be minimal, at least in comparison with the damage that the more glamorous and telegenic Rather could do. So Rather, you might recall, got the job.

As Ingrid Michaelson sings on a song I love (I can't believe I'm using it in this context), "The only way to really know / is to really let it go."

Why Fox Affiliates May Not Pick Up Conan

So Conan's free to appear on another network. Yay! NBC's not a total douche.

I wondered before why NBC affiliates would rather show reruns than the Jay Leno Show, and the same premise holds for Fox: why wouldn't the affiliates run Conan's show? How could they possibly lose when you compare it to what they air now--reruns of The Simpsons and Seinfeld, a show that completed its run over a decade ago?

This Broadcasting & Cable piece breaks it down:

For the Fox owned and affiliated stations, picking up O'Brien would appear to cause far more pain than gain. The performance of the stations in the Top 10 markets at 11:30 p.m. is largely equivalent to NBC's Tonight Show ratings in the same hour. But the stations keep far more ad inventory in that hour now than they would if they were forced to give it up to Fox. Every half-hour syndicated show offers stations as much as six minutes of advertising inventory to sell, while a half-hour of network inventory typically offers only about a minute.

Sources say Fox brass has asked the Fox-owned stations to run the numbers, and stations have responded that they expect they would lose millions if the local outlets had to give a late-night hour back to the network. The Fox affiliates fall somewhere between lukewarm and intrigued about the notion of O'Brien shifting to their late night air, perhaps at 11:30. Some wonder why he should expect to do better on Fox after posting lagging ratings during his Tonight Show run, while others say he's a rare bankable talent that may be a free agent.

Taste Isn't Everything

The problem with discussing Jay and Conan's shows, as well as the rest of the late night debacle, is that invariably the author inserts his taste, which of course comes across as fact--that obviously Conan is so much funnier than Jay, that Jay is flat-out dry and unfunny. As much as we all do this to some degree, it's particularly irksome in this case, because both men--as well as the rest of the late night group (save for Carson Daly, but no one cares about him anyway)--are all established comics in one way or another. Sure, their humor, style and approach all differ, but that doesn't necessarily make one inherently unfunnier than the other. Jay had a loyal audience and was regularly beating Letterman by 20%--and ratings do indicate that he was popular. Someone was watching him; it may not be those who write the articles and Twitter obsessively, but he had plenty of lower-profile fans.

However, despite the partisanship, this Daily Beast article dissects why Conan's Tonight Show wasn't doing well, and he throws out the timeslot as hogwash:

The problems were fundamental. First is that here in the hangover of the 2008 election, we want political satire. O’Brien doesn’t do much political satire. If you think of the transcendent bits that surfaced on YouTube since Conan began Tonight last June, they’ve come from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, various cable chat shows, even ancient Saturday Night Live.

Conan’s only major contribution to political goofery is Smigel’s (inspired) ventriloquism of politicians like George W. Bush. It’s no wonder that O’Brien’s Late Night ratings plummeted by nearly 700,000 viewers (more than 25 percent) back in 2008, when the nation glued its eyes to the campaign. It should have been an omen: His Tonight Show felt off-topic before it started.

That might not have been so deadly if the Tonight throne hadn’t distorted what made O’Brien funny. The problem is not the old saw that O’Brien’s “brand of comedy” doesn’t play at 11:35 p.m. Carson and Letterman had plenty of inspired wackiness, and Grandma and Grandpa liked them just fine. The problem is that O’Brien is really at his best as a straight man—the guy doing the horrified reaction shot when the masturbating bear runs out on stage. He’s a ringmaster rather than an emotional center of gravity.

This flows from O’Brien’s Harvard Lampoon sensibility, a kind of comedy that is impish and intellectual rather than crusading and heartfelt. (You can never imagine Conan snarling like Jon Stewart.) There’s nothing wrong with this, and it could work within the right show. But when O’Brien sat down at Johnny’s desk, the gravitas seemed to throw off his balance.

He goes on to say that the Tonight Show hadn't figured itself out yet. Well, duh. That's not a huge sin for a show that's only been on a few months, and talk shows--which tend to have hundreds of episodes over a multi-year run--should have even more leeway than other types of programs. They're done on the fly, working simultaneously on several days' worth of episodes. Anyone who's ever watched the same host multiple days in a row knows that they repeat jokes; that is, they exhaust the same stories, news items, and themes day after day. This week every host has been riffing on the Jay/Conan/NBC mess; it hasn't gotten old yet, but the jokes about Harry Reid have. It's the nature of the game, not meant to be watched night after night, but to flip casually among many. As such, some nights are bad; it depends on the jokes, the news, the guests, and if you stick around, you do get glimpses of the style. But each man and his respective staffs put on a show, and the effort is seen. Denigrating either performer for comedic chops is unfair to the work they do.

On Jay and Conan, and This Awful Situation

The brilliant Mark Harris predicted the Leno mess months ago:

But these days, with its lineup zigzagging from football to low-end cheapo reality like The Biggest Loser to botched onetime hits like Heroes to media pets like 30 Rock, NBC’s brand is scattershot. The face of the network, by virtue of sheer omnipresence, is Jay Leno, who, at 59, is not any network’s demographic ideal. He may not be killing NBC, as TV Guide recently speculated, but it’s beginning to feel like he’s participating in an assisted suicide. One thing’s already clear: Remaking an entire prime-time lineup in his familiarly peevish image was a Hail Mary pass, not a long-term business strategy. And one suspects the network knows it. With Jeff Gaspin already working hard to repair NBC’s relationship with the creative community by signing deals with high-profile producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and J. J. Abrams, it’s hard to imagine that he and Zucker are not beginning, very quietly, to consider a Plan B. That could involve paying off Leno and canceling his show, cutting it back to three or four nights a week to give the grid a little more flexibility, or even returning Leno, “by popular demand,” to the Tonight Show. Start sweating, Conan; Leno recently told a trade reporter he’d take that deal if he were asked to—a seemingly offhand comment that sounds a lot like the beginning of a gigantic face-saving maneuver.

TMZ broke the news Thursday that NBC was considering a shakeup in their primetime and late night schedule, an earthquake that only rose as the days continued. It was another powerful coup for TMZ, the first time sticking its tentacles into business matters. Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, both middle-aged white men not usually the sort of target the gossip site goes after, were now the number one story.

It’s a real shame that it all had to end this way. The “failed experiment” of The Jay Leno Show was pilloried online, absolutely brutalized from the moment it was announced. Sure, it sucked for the creative community, but it was an interesting, bold move, and I supported Jay, Conan, and NBC. NBC said multiple times that they would honor the two-year commitment, wanting to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but it was the affiliates—some, like Boston, which was against it from the start—who revolted.

Although NBC liked The Jay Leno Show, they felt they had no choice but to pull the plug, that a reduced load—airing two or three times a week—was not enough. Obviously, they wanted to hang on to Jay and Conan, to everyone, so they came up with their half-hour deal. It was a panacea, the best way they could retain all their talent. It’s a mess, with not enough time for everyone, yet too many holes to fill.

What’s changed so much is the business climate; the shows weren’t given much time to settle in, to get comfortable, showing just how different television is today. The Jay Leno Show hadn’t even been on the air for six months before it was cancelled, and it was performing to expectations. Conan’s Tonight Show was doing ok, but it had only been on the air since June. Conan was up against Letterman, an institution in his own right, and still in the midst of an extortion scandal; Jay’s show was an experiment still in the testing stage. It’s well known that their predecessors had bumpy rides when they first began, all they needed was a little time, at least a year!

Sure, the audiences for each comedian were different—a lot of people who were used to Jay at 11:30 may not have appreciated Conan’s humor, since they rarely saw him when he was on after midnight, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get used to a new face or a new slot. But even those who want to argue that online viewership should matter—Conan’s Tonight Show was the 13th most popular item on Hulu last year—it is an issue that is irrelevant for the affiliates, a group who rarely get the spotlight. Jay Leno’s show didn’t crack the Top 25. This isn’t surprising; while Jay beat Conan in total audience numbers, his biggest fans tended not to be the types of people who watch clips online: middle-aged parents, the loyalists, the people who’ve known Jay for years. Conan’s audience is naturally up later, college-aged and people who aren’t settled into decades-old habits, and will watch the same wacky stuff over and over again, flipping online for the clips they missed.

It’s hard to comment on Leno vs. Conan’s respective shows without getting into taste—and that’s another arena where no one ever wins. Both of them have made several shots at NBC’s expense, as well as riffing on the situation at hand. Alessandra Stanley has an astute analysis (though she does come down on Leno’s side; he is the more polished performer):

[Conan] is considered a younger, hipper comedian, but as it turns out, his “Tonight” show is not very different from Mr. Leno’s. On Thursday they both made the exact same joke about the freezing temperatures in China — so cold that little children can’t get to their factory jobs. (Mr. Leno told his version a bit better.)

(I've noticed repeat jokes among the late-night hosts, too; Jay always comes out on top.)

But truthfully, both men got screwed. While there are plenty of people who say Jay should retire (and should’ve retired years ago), should he really be forced out? His Tonight Show was regularly beating Letterman. Leno himself wants no hard feelings, and was always supportive of Conan. He just wants to do a show. And Conan has worked hard and is great at what he does; he shouldn’t be forced out (though that’s a dominant reading of the situation). Also, Conan upended his life for the Tonight Show; he is in charge of a whole crew of people and their families, and that they moved to accommodate the changes, too. It’s no small thing to a lot of people.

So while it’s not surprising that Conan made the decision he did:

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I've been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I've been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I've been absurdly lucky. That said, I've been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn't matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it's always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

It still leaves everyone else back to asking, now what? Is Jay Leno back to the Tonight Show? Will everything about his new show be completely forgotten? He had some good stuff in there (like the “Earn Your Plug” game). Whose studio will he use? How will Conan do on Fox, where he is most likely to land? Is the Tonight Show tarnished forever? Will Jay lose a lot of audience share or support? Will those rush-job dramas be ready by March? Will this season be another implosion all-around for television, like it was two years ago? Will the affiliates really be happy? For business buffs, how will this impact the Comcast deal? Is there nothing worth a wait?

Comcast’s pending takeover of NBC Universal is the dog sniffing around the hen. While Jeff Gaspin, Chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, has said that the pending Comcast takeover has had no effect on the decision, some outlets believe otherwise, citing the PR nightmare that rogue affiliates would cause as further proof of what a stinking egg NBC is. Gaspin, for his part, said that he wanted to wait until September, he wanted to see the numbers for a full television year, but the affiliates threatening to revolt forced his hand.

According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, a third of the affiliates (NBC has over 200) had talked about preempting The Jay Leno Show. I’m not sure what they would put on instead (would reruns really have given them a better boost? Seriously?), because their local news drop-offs were so bad, and advertising rates were plummeting faster than stomachs on a roller coaster. Yes, it is a bad time in media, but that's no longer an acceptable excuse, and clearly neither was waiting. It’s one of the few times that affiliates get to bully their bosses around, and so many, rightfully, place the blame on them.

Over the summer, Leno made his rounds to the affiliates, trying to soothe them that everything would be alright, that losing Law and Order wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And yet, somehow, despite it being on all the other stations, it was. NBC tried mightily—God knows everyone saw Jay Leno’s face everywhere the past several months, something Jay was quick to joke about—but somehow, it felt too little, too late.

Further reading: Ratings info included here; More on NBC's "Midlife Crisis"

Brand Integration, 30 Rock, and the "Responsible" Point of View

I tend to keep a few magazines piled up on my desk at work—ones that feature stories I want to read, but aren’t so pressing that I take them home. I had about four that were there for months, and finally decided, since they were at that point where no one else would want them either, to take them home.

I was looking through the newest one, a New York with David Patterson on the cover, dating from October that I had plucked to read a Times story, when I came across a hidden treasure: “What Tina Fey Would do for a SoyJoy”, written by a fave of mine, Emily Nussbaum. It’s about brand integration in television shows, and specifically discusses 30 Rock and MadTV, two shows that have been on my mind recently.

Television is expensive to produce, and ratings are going down, down, down. So what are TV execs to do to make money? Introduce brands inside the programming. This has gone on for some time—dating back to the early days of TV—and it’s been controversial for nearly all that time, too. But advertising is hot property (just look at shows about advertising, Mad Men and the forthcoming Trust Me), and stories about ads also enable the producers to use real products to tell those stories.

Websites and magazine features connect viewers with the brands their favorite characters wear, so why not just have the characters say what they’re wearing? But that’s hard to do well. A big deal was made a few years ago when Alias and Ford struck a deal requiring the characters to constantly call attention to the vehicle. It made a mockery of the program, taking everyone out of the action; it was so obviously an ad that had an expensive budget and story tied to it that the idea of a television show seemed besides the point.

30 Rock is a case study here; Nussbaum frames the show as the tension between art and commerce, exemplified by Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. This is also where the set up for many of the jokes come from, all meant to give double the laughs since they’re satirizing many things at once:

In the show’s fifth episode, Donaghy talks with Lemon about integrating brands. “I’m sorry, you’re saying you want us to use the show to sell stuff?” Liz asks.

JACK: Look, I know how this sounds.

LIZ: No, come on, Jack. We’re not doing that. We’re not compromising the integrity of the show to sell—

PETE: Wow. This is Diet Snapple?

LIZ: I know, it tastes just like regular Snapple, doesn’t it?

30 Rock has done this a few times, notably with Verizon. But while it’s a wink-wink to the audience and the advertisers, it still leaves a somewhat queasy aftertaste—yeah, you’re shilling, you’re just being tongue-in-cheek about it. Fey has said that she wants to point it out to her audience always, but as the article makes clear, that isn’t always possible, and in fact, one brand prominently displayed was widely believed to be a fake: SoyJoy. The integration didn’t really work, since no one actually realized it was a brand, and the brand itself didn’t get the boost it was looking for, since it wasn’t placed within the series as they wanted it. They were an afterthought, squeezed into the story for the sake of commerce. Not always the best way to get a brand mention.

But these kinds of jokes get old quickly, as Joss Whedon points out: “You can’t do it again and be cute, because then it’s a different type of shilling. Eventually you realize the reason they’re making a joke is because there’s something abhorrent going on.”

I don’t mind brand integration it as long as it works within the story. I am a story purist. It’s all about verisimilitude. The problem is, whether or not a brand is used in storytelling it tends to be noticed if it’s prominent enough in the scene. I’ve seen Seinfeld episodes where Jerry has a box of generic corn flakes on his counter, and that looks just as weird as seeing Sprite cans in front of a bunch of writers on 30 Rock, one because the absence of a recognizable brand is bizarre, the other because it’s so obvious that it’s product placement. It made perfect sense for Dwight to temp at Staples, for Don Draper to wax eloquent on Kodak cameras, for Lorelai Gilmore to express shock when Christopher bought a Volvo; all of these times I was fully following the story, with no thought about companies buying airtime and the deals that were exchanged. If it makes sense for a character to have a Mac, then no one will wonder how much money it cost for Apple to have the computer in the scene.

Interstitials, extras—things like webisodes, blog posts, and other interactive elements that make up the rest of a television show’s official site—have also become a battleground. Actors often aren’t paid extra for them, which of course causes problems. It can also cause confusion deciphering the actor from the character. Most NBC shows have a “Chime In” promo that airs right before the cold open; this is to prompt viewers to stick around for the show and to generate excitement. For The Office promo, Jenna Fischer taps the microphone three times, mimics the “ba ba ba” of the NBC jingle in a fun, flirty way, and John Krasinski, who is standing beside her adoringly, responds, “Boy, you’re cute.” How sweet. Except they are identified by their real names—“Chime in with John & Jenna” appears onscreen—not as Jim and Pam, who would actually do an exchange like this. John and Jenna aren’t dating; it is their characters who are in love with each other, not the actors themselves. It’s not cute, or endearing; this forced element (no matter how natural it appears onscreen) takes the audience out of the show. If they shill for NBC, they should do it as themselves; if it’s a funny bit in-character, then they should be identified as being in character. Of course, it’s Joss Whedon (interviewed in this article on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), who sums it up: “We invest in the reality of the show! And this is one of the ways they’re picking apart the idea of the narrative, keeping you from knowing if it’s a show or not…. They want to take the story apart so they can stuff it with as much revenue as they can. And ultimately what you get is a zombie, a stuffed thing—a non-show.”

Exactly. I understand a network and a show has to make money. And webisodes and blogs and podcasts can be fun—as long as they don’t mess with the core product.

So what about the Responsibility Project?

Liberty Mutual runs ads every week in the New York Times magazine, framing "The Ethicist" column, posing a scenario and offering several ways of solving it, asking which is “the responsible point of view”. Liberty Mutual’s campaign is the Responsibility Project, a series of films that pose thorny situations and the choices the characters face. Liberty Mutual also struck a deal with NBC as part of the Responsibility Project to offer television that offered “responsible viewpoints” and to help develop scripts that featured this mindset.

Liberty Mutual is an insurance company, and they, like Dove, are marketing themselves based on a feel-good principle. Having television that explored ethical viewpoints could be interesting, if the show doesn’t get preachy and bogged down by company objectives. But what exactly is the responsible point of view? Isn’t the point to explore the options, that sometimes what one person thinks is right is completely wrong and immoral for another? Mandating a mindset doesn’t work; the Family Friendly Programming Forum tried to make family-friendly programs, working on the pilot of several shows, most notably Gilmore Girls. Most shows that are labeled family-friendly tend to be anything but—The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 7^th Heaven—even Gilmore Girls, especially as the show continued, made a mockery out of marriage and fidelity, two important values when discussing family. Too many people are leery of corporations watching and controlling our every move; even when they try to do good (and many do), it’s hard to shake the notion of ulterior motives (money money money).

Pretty much everyone interviewed for the New York article is a 30 Rock fan. I am not. I’ve seen maybe about half a dozen episodes, a few from this season and last. I do not find the show funny, though I concede I haven’t seen many of the “best” episodes, as I’ve understood them to be. According to Nussbaum, “What makes the show funny, and timely, and terrifying, is that on 30 Rock, Liz Lemon always loses.”

Which is exactly my problem.

Liz Lemon (a terrible, self-defeating name…which is probably the purpose) is supposed to be the Neurotic Single Woman. She’s supposed to follow in that long line of 30ish single women who worry about their singleness—Mary Tyler Moore, Ally McBeal, Carrie Bradshaw. She babbles, she’s awkward, she’s often the sanest one amidst the crazies. Not only does Liz never win, even the smallest battles, but she’s constantly made a fool; no one at her job respects her. They walk all over her, but she has to corral her castmates together to make sure they can function, while she can barely function herself. Tina Fey has said that Liz Lemon is her single alter-ego, that if she didn’t meet and marry her husband she would be just as pathetic as Liz Lemon. For what bugs me most of all is that Liz Lemon is pathetic. She is fake-perky, always trying to hide those tears of shame and embarrassment by starting another ill-advised endeavor, failing at that, and then doing something shameful to get over her feelings. She never has any pride. She doesn’t stand up for herself. She’s not funny, she’s sad.

I welcome a real discussion on 30 Rock, why people think it’s funny, why Liz Lemon is the complete opposite of how I characterized her. As I’ve said, I haven’t seen enough episodes (nor have the notes), to write a real review of her character, why I don’t find her as appealing as she should be. I enjoyed her immensely on Saturday Night Live, but I find her strikingly unfunny—and sometimes insulting—on 30 Rock.