The Return of COCO

After months of anticipation, Conan O’Brien returns to television. His new show, entitled Conan, aired its first episode on Monday. While not perfect, it definably seemed a promising start for this as always funny performer.

The best part was probably the beginning, which was a pre taped bit on his journey from The Tonight Show to TBS. Of course it was anything but serious, as he goes from being executed mob style at NBC, to working as a birthday party clown and an employee at Burger King, to being saved from suicide by Larry King. It perfectly showed his ability to see the humor in everything.

Once the show began the Conan we know emerged, zany and lively. While he seemed a bit nervous if anything it fueled his already considerable energy. He, along with co-host Andy Richter, took a few jabs at NBC and even TBS, but nothing that was vindictive or truly mean spirited. The meanest jokes were at Conan’s own expense, such as showcasing an actual Halloween mask of a crude likeness of him that was called “ex talk show host”.

The weakest part of the show oddly enough was the talk show part, where he interviewed Seth Rogen and Lea Michele. Not because Conan is a bad interviewer, because he’s not. It just seems his best quality is the zany bits he comes up with. It would serve him better to have one interview guest a night and devote more time to comedy sketches. Of the two I liked the Seth Rogen interview better simply for an amusing story Seth told about how he proposed to his girlfriend, though I also enjoyed the interview with Lea Michele.

The show did go out with a bang though, with Conan rocking out with Jack White from The White Stripes. How many other talk show hosts would be playing guitar during the musical segment?

Overall it was a good first show. As prior experience has shown Conan improves as he relaxes and a bit of time passes from the beginning of a new talk show start. And he was definitely better this time around then he was when he started The Late Show all those years ago. So it seems he has the beginnings of a successful talk show.

Conan O'Brian Further Screwed Over By NBC

It seems that NBC really is doing everything to keep things the way it was, even if it means completely reinventing itself and screwing others over in the process. By this I mean that they are doing everything they can to keep Jay Leno on their network.

This all started in 2004 when Jay Leno announced that he would be leaving The Tonight Show in 2009. At first things went as they were expected to. A successor (Conan O’ Brian) was chosen and other networks started trying to lure the popular comic over to them. But in December 2008 it was announced that Jay Leno would remain on NBC with his own talk show. Furthermore it would air at 10pm five nights a week, significantly reducing the number of hour long scripted programs the network usually aired.

Let’s get one thing straight, this decision was mainly based on money. True NBC didn’t want to lost Leno, who was a ratings darling for the network. But a bigger realization in this decision was that it was much cheaper to produce one five days a week talk show then five hour long dramas. And the fact that this decision came during the beginnings of the recession only added more incentive for the network to try and save money.

It has been four months since The Jay Leno Show began airing and the results haven’t been great. Viewership for the show has been less then expected. Today it was announced that The Jay Leno Show will no longer air at 10pm after February 11th. Instead it will be trimmed to a ½ hour format and air at 11:30pm, with The Tonight Show airing at 12:05AM instead.

This is a slap in the face to Conan O’Brian, who already has had to put up with a ton of crap from NBC and Jay Leno. First instead of simply handing over the late night torch, as Johnny Carson did when he named Jay Leno his successor, Leno stole a lot of O’Brian’s thunder with his decision to remain on television. With Leno doing topical humor at an earlier time Conan’s material would unfortunately seem like it was already heard. Not that it was his fault; just that it was the nature of the situation.

But this is an even greater insult. Because Leno isn’t doing well in a 10pm time slot he’s rewarded by getting his old slot back and having Conan give up time for his show. That is not right. Leno had his tenure during the late night hours and now its Conan’s time.

While I would like to see Conan remain The Tonight Show host, it might be for the better if he moves to another network. One where he is appreciated and treated with the dignity he should have gotten all along.