Never Too Old To Play™

When I first heard about last week’s rumors involving Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, my immediate reaction was that it had to be bull since NBC would never be stupid enough to mess around with an iconic program like The Tonight Show. NBC’s official announcement on Sunday that The Jay Leno Show would move from its 10:00-11:00PM ET time to a half-hour slot starting at 11:35PM ET, currently occupied by Conan O’Brien’s incarnation of The Tonight Show, proved that I gave “the peacock” way too much credit.

NBC officials already proved themselves ignorant of the common sense principles of network programming when they decided to cut the five hours of scripted television shows that aired in the 10:00-11:00PM slot in favor of a significantly cheaper Leno-hosted talk show under the guise of building on a renewed “appetite for live, topical programming.”

Whether you choose to believe that malarky, which paints NBC as not having the mental faculties to realize that the surge in ratings for their Saturday Night Live program was simply due to the fervor surrounding the Presidential election (specifically, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin), or the suspected cost cutting motivation for a company suffering from a consistent fourth place ratings spot since 2004 (ironically right around the time they announced that O’Brien would be taking over The Tonight Show from Leno in 2009) thanks to an inability to develop compelling new programs, the network comes out looking like a big, fat imbecile with no hope for salvation.

At least NBC is willing to acknowledge its mistakes and learn from them – the studio has ordered a veritable cornucopia of new drama concepts from entertainment luminaries such as producer Jerry Bruckheimer whose earlier television collaborations include the hit series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as well as Without a Trace and The Amazing Race, The Practice and Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley, and NYPD Blue writer and House creator David Shore as well as a new Law & Order spin-off that will take place in Los Angeles and hopefully be better than the excruciatingly boring Law & Order: Trial by Jury.

The problem is that this should have been what they did at the end of 2008 instead of developing a primetime version of Leno’s Tonight Show that, while handily beating CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman and even O’Brien’s Tonight Show in the ratings, had a next to zero chance of even remotely competing with the other networks’ scripted programming.

NBC really should have just parted ways with Leno despite the risk of him starting a new show at a competitor network. Instead of showing that they’re willing to make the effort to invest in the future with an edgier, smarter brand of comedy that is more in line with the changing tastes of American audiences who embraced films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hangover in favor of movies like Old Dogs and Land of the Lost which are family comedies more akin to Leno’s safer, more traditional brand of comedy, the studio has sent a clear message that they’re mired in the past and have come off looking like desperate, reactionary fools by not giving either Leno or O’Brien’s programs even a year to build and grow.

In all their bumbling haste, NBC has buried their future in late night television, now that O’Brien has finally quit, in exchange for a quick band-aid for their current financial problems. Leno and Letterman’s shows, like the hosts themselves, are getting rather long in the tooth. Neither comedian is going to do this for that much longer – either because they themselves decide to hang up their gloves or audiences will have smartened up enough to demand better entertainment – and when the time comes for NBC to find a new host for The Tonight Show, who will be able to step up to the plate? Certainly not Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel. Definitely not Craig Ferguson. Carson Daly? Yeah, right.

But will The Tonight Show with Jay Leno even last that long? NBC has no doubt done some serious damage to Leno’s brand through this whole debacle with many people on the Internet – and even a fellow late night host – wrongfully laying the blame on him and undoubtedly ready to boycott his show… if it even gets that far (rumors are circulating that Leno may try to wash his hands of the situation by following O’Brien out of NBC).

About the only good thing coming out of this train wreck is that O’Brien comes out looking even better than he did before. His pride may have taken a little bit of a hit, but there is a tremendous amount of sympathy and support for O’Brien from the new generation of viewers who watch him not at 11:35 or 12:05 or 12:35 but anytime they want on sites like YouTube and are changing the landscape of the television industry by doing so. More importantly, he now has the opportunity to reinvent his brand free of the shackles and restrictions imposed on by NBC and perhaps should look to cable programming or even a less traditional format like a web show to accomplish it.

Whether Conan O’Brien chooses to reinvent the wheel like the pioneer he always was or simply improve it, it’s nice that his future is for once truly in his own hands.