Never Too Old To Play™

Jay Leno crossed the line on Wednesday’s edition of The Jay Leno Show.

While Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and especially David Letterman have been unrelenting, at times harsh and arguably unfair with the barbs they’ve volleyed over the whole NBC late night mess, they’ve always kept the focus on Leno and the business with jokes about the situation itself, NBC’s ineptitude, Leno’s perceived role in all of this, the controversial decision to install Leno over Letterman as host of The Tonight Show when the legendary Johnny Carson retired in 1992, and of course Leno’s chin.

Leno, however, took things to the next level with the following segment from his monologue:

“Letterman has been hammering me every night. Going after me. Hey Kev, you know the best way to get Letterman to ignore you? Marry him. He will not bother you. He won’t look you in the eye.”

Ironic coming from a guy who returned home early from the one trip to Europe he took with his wife, Mavis, because he would rather be working than vacationing with the missus.

And unnecessarily personal as he shifted the focus from Letterman himself to his wife. Compare it to this other riff from Monday night’s episode:

“Boy, remember the more innocent days of late night TV, when the only thing people cared about was what intern the host was nailing? What happened to those days?”

Did you catch the subtle difference in the angle Leno was coming from in each of the jokes?

While I understand that he has a right to defend himself against the barrage of attacks Letterman has been leveling at him over the past couple of weeks, he really should be fighting fire with fire and leaving veiled references to people who have absolutely nothing to do with the situation whatsoever out of it.

The bottom line is that Leno’s comment was entirely uncalled for and a pathetically cheap low blow, a highly uncharacteristic 180 degree about face of the jovial onscreen persona that he needed to desperately cling to until the whole scenario played itself out.

Unlinked source(s): TampaBay.com, New York Post

Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, apparently inhabits a different reality from the rest of us.

In response to Conan O’Brien and David Letterman’s on-air attacks against Jay Leno, Mr. Ebersol chimed in with his two cents on the late night disaster by citing that Letterman “couldn’t beat (Leno) in the ratings” and blaming the debacle on “an astounding failure by Conan.”

This claim is in direct contradiction of the well-established facts of the situation, the most important of which is that this so-called late night shuffle is NBC’s clumsy attempt to appease their local affiliates who have long lamented the loss of lucrative ad revenue from their local news programs due to The Jay Leno Show’s weak performance relative to the scripted programming that used to occupy the 10-11pm time slot.

Mr. Ebersol’s comments appear as little more than a transparent attempt to back peddle on NBC’s misinterpretation of the success of Saturday Night Live’s Thursday night edition of Weekend Update during the Presidential election as the television audience’s growing “appetite for live, topical programming,” if you even subscribe to the honesty of that statement which many recognized as a smokescreen for their true motivation of drastically cutting the costs of their primetime programming (the production budget for an episode of, say, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit dwarfs that of a talk show episode).

This misstep by NBC cost their affiliates, who keep all of the profits from ad revenue for local nightly news programming, a lot of money, but NBC has only now decided to answer their complaints because of their potential to scuttle government approval of NBC’s sale to Comcast. The affiliates have been complaining almost since day one yet NBC was previously willing to continue to do the right thing by supporting O’Brien as their investment in the future of late night.

Now, O’Brien has reportedly signed an exit deal that unpleasantly severs his ties with NBC after having had little more than seven months to build an audience at his new time slot. When Leno took over hosting duties of The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson, who was a far more popular host than he ever was with ratings much higher than he ever had (Carson’s final show was viewed by an estimated 50 million people), NBC stuck with him through the first 15 months during which his ratings were far lower than Carson’s and through the next twenty-two months in direct competition with Late Show with David Letterman during which he lost in the ratings. In fact, it wasn’t until just over three years after the debut of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that the show finally beat Letterman’s not because Leno was funnier or more likable but because of the Hugh Grant interview in which the actor spoke rather candidly about the scandal surrounding his prostitution-related arrest.

I know Mr. Ebersol is just another corporate lackey spouting the company line, but it would have been nice to hear him stick with the facts rather than twist the truth into some ridiculous, self-serving claim to try to divert the blame that falls squarely – and deservedly – on his fellows’ shoulders.

That would have been far more revolutionary than a late night talk show airing during primetime.

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.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association released its 2009 Golden Globes nominations today with a good mix of expected nominees and surprise candidates.

The big news for me is that my two favorite new television shows of the season - Glee and Modern Family - were nominated for “Best Television Series – Musical Or Comedy.” In addition, Glee’s Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Jane Lynch were nominated for their lead actor, lead actress and supporting actress roles, respectively.

The “Best Television Series – Drama” is an interesting category in that only one of the five nominees, House, is on a broadcast network while the other four – Big Love, Dexter, Mad Men and True Blood – all reside on pay cable channels. I don’t know if that speaks more to the quality of these cable shows or the dearth of solid dramas on CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox.

On the other hand, the major networks own the “Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy” category with NBC’s 30 Rock and The Office alongside Modern Family (ABC) and Glee (Fox) with cable represented only by HBO’s Entourage, whose most recent season was fairly weak (I still love the show, though).

Congratulations go out to Steve Carell from The Office and Thomas Jane from HBO’s Hung, a show I got into earlier in the season that is also represented by Jane Adams in the “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role” category, for their “Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Musical Or Comedy” nominations.

And let’s not forget Neil Patrick Harris’s nomination for his portrayal of the ever-hilarious Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother and Jeremy Piven’s nomination for playing ruthless Hollywood agent Ari Gold on Entourage. I love ‘em both but admit that I’m pulling for NPH this time because Piven has already won 3 Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for this role.

I admit I’m a little disappointed that Jim Parsons was not nominated for his portrayal of Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D. on The Big Bang Theory, one of the funnier shows on television. He got an Emmy nod earlier this year, but I guess the Hollywood Foreign Press Association didn’t share The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ opinion.

On the movie side of things, nominees were pretty much as expected with a few surprises here and there. Movies like Precious, Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker – nominated in the “Best Motion Picture – Drama” category – and Julie & Julia and Nine – nominated in the “Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy” category – have had their fair share of Oscar buzz.

I’m a little surprised, though, by the nomination of Avatar for a top award although I suppose that maybe I should not be since the movie holds an 83% general rating and a 93% Top Critics rating at RottenTomatoes.com. I’ve read and heard a lot of backlash from film geeks about the lackluster story, snail’s pace of development and cheesy dialogue, and especially about the intimidating length (161 minutes).

The nominations of George Clooney (Up In the Air), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Tobey Maguire (Brothers), and Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) were quite expected considering all the Oscar buzz surrounding each of them.

The surprise was in the nomination of Robert Downey, Jr. for his portrayal of literary icon Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt for his part in (500) Days of Summer and Sandra Bullock for her role in The Proposal, and in the number of dual nominees this year: Bullock scored another one for the drama Blindside, Streep got her second for It’s Complicated and Matt Damon was nominated for his lead role in The Informant! and his supporting role in Invictus where he goes up against Christoph Waltz’ portrayal in Inglourious Basterds of Hans Landa, described by many as one of the best movie villains in history.

More interesting to me, though, is the “Best Animated Feature Film” category since I’m a big fan of animated movies. For the first time since the Golden Globes and Oscars started honoring these films with their own category, there has truly been a wide field from which to nominate. Despite how good some of the other nominees are, however, it’s realistically going to boil down to a vote for either Up’s impressive accomplishment of being the film that shows the world that animated movies can be as deep and sophisticated as live action films or The Princess And The Frog’s impressive accomplishment of bringing back the magic of Disney’s traditional animation studio with a generous dash of nostalgia for people like me who grew up on Disney movies. If the people were to choose, I’m sure nostalgia would win out, but we’re talking about critics here so I’ll have to give the edge to Up.