LAWRENCE, Kan. – The Winter Olympics can’t come soon enough for NBC. Until then, there’s little the network can do to stop their talk show hosts from taking nightly jabs at their apparent late night ineptitude. Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien has finally broken his off-air silence, rejecting the proposed move to 12:05 a.m. ET in a statement released today:
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Who knew it would take over 15 years for the chinks in NBC’s late night armor to show? Indeed, what goes around seems to be coming around for the network that once branded itself “America’s Late Night Leader.”
It’s becoming clear that the decisions NBC made in 1991 set the stage for the giant mess currently waiting at its doorstep.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Rumors began swirling today about the future of NBC late night. With an end to the 10 p.m. (9 p.m. CT) Jay Leno Show imminent, many people are wondering what will happen to new Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien.
It has been said many times over that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Such is true of NBC.
The network that passed over David Letterman as Johnny Carson’s successor for The Tonight Show in the early 1990s seems to have made a similar gaffe with Leno and O’Brien. Like former NBC Entertainment executive Warren Littlefield – made infamous by Bill Carter’s book The Late Shift and a subsequent HBO movie of the same name, current entertainment chief Jeff Gaspin offered the 11:30 time slot to a seemingly hot commodity, O’Brien, in order to prevent losing him to a rival network.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Late Show with David Letterman: Led by the premiere host in late-night television, the Late Show did a superb job last Wednesday when actor Russell Crowe appeared on the show after his arrest last week for throwing a telephone at a New York hotel worker. If Johnny Carson is the eternal King of Late Night, then David Letterman is its Crowned Prince. Letterman is by far the best interviewer of all late-night talk show hosts, and his star shone bright when he appropriately conducted a compassionate, serious interview, infused with a perfect amount of humor. Regardless of ratings, Late Show with David Letterman is qualitatively far superior to any of its competition. Even technical-director-turned-director Jerry Foley, who is often lacking in his ability to direct a music performance, rose to the occasion with a commendable job on Paul Anka’s jazzed up rendition of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”