[thinkfloyd14]

Originally Posted by red-beard

It wasn't Leno behind this. It was a bunch of stupid NBC executives. Leno went through what happened earlier in the week.

6 years ago, while Leno was #1, NBC didn't think he could sustain it forever, and decided to make a succession plan. This was to avoid the provious succession issue, between Leno and Letterman.

Last year, Leno was still #1. NBC went ahead with the plan. I expect this was also pushed by Conan, since it was he who would gain by moving to the "Tonight Show".

Leno had 6 months left on his contract when his run of the Tonight ended. He asked to be released from his contract so he could pursue other things. NBC said no. We think you are too valuable. They came up with the idea of the 10PM Jay Leno show. Leno didn't think it would work, but NBC said they had extensive data showing it would be great.

They even anticipated the drop in ratings. But they thought that when the drama shows went into re-runs, Jay would come out on top.

The local stations bled viewers. And the lead in to the local news and then the 'Conan' Tonight show was diminished. It was the revolt by the affiliates that got this thing started.

A decision was made to move the time slots around. I think this was based on people used to dealing with non-live shows. Moving a drama or comedy show from one night, or time slot to another doesn't affect the people in the show directly.

NBC came to Jay and told him the show wasn't doing what they thought. NBC decided to move Jay back to 11:35 and to move Conan to 12:05.

When they told Jay his show wasn't working at 10, Jay asked if he could be let out of his contract. NBC thought he was too valuable and said no. They wanted to move him back to 11:35. Jay asked if Conan would be OK with it. NBC was "sure" he would.

At this point, NBC springs the idea on Conan. This is where it started becoming public and all of this occured in the past three weeks. Conan, and many other people, get the impression this was started by Jay to get his old timeslot back. Again, it was NBC, under pressure from the local affiliates that instigated this, based on a serious drop in viewership and revenues.

To recap:

NBC made a bad decision 6 years ago
NBC decided carry through with the decision even through they had two #1 shows.
The decision hurt viewership and the local stations revolted
Without consulting either Jay or Conan they decided to change the schedules
Instead of bringing it to them together, they talked to Jay first
Conan didn't want to give up the show

This is complete bull****, Leno should have walked out like a man and let conan have his time, leno's time was up, and he should have left. Don't tell me there was no way for Leno to leave. If Conan decided to leave, Leno could have easily left or gone to another network.

YouTube - David Letterman - Will Jay Leno Do The Right Thing?