The Late Show Conflict: Battle for NBC

January 14, 2010. Executive Leaps to Leno's Defense. By Bill Carter
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/business/media/15conan.html
Synopsis
The New York Times ran an interesting article on the recent controversy at NBC. As Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien continue to squabble over who should get the prime time slot for their late night show, an NBC executive Dick Ebersol has stepped in to defend Jay Leno. So far Leno has taken a great deal of the heat in the very public conflict, which is nightly mocked by a still angry David Letterman, who has gone a good eighteen years since he was rudely ousted from the Late Show and still harbors some hurt feelings. Mr. O’Brien joked that young people should be inspired to believe that they can “do anything you want in life — unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.” Mr. Ebersol shifts the blame away from Leno and NBC executives and instead claims that this whole mess is a result of O'Brian's performance, which he goes as far to call "an astounding failure." Ebersol says he advised Conan O'Brian to appeal first and foremost to cities in the central time zones, a strategy that late night talk show legend Johnny Carson had always followed. He claims that Mr. O'Brian had ignored this advice and ran a show for seven months that was unaccessible to his most important audience.
Response
I find all the banter and posturing done by these talk show hosts to be pretty entertaining. They don't have many reservations about comically ripping each other apart on live television, and there is a lot of professional jealousy and backstabbing behind the scenes that I didn't know about. Personally I like Leno best out of the three pundits, but he also comes off as much more ambitious than Letterman or O'Brian. I didn't realize that the midwest was so important to these talk show hosts success, to me it always seemed like the only city they cared about was New York. Late night talk shows are a big part of American culture, and I hope a solution is reached where all parties can have a prime time show. I agree with Ebersol on a couple aspects, first that Conan O'Brian didn't play to his audience enough. His show has high ratings and a lot of appeal for the Northeast and the younger generation, but these groups make up a small part of his market. Also I agree with his opinion that whoever is most popular deserves the prime time slot, which in this case is Jay Leno.