oh, you're with CoCo now, are you?
So of course the thing that’s got everyone all a-buzz (other than that earthquake, but that’s, like, a bummer) is this business with Conan O’Brien and how much of a testament to how we- I guess as a generation?- are “about” lots of stuff, but can’t be bothered to DO much of anything, even watch TV.
Everyone on this “I’m with CoCo” bandwagon would have been better served spending much less time and energy just watching his damn show than making all these nifty graphics and tweeting about their favorite Conan sketches (all of which are from his old show, not his new one), but the weird truth about it all is that you AREN’T with CoCo, unless the numbers lie.
You don’t care about his show, you just think this is a funny story and you remember Jay Leno as that boring guy with the big chin that your mom might like. Sure, you really liked that episode of The Simpsons where he washed Krusty’s hair, but you’re totally sure that Conan wrote that episode.
Conan wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t been getting 2 million less viewers on average than Jay Leno had been in the same timeslot. The NBC Execs didn’t suddenly decide “hey, let’s ruin the red-haired kid’s dream.” What they decided to do is not something I’m defending. We can go on and on about how Conan’s lead-in needed to be better, and that his ratings are all NBC’s fault, that they needed to give the show time to grow, I can’t argue with you. That’s all true.
The undeniable truth is,however, that all of YOU had simply turned on your TVs, it would have been a lot tougher to show him the door.
Sure, ratings are up now that there’s a fight on, but it’s not something you’ve got to make a commitment to, there’s, what, a week left of Conan’s show? But there’s still less people watching Conan and Letterman combined than watch an average episode of WWE Raw. You can go ahead and look that up, cupcake, I’ll be right here.
It was a LOT less, wasn’t it? Yep. AND people pay to get into that show!
That’s the world you live in, and THOSE people watch TV. Those people are the people who did and will watch Leno, not you. TV isn’t FOR you, the internet is for you, and that’s why you love this story so much. You can tweet and post cute pictures and stuff, but then you just have to read the recap of what happened the next morning while you’re supposed to be working. You don’t, as Letterman says, “have a dog in this fight,” you jut think Jay Leno is annoying and you like to make fun of him.
Which is fine, Jay Leno DOES suck, but understand why you’re doing this. It’s not because you LOVE Conan, or at least not because you love his show. And the fucked up thing is that the people in charge of television so totally doesn’t get the internet that they think that just because you’re all talking about what’s happening, you’ll follow Conan to Fox or wherever it is he ends up.
As we’ve discussed, you won’t, and they’ll be left holding the bag with a guy who now thinks he’s worth 32 million dollars for seven months of work but can’t draw viewers for shit, Conan still won’t have The Tonight Show, neither will Dave, and Leno will be.. well.. allowed to be himself until he’s ready to quietly retire and hand it over to someone you’ve never heard of.
Certainly not Jimmy Fallon. Or Conan. Or Dave. NBC will still be fucked for a while, then change their business model to an internet-based one or go out of business. The internet will swallow TV and become the primary for of media/entertainment, your parents will die, and your children will wonder why all of this mattered.
So it goes.
