BLUE JAY WAY

Dear Readers,

Does anybody really care who hosts The Tonight Show? Apparently, quite a lot of people do, as it took an earthquake of biblical proportions in Haiti to knock the story of Conan O'Brien's dis-fuelled rejection of any change to NBC's late-night lineup off of the front pages (or most of them, at least).

Just like the term 'front pages', The Tonight Show belongs to another era. A venerable late-night warhorse from the 1950's, the program has undergone several changes of hosts without changing very much. Even as the 21st century's appointee, Conan has not so much changed the format as he has revealed how worn-out it is. Sure, people still watch the 11 O'clock news and after the local 'fuzz-and-was' stories, sports (delivered by some crazed, caffeinated jock-brain) and the weather, quite a sizable audience still likes to round out their evening with some topical humor and show-biz bantering. When Conan took over, his perceived task was to put an edge-y-er type of humor on display for that audience, and also attract the lion's share of the coveted 18-30 age group, so important to advertisers. But the experiment was sputtering, constantly losing in the ratings to the 60-something (but still hipper) David Letterman, while the old incumbent, Jay Leno, was making a dog's dinner out of his 10 PM 'consolation prize' program. You know the rest - the cancelling of Jay at 10, the pushing of O'Brien's show to 12:05, Conan's refusal to be shifted, and his soon-to-be announced multi-million dollar severance pay as compensation for a job not-so-well done.

One supposes that now, Leno will return to The Tonight Show seat after a 7-month trek in the wilderness, and all will be well at NBC. Ironically, this switcheroo comes at a time when Conan's ratings are headed skyward, but will probably only prove to be akin to motorists slowing down to gawk at a traffic accident. Also ironic will be that Jay will come under pressure to maintain those numbers, as he drags the late-night format back into the 20th century, where it rightly belongs anyway.

As host of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson regularly made the news, or at least the morning-after chat around the water cooler. Like a clever You Tube video, Carson's monologue went viral (before that word took on it's modern meaning) on a regular basis, and with no serious late-night competition for years, his was the act that America waited for after learning from the goofy weatherman how they should dress the kids the next day. For it's time, it was brilliant. Nowadays, The Tonight Show only makes news when it changes hosts -spontaneity and controversy is simply gone from the program. A future release of The Best Of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno would vie with Ironing Shirts with Bea Arthur for last place on the DVD sales charts.

While certainly a funny and intelligent guy, Conan O'Brien simply wasn't must-see TV (except for the next few weeks of tabloid-fodder-fed curiosity), either for a generation that still loves Johnny and Jay, or for the generation that drives, tweets, texts and surfs - all at the same time. It was just his bad luck to succeed to a throne that has all the rosy potential of the Romanov dynasty, circa 1917. Okay, let Jay work out the remainder of his contract at 11:35, but take some advice, NBC, after Leno goes (again) try and think of something else to do with a time slot who's formula has outlived it's usefulness.