“The Jay Leno Show” was ill-defined and sloppily handled from the outset. NBC’s solution was, famously, offering him “The Jay Leno Show,” which would air every night at 10 p.m. Meanwhile, it was looking like Leno would wind up competing with O’Brien at ABC. When NBC executive Dick Ebersol later spoke with O’Brien and his producer about how even Johnny Carson had recognized the need to appeal to midwestern audiences, O’Brien emphasized that he would do the show his way, and that was that. When O’Brien was finally given Leno’s job (with a five-year waiting period), Leno was “broken-hearted.” He played the loyal soldier on the outside, but in private conversations, he couldn’t understand why he was being fired despite his success.īy 2008, though, the network’s chief executive, Jeff Zucker, was growing nervous, as O’Brien showed no signs of adapting his show for a mainstream audience.
O’Brien’s agent, Ari Emanuel - brother of Rahm, and the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold character on “Entourage” - was pressuring NBC to give O’Brien “The Tonight Show” back in 2003.Ĭarter notes how O’Brien’s team always held Leno in contempt for failing to “innovate,” and displayed an arrogant incredulity at how NBC wouldn’t just hand the show to O’Brien, despite Leno having been the ratings leader for almost a decade. Veteran journalist Bill Carter details the vicious recent battle over “The Tonight Show,” showing how Leno was hardly the devious schemer he was made out to be, and how O’Brien was not always the angelic innocent the media portrayed, as he and his team aggressively pursued the show at every opportunity. Whenever they wanted to discuss the situation around the office, instead of saying “The Tonight Show,” they would call it “Anderson Cooper 360.” Jay Leno, the current “Tonight Show” host, didn’t know that O’Brien had been handed his job.
On a cold February night in 2004, Conan O’Brien and his executive producer brought their publicist to Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel to share the exciting news that O’Brien had been offered a new job - host of the late night institution, “The Tonight Show.”īut there was one problem.
0 kommentar(er)
