Category Archives: TV

I drove out to Burbank yesterday to have lunch with my pal Wally Wingert. You hear Wally's voice all over the place. He does the voiceovers on the Old Navy commercials. He's the robotic voice you hear when you call U.S. Airways on the phone. He's on a dozen cartoon shows, including The Garfield Show for which he plays Garfield's putative owner, Jon. And he's the announcer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, along with being heard throughout the show on various comedy bits. Other voiceover guys envy Wally those gigs but do not begrudge him as he's very good and he's worked very hard to get where he is.

I used to write shows that taped at NBC but long before that, I was known to roam its hallways without authorization. In 1970, I began doing a lot of freelance jobs for Disney Studios, which is two blocks away. I'd take the bus out to Burbank (I didn't drive then) and spend the morning and lunch hour at Disney, handing in assignments, getting new ones and just talking with the folks out there. Then I'd hike over to NBC…and the security then was nothing like the security now. Today, I had to show I.D. and go past guard after guard and be buzzed through doors. Back then, you just had to have someone inside leave your name at the front desk. That got you in and after that, you had the run of the facility. My first two times there, I was there on business and with actual passes. But after that, I learned I could get in by walking like I knew where I was going, waving to the guys at the front desk and carrying a copy of that day's Variety. They'd seen me there before so they figured I worked there…which I didn't. Back then.

1970-1972 was a great time to be roaming the halls of NBC. Laugh-In was in Stage 3 and when they weren't, Bob Hope or someone else was in there taping a special. Neither Hope nor Laugh-In usually had a formal studio audience (except Bob did for his monologues) but there were bleachers where you could sit and just watch. So I sat and just watched. Flip Wilson and Dean Martin taped farther down the hall and there were game shows aplenty and specials. As related here, I spent one memorable afternoon with Gene Kelly when he was taping a short-lived series on the premises.

Johnny Carson was still based in New York then but his show often came to "Hollywood" (Burbank, actually) for two or three weeks. He worked in Stage 1 which shared a common hallway with Stage 3 — same make-up and wardrobe rooms, same bank of dressing rooms. If I could, I'd stick around and watch Johnny tape at 5:30. There was a little area where the staff stood or sat during the taping and no one ever minded if I walked in and stood there about 20 feet from Johnny's desk.

From there, you could see him come into the studio and head around to the back while the band played the theme and Ed McMahon did the opening announce. He was escorted by his director and a uniformed Burbank police officer, though the cop would drop back a few paces so he was close but ignorable. When Ed did his "Herrrrre's Johnny," the director would cue Johnny through the curtain, the audience would explode and…well, I've only felt a few particularly tingly moments in TV studios but Johnny's entrance was one of them. So was hearing that band live. When I worked there, I'd try to get away and be outside Stage 1 when the Tonight Show band practiced. As good as they sounded on my TV at home, that was nothing compared to how they sounded in person. It was my second-favorite thing in the building after going down to where The Dean Martin Show was done to watch Golddiggers rehearse.

Leno tapes on the other side of the lot so Wally wasn't all that familiar with Stage 1. After we lunched at the NBC Commissary, we hiked over and I gave him a tour of the other part of the campus, including Johnny's stage. I showed him where Johnny stood for the monologue, where the desk was, where Ed stood, etc. We roamed through whatever wasn't locked and I recalled so much about being there. The studio was alive in the seventies when I trespassed and also in the eighties when I did variety shows there. Now, there's about a fifth or less of the excitement and activity. Production is done all over the city and I doubt there's any building or lot where you could go from soundstage to soundstage and see as much happening as I did there, once upon a time.

Lunch at the commissary was fine. I had the London Broil and Wally had a tuna melt. He showed me through the Tonight Show operation though we couldn't get on the stage. It was occupied with an elaborate rehearsal for a sketch they were doing that night involving the Twelve Days of Christmas. They had twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, etc. At the end for the Partridge in a Pear Tree, they rolled out a fake tree with Shirley Jones seated under it. On our way out, Ron Paul (a guest for that evening) was walking in with a small entourage. Ron Paul supporters were packing the studio audience and they were out with signs at all the driveways and entrances into NBC.

Before I left, I used my iPad to snag a photo of Jay's parking space and what he drove to work that day. Once upon a time, Johnny Carson's parking space was darn near the high point of the NBC Tour. That was back when the studio had enough activity to even have an NBC Tour. I suspect that when Leno now selects which of his nine zillion vehicles he'll drive to work each day, one small consideration is to give folks (tourists, crew members) something interesting to look at. I further suspect that when it was decided where to locate Jay's parking spot, someone had that in mind. I was only around it for about ten minutes but during that time, passers-by took around eight photos of what came out of Jay's Garage yesterday. If there was an NBC Tour, it would still be the highlight.

Mitt Romney has figured out the foolproof way to win the Republican presidential nomination. Early next week, he will announce that he's poured millions of dollars into a research firm that has finally perfected a working time machine. If elected president, Romney vows, he will not only undo every law, executive order and action that Barack Obama has instituted — including unkilling Osama Bin Laden and dozens of other terrorist leaders — but Romney promises to travel back in time and somehow change things so that Obama will never have been elected in the first place.

My staff did extensive polling of the G.O.P. base," the former governor of Massachusetts told reporters in an informal chat Monday afternoon. "We wanted to determine what they most wanted so that whatever it was, I could insist that's what I've always been about. It turns out they don't want to believe they live in a country that would ever elect someone who wasn't a white ultra-conservative…so I'm going to give them what they want. Elect me and you'll wake up one morning and never know Barack Obama ever existed.

We've already tested it once," he added. "Just see if you can find anyone who remembers the guy who was James Bond between Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig."

Asked by reporters what else he might do with his time machine, Romney replied, "Well, there is the little matter of about eight thousand speeches of mine I wish I'd never given. And I may also arrange for Jay Leno to have never had that show he did at 10:00!"

Herman Cain was on with Letterman the other night, looking darn happy to be on a Big Time TV Show, though intermittently annoyed at some of Dave's questions. I suspect no one's opinion of Mr. Cain changed because of it. If you thought he was shallow and inexperienced, that's how he came across. If you thought he was something exciting who's being unfairly maligned, that view was probably reinforced.

His platform does seem to be on the order of "I did such a great job turning around a failing pizza company, you should just elect me President of the United States and let me figure out how to turn around a failing country." I kinda wish Dave had said something like, "Listen, CBS had one disaster after another in this time slot and I came along and made it successful. That doesn't mean I have a clue how to fix the economy, deal with the Middle East or control the cost of health care."

Cain kept talking about his "9-9-9" plan and Dave wasn't prepared (or maybe interested) to quote experts who say it'll screw the lower and middle-class…and not help the economy either. At times when I see these interviews, I feel like the country is being done a disservice to have a candidate get all that air time — and a stage on which to prove he's funny and a nice guy — without real cross-examination. But then they don't get the hard questions from anyone, really. Cain is now cancelling interviews anywhere he's likely to be asked anything he isn't prepared to answer. That seems to cover a lot of topics.

So maybe softball interviews are all we've got. Jon Stewart is better than Dave at handling political guests and Jay Leno is worse and the rest are either uninterested or their shows are low-enough profile to not attract presidential candidates at all. I wish we had some solid journalist with a good time slot and such a reputation for fairness that it would look bad for a candidate to not go on that show and sit for a real and challenging interrogation. We have no such person. Nowadays, if a candidate is asked something they can't answer, they flee to safer venues and cry about "gotcha" questions.

I'm back from the taping of tonight's Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. My friend Neil Gaiman was among the guests (and the musical performer was his amazing bride, Amanda Palmer) and I needed to get something to Neil so I took it over myself. I live within walking distance of CBS Television City…so naturally in my career, that's the studio where I have least often worked on shows. I've been over in the executive-type wing a few times in the last decade or two for meetings but I think the last time I was in the "studio" section was 1985 when we did CBS Storybreak there with Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan. That's more than a quarter-century ago.

My confidence that I knew the place wronged me. I didn't pay the closest attention when the lady at the Artists Entrance told me how to get to Stage 58 and soon found that walls have been moved since I was last over there. Many walls. And elevators that once went to the third story now only go to the second. I wound up on the wrong floor, stumbling through where they store the sets for The Price is Right…and I actually made a right turn at the Plinko Board.

Then a passing stagehand saw the I-don't-know-where-the-hell-I'm-going look on my face and offered to direct me. I joked about how the place sure has changed since I worked there and he asked me, "What show did you work on here?"

I said, "I did a show here with Captain Kangaroo." The man's eyebrows shot up and for a moment, he thought I was lying and was therefore perhaps a trespasser. "Captain Kangaroo taped in New York," he said.

He was right insofar as the Good Captain's main show was concerned. But I told the man, "He also hosted CBS Storybreak which taped here in Studio 33" and that seemed to satisfy him. He then gave me what turned out to be faulty directions, thereby routing me to another place which was not where I was supposed to be. Finally, another stagehand pointed me to my destination and I found the dressing room of Neil and Amanda. Soon after, I also found Neil and Amanda.

I was impressed with the smooth professionalism of the production crew. That is not always the case, even with long-running shows. In this case, all was well though Mr. Ferguson had thrown his staff a curve. An opening musical number had been proposed for tonight, it being Halloween and all. Last week, they decided not to do it. This morning, CraigyFerg decided to do it. They had to scramble and book dancers and pre-record the song and rehearse it…and they wound up delaying the taping from 4 PM to 5 PM. The number required two takes because Geoff Peterson's eyes didn't light up at the proper moment the first time.

As I already knew, Ferguson tapes his show slightly out of sequence. The cold openings they do — the segments that precede the opening title — are taped second. The first thing they record is his entrance before the live audience and his monologue. Then they tape the cold opening. (And speaking of cold, you could preserve meat for ten years in that studio. One of the performers in Amanda's band wore a parka while performing. Ms. Palmer, dressed in the frilliest nothing, vowed to wear one whenever she's asked back.)

I was very impressed with Craig Ferguson. He was funny backstage. He was funny chatting with the audience during commercial breaks. As a matter of fact, he was even funnier during the commercial breaks than he was during the show itself…and he was pretty funny during the show itself. From what I can tell, he does very little preparation for the interviews — a lot less than Letterman or Leno or anyone else currently in that line of work.

But then I was briefly unimpressed with something. They taped the first interview, which was with Zooey Deschanel. Then they taped Neil's spot, which went extremely well. (It felt long and I'm wondering if there won't be edits in it when it airs in a little while.) Then they taped Craig introducing Amanda's number…but they didn't tape the number. Then they taped the end of the show and then Ferguson left and after he was gone, they taped Amanda's number.

I was startled. First off, it's common courtesy to any performers you have on your show to watch their performance. Jay Leno, for instance, makes a point of not only watching the musical act perform (as opposed to, say, chatting with his producer during the number) but Jay always moves to a position where both the audience and the performer(s) can see he's watching. It's also good show business to "button" a performance with the host coming over and shaking hands with the performer(s) and joining in on the applause. David Letterman, like Jay, always does that.

Like I said, I was briefly unimpressed. Then several folks explained to me that Ferguson usually does just that but tonight, he had to dash home due to the late taping and his son's Halloween plans. Okay, I'll accept that. I am no longer unimpressed.

Another odd moment. I got to talking with a slim, bald gent backstage though I had no idea who he was. He was wearing a shirt with the show's logo on it and I guess I assumed he worked on the staff. We were talking about CBS and I told him, walking encyclopedia that I am of such things, about some of the shows that had taped in that building. After about ten minutes of folks interrupting us to ask him about musical matters, I figured out that he was part of Amanda's band. And after fifteen, I realized that he was Moby.

So I'm good at TV history, bad at recognizing popular musicians…even musicians whose work I like. Later, I was introduced to another performer who was helping Amanda out — Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields — and I had a momentary inability to recall the name of that CD of his I liked so much. It was 69 Love Songs and I wish I'd had its name on the tip of or anywhere around my tongue when I told him I knew and enjoyed his music. Since I didn't name anything by name, I'm not sure he believed me.

Amanda's number, performed with those two gents plus Neil, went quite well. The live audience seemed to really like her, which is not always the case with audiences who come to see a star and are annoyed they have to sit through other things. Letterman's audiences were at one point notorious for their disinterest in anything on the stage that didn't involve Dave. You could have had the Beatles reuniting over in the performance area and half the audience would have been staring at Dave sitting behind his desk in the dark and they'd be wondering when he'd be talking again. A lot of comedians who might otherwise do stand-up on their own fare better when they sit in the guest chair and perform much the same material as a conversation with Dave. The entire audience will actually listen to the act that way.

As good as Amanda's song was, I actually enjoyed it more when we were in the dressing room earlier and they were rehearsing with just ukuleles or, in a few cases, no instruments at all. It was just Amanda and her spectacular voice, Stephin and Neil (Moby had gone for a walk) running through the tune several times sans microphones. I wish there was a place to hear that kind of thing more often.

So I was impressed by Neil and Amanda both. I was impressed by Craig Ferguson, on and off camera. I was impressed with the opening musical number and the closing one. I was impressed with Josh Robert Thompson, who's the fellow who provides the voice of the Robot Skeleton Sidekick. What else was I impressed by? Oh, yes: The food and beverage in the green room. I worked on a lot of shows and never saw a spread that good. I was even impressed with me, finding my way out and back to my car when it was over. I didn't get lost. Then again, I was walking with Neil's associate Cat, who can do absolutely everything. But I was impressed that I knew to just walk with her…and that's the only reason I'm home to blog about the show before it airs. Trick or treat.

If you're thinking of ordering the new DVD set of I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, now might be a fine time. Its makers are taking orders now for Volume One which features 16 episodes (i.e., half of all that were made) of this funny 1962 sitcom plus many special features. Some but not all of the bonus goodies will be available when the mass-market (and probably cheaper) DVD set comes out next April but I know you. You want all the bells 'n' whistles…and hey, you might even get a free autographed card from the stars, John Astin or Marty Ingels. Find out about the offer and order at this website.

Should you not be familiar with this series…well, I don't want to oversell it. It was a wonderful little show that deserved to run many, many seasons and didn't, and I remember loving it a lot. Many of the shows I loved back then do not withstand later consideration. I watch an old My Favorite Martian and as often as not, find myself wondering, "What did I ever see in this show?" But I've seen some I'm Dickens, He's Fenster episodes lately and they still make me laugh. I'm especially impressed with the quantity and quality of physical humor they did…a rarity in the era of talk-talk-talk comedies. And Frank DeVol is indecently funny whenever he's on-screen. Check it out and see if it makes you laugh, too.

Just took this photo off the TV set in my office. In case you can't read the text, it says…

The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
"Amanda Seyfried; John Cho and Kal Penn" (2011) Actress Amanda Seyfried; actors John Cho and Kal Penn; President Barack Obama; Yo-Yo Ma & Friends perform. (CC, Stereo)

Well, at least he got billed before Yo-Yo Ma.

From Jay Leno's monologue last night…

Did you know Rick Perry used to be a Democrat? But then again, Barack Obama used to be a Democrat.

It dawned on me last night while watching the White House Correspondents Dinner that it's an evening where folks in politics get to pretend they're in show business…and folks in show business get to pretend they're in politics…and they're both right. I usually think of it as an enormous but intriguing waste of time and one of those events that suggest much of our political rhetoric is bogus. If it was earnest, some of those people should have been slapping each other instead of dining cordially in the same room.

Last night's event, at least as it appeared on C-Span, suggested something very American to me. In how many other countries could this take place? I can think of a couple but it's not a long list. I have a hunch that Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi doesn't annually don a tux, fraternize with the press and sit there and get roasted by a Libyan comedian. Admittedly, Seth Meyers didn't spend as long on Obama's shortcomings as he did on Donald Trump's…but Obama is actually going to be on the ballot and in a way, the remarks about him no longer being the guy America elected were a lot crueler than making fun of Trump's hair. If people are going to make fun of you, wouldn't you rather they picked on your hair than your personal integrity?

I thought Meyers' material was sharp. His delivery is a little amateurish and in a way, that helps him because he seems so innocent and non-confrontational. Later, I watched a little of Jay Leno's last appearance at one of these dinners and I was struck by the contrast. Leno "sold" his jokes better but his jokes just weren't as good. Meyers had the wisdom to open, not with jokes that put anyone in the audience on the defensive, but with lines about C-Span and the hotel and Washington parties, thereby getting them laughing at others before anyone had to laugh at themselves. It was really a very skillful performance.

A lot of websites today are reporting on how annoyed Donald Trump was at comments by Meyers and by the President. I don't think he was mad at all about them. I think he was mad at the way the rest of the audience laughed (perhaps overlaughed) at them. And not to be mentioned at all would have pissed him off even more.

Obviously, I don't know Mr. Trump. Apart from the one near-encounter I wrote about the other day, I've had only one other brush with him. One day we were in editing at Modern Videofilm on an episode of Garfield and Friends, and he and Ivana (I think) walked into our bay, hopelessly lost and late for something they were supposed to view elsewhere in the building. Even before I recognized who it was, you could feel the self-importance in the room.

But my guess on all this is that he tossed his hat into the ring (that is not a hair joke) kind of as a publicity stunt and attention-getting device…and that maybe in the last few weeks, he's had moments where he thinks, "Hey, I could actually win this thing" and maybe he's started taking it seriously. But he also has to be looking at polls now that say that a pretty large percentage of this country is starting to really hate him…and that's before he's credible enough as a candidate that the opposition's going to start really going after him. Last night, he obviously didn't enjoy insulting jokes delivered with a smile. How's he going to take to some pretty important people calling him, in all seriousness, a dangerous megalomaniac?

And how about them digging around in his past, hauling out every stupid thing he's ever said and all his many legal hassles? Is this man equipped to be a good loser? Or even a proper team player in the Republican Party? I don't think so. A lot of his income if he doesn't become President flows from people liking him, trusting him and being impressed with him. Does he want to gamble that on the slim chance he can get the nomination, let alone beat Barack Obama? I don't think so.

Douglas Alden Warshaw writes an interesting profile of Conan O'Brien…most interesting for its description of how, they say, Twitter and new media enabled Conan to reinvent himself and his career after the debacle of his Tonight Show.

I still think Jay Leno has been unfairly blamed for what transpired…and this article sure makes it sound like what sunk The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien was that it had The Jay Leno Show as its lead-in. Reality check: Conan's first Tonight Show was on June 1, 2009 and Leno's 10 PM show didn't come on the air until September 14. If Conan's show had been getting good or even encouraging numbers before Leno went on at ten, you'd have a good argument that Leno's ratings had undermined O'Brien's. That would have been obvious and it ain't what happened. Conan was in trouble before Jay's show debuted…and while it's true that what NBC had on at 10 PM before just before Jay went in there was not a lineup of hit shows, that was the best NBC was able to program at that hour. Leno had won the 11:35 time slot for a decade or so with that kind of lead-in. I can't see that anything Jay did or didn't do would have prevented NBC from moving Conan out of the 11:35 position, nor do I see any reason Jay should have tried to stop that even if he could.

In any case, I find myself enjoying Conan's TBS show more than either his Tonight Show or his last few years on NBC at 12:35. (For what it's worth, I'm enjoying Leno less than I used to, and I gave up even TiVoing Letterman. Most nights, I record then watch Leno, O'Brien and Craig Ferguson — each until some guest starts to bore me. Currently, Craig is the one most likely to keep my digit off the fast-forward button for the entire hour.) I like Conan best when he's less interested in being funny himself than when he's playing straight for Andy Richter or someone in the guest chair. I think Andy Richter's the best sidekick in the history of American talk shows — admittedly, not a highly competitive arena.

I hear mixed reports on how well Conan is doing and a lot of it depends on what standards of weights and measures one employs. He was never expected to beat Jay or Dave…and probably not even Jon and Steve, which is fine because that doesn't seem to be happening. There's some dispute over how much ratings-type cred you give O'Brien for the folks who watch his show days later via TiVo or view it in whole or in part online. The bottom line is that he seems to be profitable for TBS, which is generating more income via the back-to-back pairing of Conan followed by George Lopez than they saw with just Lopez on every evening. A friend of mine in the biz said, "If TBS was expecting any more than that, they were nuts." I don't think they were nuts. I think they were very smart to bring Conan O'Brien and his show on board.

According to this article, Jay Leno's Tonight Show is now matching Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show in the number of young viewers. If that's so on a long-ongoing basis, it's a pretty good argument that NBC was not wrong to replace Conan with Jay. Jay has bettered Conan's numbers in total viewers since the switcheroo but lagged somewhat in the 18-49 demo before.

The piece also notes that Leno is drawing a much larger audience than Conan's current show but that's not of huge surprise or significance. A show on NBC would outdraw a show on TBS.

In other late night news, Nightline has lately been doing better than Jay or Dave.

And this article says Jimmy Fallon's crushing his competition because he's attracting superstar musical guests. Fallon may be drawing viewers because of such bookings but the text of the piece shows that Fallon isn't, as the headline claims, whipping those opposite him. It says right there that Fallon has 1.79 million viewers versus 1.77 for Jimmy Kimmel and 2 million for Craig Ferguson.

Do you see any whipping going on there yet? He and Kimmel are almost tied (though granted, Kimmel's numbers should be higher since he goes on earlier) and Ferguson is still ahead of Fallon…with a show, by the way, that probably costs less than a third of what Fallon's show costs to produce. The article does cite numbers that suggest Fallon has the momentum but he ain't whippin' yet. And might his uptick have as much to do with the gains of his lead-in, Mr. Leno, as it does with great musical guests?

One thing that makes me suspicious about the article is that its whole premise is that Fallon has gained because he hired the former music editor of Billboard magazine. Where did this article appear? Billboard magazine.

Back in this deathless posting, I said, of the Late Night Wars, "It's not that easy to say how right or wrong NBC was to oust Conan O'Brien from The Tonight Show and reinstall Jay Leno. You have to theorize as to where Conan's ratings would be if he still had that gig." Jonathan Andrew Sheen takes issue with me…

I think that leaves something out. You also have to think about what would have happened with NBC, Jay, and the 10:00 ratings. The relationship with Leno was clearly important to NBC, and his 10:00 show was clearly not performing up to standards NBC could live with. ("Tanking" seems far to mild a word. What Leno was doing was to a Tank what the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier is to a Tank, IIRC.) I've always seen that particular dance as having as much to do with saving 10:00 PM as with boosting the ratings of Tonight.

And now, I'll take issue with Jonathan Andrew Sheen: I don't think that's quite it. That is, I think too much was made of how the failure of Leno's 10 PM show impacted Conan's 11:35 numbers.

Keep in mind, foist of all, that the Conan O'Brien Tonight Show went on the air June 1, 2009. NBC was probably unhappy with the ratings by the end of the second week and that wasn't because of Leno's 10 PM show. It didn't even debut until September 14. Yeah, Leno's failure at ten didn't help but it's not like Conan was doing great before Jay came on and then plunged.

The thing to remember here is that NBC has long had a severe 10 PM problem. When Jay was hosting The Tonight Show, he had lousy lead-ins. He has lousy lead-ins now. He will probably have lousy lead-ins next season, as well. It comes with the job. One of the main reasons NBC even offered Jay the 10 PM time slot is that they knew they didn't have anything else to put there that was going to knock off the competition. The idea with The Jay Leno Show was basically, "Hey, if we're going to flop at 10, let's flop with cheaper programming." In that context, Leno's show made a little more sense.

It actually performed close to expectations insofar as the network was concerned. The problem was that no one had anticipated the dire impact it would have on the newscasts that followed, thereby costing the affiliates a key portion of their incomes. A friend of mine in programming (not at NBC) said to me, "If Jay had done well and Conan had done poorly, it would have been bad but not a total catastrophe. Same if Conan had done well and Jay had bombed. It was having both fail at once that created an intolerable situation for the affiliates." They were used to losing at 10 PM. They weren't used to losing at 11:35.

My friend went on, "They didn't know how to fix 10 PM. They still don't. In some ways, it's worse than ever there. But they thought they knew how to fix 11:35…reinstate the guy who used to routinely win the time slot." Leno's not winning as clearly as he did before but he is winning…usually. The last week or two, he was #1 in total viewers and he tied Conan's numbers for the same week in 2009 with the 18-49 demographic. That ain't bad. I am less and less a fan of what Leno does on The Tonight Show but he is doing the job of pulling in the numbers…even, some nights, with lead-ins as weak as or weaker than The Jay Leno Show.

Well, let's check in on some of our most frequent topics, shall we?

Late Night Wars — Leno is up lately, Conan is down. A lot of folks are for no visible reason eager to say the battle is over and to declare a victor. It's not that easy to say how right or wrong NBC was to oust Conan O'Brien from The Tonight Show and reinstall Jay Leno. You have to theorize as to where Conan's ratings would be if he still had that gig. I'm guessing though that NBC is feeling pretty good about their decision right now and the folks at TBS who took Conan in have to be just a tad concerned. I've been watching Conan there, by the way…or at least, watching some of the show. He's had a string of guests who don't much interest me and neither do their interviews…but I'm enjoying the non-interview segments. I think actually it's a better show than what he did at NBC.

Spider-Man on Broadway — No further accidents…and some online commenters are making the point that because of the injuries, there's an added layer of suspense for the preview audiences. When the actors are flying through the air, there's less certainty that nothing can go wrong. The long preview schedule has caused some reviewers to begin bending the unofficial rule that a show is not to be reviewed until it officially opens. So far, those who are doing the bending don't seem to like what they see, particularly citing a weak second act, unmemorable songs and unnecessary and muddled revisions to the Spider-Man legend. Meanwhile, the big online debate seems to be over news that the injured Christopher Tierney does not intend to file a big, whopping lawsuit against the show. For reasons I can't quite explain, some hail this as admirable while others deem it lunkheaded. Few are considering the possibility that the decision has anything to do with some some nondisclosed settlement that might already have been negotiated.

The Writers Guild — It seems like we're always striking, coming off a big strike or heading towards the possibility of one. Not many are mentioning the "S" word yet but the Guild has been organizing something we call our "Pattern of Demands." This is a wishlist of potential contract improvements we assemble each time we head into negotiations. In some past episodes, the "pattern" has been that the other side gives us a take-it-or-leave-it offer and refuses to even listen to the wishlist, let alone concede any of its points. Last time out, they did at least listen and we made a little headway on the list. This time, the smart money is that we're headed for a quick and dirty deal — the Producers huddle with our current president John Wells and a few others and made an arrangement to head off a strike with the usual incremental fee increases and a few token items from the Pattern of Demands. I'm not saying that will definitely happen but both sides have ample reason to make it go that way. At the moment, I don't see a picket line in my future.

I'm going to be very busy the next few days…maybe not Mushroom Soup busy but close to it. Posting here will be hit-and-miss. Responses to e-mail will be the same with the emphasis on the "miss." I am fine, dear friends. Just have a lot to handle as I run the End of the Year Clearance on my "to do" list. Back soon.

The overnight ratings for Conan O'Brien's second show were, as everyone expected, way down from his first night when he beat both Letterman and Leno. Last night, both of them beat him even though his main guest was Tom Hanks, who is about the biggest name Conan's likely to have on for a while. I assume they didn't book Hanks for Show #1 because they figured they didn't need him then and that putting him on the second night might minimize the inevitable drop. Mr. Hanks was, as usual, very funny but mostly talking about Conan's recent job relocations. One measure of whether the new show will work is whether Conan and his guests can soon drop that topic and find anything else to talk about. I think his Tonight Show for its first few weeks spent way too much time talking about how Conan O'Brien was hosting The Tonight Show.

Of course, O'Brien isn't really competing with Dave or Jay. He's competing against the cost-effectiveness of TBS having his show there as opposed to more reruns of The King of Queens. If that's the game and everyone understands it, I think he'll win.

Tonight, Jay Leno's big guest is Christine O'Donnell, which will probably give him the biggest tune-in. I have this awful feeling that we're in for a cold opening that'll go something like this: Jay runs into Christine in the hall and thanks her for agreeing to do the show. She says it's her pleasure. He says, "Hey, I hope you don't mind all those jokes I told about you being a witch." She says, "No, they didn't bother me at all." Then he starts to go off to do the show and the lights flash and she turns him into a frog or otherwise puts a curse on him. Something like that.

Rudy Panucci operates PopCult, a fine popular culture blog that focuses on but is not exclusively devoted to West Virginia. He writes…

I enjoy your balanced take on the Leno/Conan mess, but something hit me — if Leno had agreed to "retire" at the end of his run on The Tonight Show, instead of trying the move to 10 PM, his reputation would be amazing now.

Just think, he'd be the the guy who left Late-night, and as a result the entire broadcast time-slot and talk show genre collapsed. He could look back and say, "The whole thing fell apart when I left."

By sticking around, and then returning to The Tonight Show, he proved that it wasn't just him leaving that lead to the collapse. Of course, it could still be that his seven months away from the time slot "broke the habit" for millions of people, and hastened late night's decline, much the way that the O.J. trial mortally wounded Soap Operas.

I realize that it's an unlikely scenario, since Leno was more interested in continuing to work, rather than burnishing his reputation, but if things had played out that way, it's fun to speculate on how the landscape would look today.

If he had just retired to Vegas, people might even miss him. Then what would've happened. Would Carter have gotten a new book out of the deal?

Would Conan ever over-take Letterman? Would Letterman announce his retirement? Would it have been a bigger deal when The Daily Show beat both Tonight and Late Night, like they did last month?

It'd be fun to see what Leno would think of this idea. I get the feeling that he's way past the point of caring about his reputation, but it might at least get a comical forehead-slap as a response.

I'd wager big that all the players in the little Late Night dramas have long lists of things they wish they'd done differently. In Jay's case, I don't think he was that concerned about not having anything to do after Tonight. The guy loves standup and I'm sure he could have worked every night for the rest of his life doing that…and maybe even for better money than he was making on NBC. (Knowing he always had that to fall back on is probably one of the reasons he got through some of the more tempestuous times in late night. A lot of people marvelled at his cool or even faulted him for a seeming lack of emotion. But it can have a very calming effect on you to know you always have another great job waiting…one that no one can take away from you.)

I suspect Jay had two factors driving him to the 10 PM slot — three if you count the fact that they paid him an awful lot of money. One was the simple desire to not be kicked off TV against his wishes. The other, which would be especially significant if he really imagined Conan would fail and he'd be asked to go back to 11:35, would have been to keep his staff together. It takes time to put together a team like that and if he'd gone out of production, he never would have been able to quite reassemble that operation again. Some folks would have gotten other jobs. Some would have moved away or retired. He couldn't have stopped doing TV altogether for seven months, then gone back to The Tonight Show as he knew it. Then again, he couldn't have anticipated that his rep would take the hit it did…so he might well wish he'd done what you say.

Meanwhile, Rog Blaine asks…

So my big question is this: What if you'd been Conan or Jay? What would you have done different?

At times, I feel like that that's fun in this: Reading these accounts and thinking, at various points, "If I'd been in that guy's position, what would I have done?" In hindsight, I think O'Brien should have gone to Fox, from which he apparently then had a serious offer, instead of bumping Leno and taking The Tonight Show. Yeah, I understand the allure of hosting the show that the very sacred John W. Carson hosted but that's over. It was over the moment Johnny left and it stopped being that Tonight Show. And then I think Leno made a mistake by being too good a sport when he was ousted from that job, acting too much like he agreed with the transition. He should have said something like, "Hey, I don't like that they did this to me but if they had to, they couldn't have picked a better guy than Conan." That would have been (apparently) closer to his true feelings and it would have made it easier for him later to go back to the 11:35 slot without looking like he was reneging on a promise.

Leno on at 10 PM was obviously a mistake for him and for NBC…but I might take issue with those who say a show like that could never have worked at that time, no matter what. I think the big problem was that neither NBC nor Jay really had a concept for a 10 PM Jay Leno Show. It was basically: "Well, we'll do The Tonight Show but it can't exactly be The Tonight Show because Conan's doing that so we'll chop down the interviews (which comprise most of The Tonight Show) and we'll get rid of the musical numbers (which supply another large chunk) and then we'll expand the comedy bits but we'll move the ones that work to the end where they'll seem out of place…and then we'll fill most of the show with comedy bits by other people even though we don't really have a crew of good people to do that." It all reminds me of that quote from a theater critic who wrote of one of Neil Simon's weakest entries, "Mr. Simon didn't have an idea for a play this year but he wrote it anyway."

I'm guessing that since Jay had this "firm" pay-and-play two year guarantee, he thought he had enough time to invent the new program while doing it. That's kind of what he did on The Tonight Show when he took over from Johnny. He couldn't have thought they'd leave him on for two years of bad ratings but I'll bet he didn't think they'd bail after four months. There was so much talk of NBC being in it for the long haul; about how they knew he'd fare poorly against first-runs of CSI-type shows opposite him but would start to show strength once the opposing shows were in steady reruns. Based on that standard, his show didn't do badly. The trouble for him was that nothing about it — not the numbers and not the content — gave the network or the affiliates any reason to think things might get better.

Then again, it's hard to disagree with those who note that if Leno hadn't gone on at 10 PM, the five shows NBC would have put there instead would probably not have done much better…and would have cost five times as much. Apart from Law & Order SVU, what has NBC had lately that could have gone on at that hour and gotten significantly better numbers? What they have there now is doing worse…and at a much higher expenditure. NBC just plain has an unfixable 10 PM problem at the moment. They could have put the World Series on in that time slot and even people in San Francisco and Texas wouldn't have watched. Even before Jay got there, it was scorched earth and nothing's going to grow there for quite a while.

But I'm pretty much pointing up weaknesses without suggested remedies…kind of like they do in Washington, these days. A friend of mine read the Carter book and called to swap observations. He kept saying, "What a train wreck" and I asked him, "Once the decision to replace Jay with Conan was firm, what could anyone here have done to prevent a train wreck?" And apart from doing much better and more popular shows, we couldn't think of much, not even with the benefit of glorious hindsight.