IF Jay Leno is ticked off at the way NBC is pushing him out the door, then who can blame him.
Never in the history of television has a major star who has contributed so much to a network’s bottom line been treated with such disrespect.
Leave it to NBC to go and fix what ain’t broke – “The Tonight Show” – by announcing a succession plan five years in advance so it can hold on to Conan O’Brien, a personality who has never been tested at 11:30 p.m., and boot Leno, who has been tested in that time period for 14 years and come out on top for something like the last 12 of them.
Now, as Leno’s 2009 deadline draws near, everyone’s wondering how he feels about the way NBC has arranged his exit.
In the absence of any public comment from Leno, who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed on the subject, observers have been sifting through his “Tonight Show” monologues for signs that he’s dissatisfied.
One such bit formed the basis for a story in the L.A. Times yesterday reporting that Leno is unhappy with the succession plan.
The bit, seen last week, was inspired by the news that NBC will soon sell and vacate its long-time Burbank headquarters. In the bit, a pair of “prospective buyers” walked on stage during the show with a “real estate agent” who told them “it” – meaning Leno and the “Tonight Show” studio – would be moved out before they moved in.
The bit was not that unusual. Leno has joked about the succession plan a number of times, positioning himself light-heartedly as the wronged party. Moreover, Leno has poked fun at NBC for its low-rated shows for years.
But analyzing a bunch of late-night bits for their deep, hidden meaning is a fool’s exercise, anyway. They’re just jokes, folks.
What’s really funny is NBC’s succession plan, with which it hoped to avoid the kind of competition for the “Tonight Show” host’s chair that followed Johnny Carson’s decision to retire in 1992.
Instead, the plan will spark another round of late-night wars that will be no less dramatic as Leno considers offers from other networks such as Fox or ABC, Conan moves into the 11:30 slot, someone else (probably Jimmy Fallon) replaces him at 12:30 a.m., and a year later, David Letterman likely retires from CBS, which will need to replace him and possibly Craig Ferguson, who’s Letterman’s guy, at 12:30.
Yesterday, Leno refused an interview request from The Post, just as he declined to be interviewed by the L.A. Times.
His silence speaks volumes. Leno himself has never come out publicly either in favor of the succession plan or otherwise – which means there might be something to all the conjecture that this plan isn’t sitting well with him after all.