Conan O'Brien: The Critics Love Him, When They Don't Hate Him!

(MoneyWatch)  It's not my job here at BNET Media to critique television shows, more to ponder what CPM their networks might charge for them, but I find it hard to pretend this morning that something big in the annals of comedy and "The Tonight Show" didn't happen last night: the debut of Conan O'Brien as the show's new host. Thus, I'm pointing to what some of the actual critics said about the first show, which, as you'll see, are just as all over the map as O'Brien's first video bit -- in which he ran across the country (perhaps to acknowledge the Jay Leno heartland?) -- to get to his new studio on the Universal Studios lot. OK. Let the critics speak (and then wait for my trenchant ratings analysis afterward):

• Conan Unfunny in 1st Show--Linda Stasi in The New York Post,
• 'The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien': Conan's first night is glitzy, glamorous fun-- Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly.
• 'Tonight Show': First Edition--Newsday (no author's name on the story). This review was a thumbs-down.
• Conan is off and running--Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. A more or less positive review.
• For 'Tonight Show' Debut, It's All About Conan--Tom Shales in The Washington Post. I'd describe this one as tepid.

If I had to assign a calculation to this somewhat random selection of reviews, I'd say that 2.5 liked the new show, and 2.5 didn't. (Shales starts out pretty negative and then closes with: "There's every indication O'Brien will be up to the job of his illustrious predecessors, but he should be confident enough to share the stage with his guests and costars.") OK.

But the most telling point -- in regards to how he will try to bridge the gap between his previous, quirky show and the more middle-of-the-road 'Tonight Show' of Leno, came from McNamara, who argues that he won't. She says: " ... while many have wondered how O'Brien would play with the typically older demographic that formed Leno's base, well, he certainly wasn't going out of his way to court them last night."

One wonders, in light of Leno's coming re-emergence at 10 p.m., how calculated that is. There's not much point in trying to woo an audience that has already had its comedic needs satisfied an hour earlier. While in some ways, that leaves O'Brien free to do the show he wants, that also creates his conundrum -- whether having the Leno audience accounted for at 10 p.m. will hurt the ratings of his own show. My guess is it will. When Leno's 10 p.m. show was announced, Leno himself kept saying that one reason he was intrigued by the idea is that so many people said that they wanted to watch him -- but he was on too late. While I've often made and heard the same complaint about O'Brien's "Late Night", which went on at 12:35, and that makes people like me more likely to watch his new show, there are just inherently less potential viewers the later in the night a show goes. More people will go to bed earlier with Leno on at 10 p.m. Good for our nation's productivity; bad for Conan.