What's Next for Conan, Jay and Dave?

(CBS)  With the curtain down on Conan O'Brien's seven-month stint as host of NBC's "Tonight Show," industry insiders and viewers alike are wondering what's ahead in the late-night wars.

O'Brien's departure was unusually bitter and public, as he and Jay Leno traded on-air barbs on their respective shows. Not to be outdone, David Letterman was poking at both.

When the experiment of putting Leno in primetime five nights a week turned into a disaster, with NBC affiliates howling that his ratings were so low he was delivering downsized audiences to their 11 p.m. newscasts, NBC decided to shift Leno back to his old 11:35 p.m. timeslot and move "Tonight" back to a 12:05 a.m. start. But O'Brien balked, and wound up walking away with what the network says is a $45 million exit package. Leno is set to reclaim the "Tonight" helm March 1.

NBC says O'Brien can take another TV job as early as September. Fox and Comedy Central have been mentioned as his possible next employers.

Leno was the rating winner while hosting "Tonight," but Letterman grabbed that throne when Conan took over.

So who wound up benefiting from the give-and-take of the last few weeks?

"I would say Jay Leno is the winner," Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz observed to "Early Show Saturday Edition" co-anchor Erica Hill. "I know he's gotten badly bruised, his nice-guy image not quite intact, but he gets to go back to 'The Tonight Show,' at 11:30, where he was No. 1 for so many years. I think he'll probably win back most of his audience, although some people may have developed habits of watching some of the competition.

"And Conan is winner financially, but you'd have to say he's certainly a loser beyond that.

"And Letterman, I think, comes out looking fine, except that he has been No. 1 during this period when he's been competing against Conan. He has never beaten Jay consistently, and that may be hard for Dave once the competition (of Leno) returns."

Does Kurtz think O'Brien is destined for a successful future, should he return to late-nights?

"Possibly," Kurtz replied. "Fox is the most likely place for him to land, and Fox can portray Conan as the hip comic who was too edgy for NBC and appealed to a younger audience. But if Conan O'Brien had trouble just beating David Letterman and (ABC's) 'Nightline,' for him to go up against Jay and Dave and ABC's news program - they're gonna be fighting over a smaller share of that pie. On the other hand, Conan probably won a lot of fans in the last couple weeks, because he was perceived as having been pushed off the playground."

[reasonable7]

Conan's gone. Jay's coming back to the Tonight Show. Dave is Dave. Suddenly, the world makes sense again.

[pickaguitar1]

lol for Coco! Great last episode and I'm sure it won't be the last

[mgpm-2009]

Obviously the person who called Conan a "crybaby" has never heard him speak on the issue, nor watched when he said goodbye and THANKED NBC. Conan's a class act, and is much funnier than Letterman or Leno. Leno is exposed as a backstabber and not the "nice" guy he tries to portray. Conan is most certainly the winner. The biggest loser is NBC. I know I'll not be watching NBC---and I will be writing the sponsors of the Tonight show with Leno to let them know I won't be buying their products while they are promoting that show. And I am only one of VERY many people doing this.

[commenter777]

Conan is one of the luckiest human beings on this planet. There are people fighting and dying for his freedom today. I think it shows a lot about a man's character when he can make fun of fat people one day and cry for himself the next because the poor thing only got to host the show for 7 months and then gets 30 million when leaving it. Grow up, there are baby's dying every day in our own country, much less in Haiti, and I would rather not see such bs, crybaby.

[tmittelstaed]

The problem is rather interesting. Jay pulls the older demographic than Conan, so while his ratings are very high, the advertisers don't like the older consumers who have set preferences, they want the younger demographic which Conan pulls.

But, the problem is that the younger demographic all have DVR's and the older demographic does not. So what happens is that Conan gets TVIOed and watched the following evening, and Jay gets watched in real time by the older demographic.

Advertisers do not count DVR viewings in the ratings because it's easy to clip commercials and not watch them. So, the younger demographic gets vastly undercounted in the ratings game.

What NBC figured is that they can tolerate a ratings drop with Jay at 10pm if they got a ratings increase with Conan, because an increase in the younger demographic is much more valuable than an increase in the older demographic. What NBC didn't count on was that the younger demographic would simply continue DVRing Conan at 11:30pm and the older demographic was too busy to watch TV at 10PM.

As a member of the older demographic who watched Jay religiously at 11:30 I actually went out and bought a DVR when NBC switched him to 10PM because by the time we got kids to bed and chores completed, it was usually past 10PM.

We will probably continue DVRing Jay when he goes back to 11:30. We never liked watching the local news, and now that I've mastered the art of zapping the commercials on the DVR, we can get started watching Jay at 10:30 or 10:45pm, and be done with it by 11:15pm. We really need to be getting to bed earlier than midnight, anyway.

[mroem]

Conan was let go of unfairly, like a freshman who doesn't score as many points as the outgoing senior-- needlessly cut from the team without any substantial investment from his overseers. NBC acted absolutely senselessly, but amazingly this will help Conan's legacy and fanbase even more than what he would've built at NBC. He will easily become the biggest evening talkshow for the next decade.

[HappyJames1]

Conan O'Brien is the funniest of the three. He will have a long career doing something on television.
Dave has a good show with quality guests.
Jay, I never would watch at the 1130 time slot. I'd prefer Letterman over Jay's show. That being said, I watched a lot of Leno's show because of the 10PM time slot. It was refreshing to watch some comedy instead of Fox's 10PM news or some poorly written crime/medical drama on any network.
The smartest thing NBC ever did was put Jay's show on at 10 PM. Hopefully, some one else will take the cue and put a variety (not amateur competition) show on during prime time.

[Union76]

Jay Leno is a no talent hack, I stopped watching The Tonight Show after Johnny Carson left. It's No wonder Leno is being thrown off of prime-time.

[mary-miami]

He's spoiled. What made him think he was so special that he would be chosen over Jay Leno? From what I've heard Leno didn't make such a big fuss about having his hours changed...If this was really O'Brien's "dream job" then he would have accepted the time change just to keep the job.