Anyone who picks up Bill Carter’s new book about last January’s late night TV debacle—The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy—looking for a villain is destined to be disappointed. This is not for lack of effort. The book is impressively comprehensive about NBC’s decision to move Jay Leno from The Tonight Show to primetime and back again and the disaster that followed. Carter gives detailed histories of and various perspectives on all the major players involved—Leno, Conan, Jeff Zucker, David Letterman, Jeff Gaspin, etc.—but in the end nobody comes off as an evil monster responsible for the train wreck. Instead, we get a fascinating example of how a bunch of people all acting with the best intentions can lead to the worst possible outcome.
“If they’d come in and shot everybody—I mean, it would have been people murdered. But at least it would have been a two-day story. I mean, yes, NBC could not have handled it worse, from 2004 onward.” —Jay Leno Continue reading »
The main reason for the excitement wasn’t just that a great comedian was returning to television, but that the return represented a chance to finally move on. Conan O’Brien has been active since he lost The Tonight Show to Jay Lenoin January: He got a new job, he went on a live tour, he grew a beard, he appeared on 60 Minutes, and he even got on Twitter. What has been frustrating, though, is that the most common subject in his comedy during this interregnum has been Conan himself—namely his departure from NBC and his new job on TBS.
Back in January, when The Tonight Show essentially became about its own future, it was refreshing to see an unleashed Conan mercilessly go after his own bosses at NBC. Unlike Jay Leno, who played dumb during the whole process, Conan wasn’t afraid to be honest and hilariously vicious. Unlike Jimmy Kimmel, who had nothing to lose by being vicious, and David Letterman, who played the role of elder statesman throughout, Conan’s attacks were also endearingly honest and personal, since he was going through the ordeal himself and had something to lose by attacking his employer. Continue reading »
Whenever the one of us who has the Canadian general interest magazine, The Walrus (slogan: “Canada’s best magazne”), in his Google Reader wonders why he still has it in his Google Reader, it comes out with the feature on Toronto rapper and one-time Degrassi star, Aubrey Graham, better known as Drake. The article also dives into the history of Canadian rap (there’s a Snow reference!) and the changing face of rap as a genre. And it’s Tim, by the way. He’s the one with The Walrus in his Google Reader.
On the topic of grammar, there’s plenty of miscues among the “40 Dumbest Tax Day Signs.” Our personal favorite is No. 2; nothing’s dumber than putting an apostrophe 20 letters before it’s supposed to be.
But it would be disingenuous to let Leno off the hook. The logic he employed in his statement, while reasonable, was not exactly airtight, and a closer look may show why the public has taken Conan’s side so decisively. Continue reading »
Critical of Norv Turner’s clock management at the end of the Jets-Chargers game, Joe Posnanski wonders why NFL head coaches consistently make such simple time management mistakes. Speaking of the Jets-Chargers game, here is more evidence of Rex Ryan’s awesomeness.
In a time when weekly sports magazines that simply detail basic game plots and predictions have become less and less necessary, we have to wonder why it was up to GQ to dig deep into the ongoing Marvin Harrison investigation. Turns out the foil to all those diva receivers for so many years may be the worst of them all, Rae Carruth included.
