I was anxious to watch Conan O’Brien’s 60 Minutes interview tonight. It was his first since leaving The Tonight Show and even though he is still under a no disparagement order, very illuminating.
He clarified much of what I suspected about his departure from The Tonight Show. His removal was a business decision. It would have cost more money to get rid of Jay Leno than it would have to jettison him. As far as the bottom line is concerned, it made business sense. O’Brien said he has no axe to grind about that and I believe. His problem is the lack of class which NBC, Jerry Zucker, and Jay Leno demonstrated in the whole affair.
NBC claimed they were going to stick with O’Brien for the long haul because that is what he had done. The arrangement for him to take over TTS was made in 2004. O’Brien stuck with NBC for five years waiting. Then they only gave him seven months to make TTS his. According to O’Brien, the relationship turned toxic because of impatience at the network. They claimed TTS was losing money when it seems impossible to believe. Considering NBC was willing to fork over millions to O’Brien, it is difficult to believe the network was bleeding on the deal.
O’Brien said he had not spoken to Jeff Zucker, president of NBC, since his departure. They had been friends since college. You may recall some leaked answering machine messages from Zucker to O’Brien showed Zucker’s snaky attitude towards his longtime friend. Maybe he thought he was being cute, but that was neither the time for that sort of thing.
The same with Leno. O’Brien has not spoken to him and it does not sound like he wants to. Because of the no disparaging order, O’Brien refused to answer if he thought Leno had cheated him out of TTS, but he did say if he had been in Leno’s shoes, he would have acted differently, like going to another network.
I believe O’Brien was sincere in saying that. It is easy to say would you would and would not do when it is all hypothetical, but O’Brien’s attitude is resignation that TTS is no longer his, but an obvious hurt over the behavior of the people involved. O’Brien appears to have a wounded sense of idealism about how people should act that gets jabbed repeatedly when they do not act ideally. I have to admire that. He is a class act.