Daily Commentary – Wednesday, January 13th, 2009 – The Late Shift, NBC’s Folly with Leno, O’Brien and The Tonight Show

• More intrigue on the late night comedy battlefield heats ups between Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and an incompetent NBC Peacock network. They managed to take two successful late night comedy shows with Leno & O’Brien and upset every one and destroy the ratings.

What has become of the NBC network? The once proud Peacock, now manages to screw up their comedy programming. Their actions becoming folly for late night comedy foe David Lettermen.

NBC’s answer to their mess was to change Leno’s show from 10pm to 11:30, one half hour before O’Brien and pushing “The Tonight Show” to 12. However, Conan O’Brien says not so fast to the Peacock …

A representative for Mr. O’Brien said Tuesday that the issue came to a head for the host on Monday and that he had “sat up all night drafting the statement.” NBC, whose “Tonight Show” has been broadcast at 11:35 p.m. for decades, declined to comment. Mr. O’Brien was scheduled to do “The Tonight Show” on Tuesday night.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Mr. O’Brien said, “I sincerely believe that delaying the ‘Tonight Show’ into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. ‘The Tonight Show’ at 12:05 simply isn’t the ‘Tonight Show.’”

Daily Commentary – Wednesday, January 13th, 2009 – The Late Shift [1:47m]:  | Download