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Old 01-16-2010, 07:35 PM   #275
Hack&Lube
Atomic Nerd
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man View Post
To be fair to Leno, he didn't want to retire. NBC forced him to in order to try to keep Conan back in 2004. When 2009 came around and Leno was still garnering big ratings, NBC freaked out and promised him a primetime show instead of letting him go to a competing network. So really the blame lies totally with NBC and their mismanagement of both Leno and Conan IMO.
Yeah, back then, everybody was claiming that setting a 5 year plan for transferring ownership of the Tonight Show was done to avoid a repeat of the Leno/Letterman scandal but now it's getting even worse.

What irony.

In 2004, Leno and Conan were at the top of both their timeslots. NBC had to resign Conan and wanted to keep him on and figured that Leno would retire or something by the time he was 60. They made this pact so that Conan WOULDN'T leave by offering him the tonight show. 2009 came around and it turns out Leno doesn't want to quit and he's still on top in ratings. NBC panics and stupidly assumes they can move Leno down an hour and he'll get the same ratings. Conan will better Leno's old ratings on the Tonight Show, and Fallon would pick up the rest. They also gambled that the Leno show would negate the need for NBC to produce actual televion (comedies/dramas) and they could save money that way since NBC has sucked at that part since the 90s ended.
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