Archive for January 12th, 2010

Dear NBC Executives,

My name is Travis Harder and I am writing to express my disagreement with your recent decisions regarding your late night schedule. I feel that moving Jay Leno back to 11:35, pushing Conan O’Brien back to 12:05 and Jimmy Fallon to 1:05 is not only a mistake, but simply wrong. The fact of the matter is, Jay Leno is past his prime and isn’t funny anymore, to anyone except old people. True, Conan has not done as well as David Letterman recently, but that is because you have failed to give Conan a good lead in. Obviously, it makes sense to get rid of Leno, however, moving him to 11:35, screwing Conan and Jimmy Fallon over in the process makes no sense. If people aren’t watching Leno now, what makes you think they’ll watch him when he goes back to 11:35? Sure, he had viewers before he “retired”, but he’s not going back to a hour long comedy/talk show, like he had before. People watched Leno because he had the big name guests. Putting him in a 30 minute show, relying solely on his comedy will fail. Pushing Conan and Fallon back half an hour will give David Letterman and Craig Ferguson a major advantage, and people aren’t going to watch half an hour of Letterman and switch to NBC for Conan. Furthermore, Conan has now said that he will not host The Tonight Show at 12:05. If you are going to lose a host either way, lose Leno. At best, you’ll get another 5-10 years of bad comedy and low ratings with him, whereas with Conan, you will get many years of a genuinely funny show. It was bad enough when you lost David Letterman because of Leno, don’t lost Conan as well. Fox has already said that they would be willing to do a show with Conan, and I will follow Conan to Fox if he takes them up on that offer. Think about this: if Fox decides to go into the late night game, they will logically want a later show to follow Conan O’Brien’s. Jimmy Fallon can’t be happy about his treatment, either. It’s not unreasonable to think that he may follow Conan to Fox, leaving you with, what, Carson Daly to host Late Night? Where is the upside to this? How do you benefit by pissing off the host of your flagship late night show? How does causing more splintering benefit NBC? Let me end this by saying that if you do not cancel your current plans to move Leno back to 11:35, I cannot continue to support the network by watching. Furthermore, I will contact any company that advertises on Leno’s show and let them know that as long as they are advertising with Leno, I will not purchase their products and/or services.

Travis Harder