I Killed Conan: A Perspective on the Late-Night Hubbub

Like seemingly everyone else on the Internet, I'm a fan of Conan O'Brien, who not only served as a producer on the the two best Simpsons seasons evar, he also wrote one of the show's all-time best episodes. I have fond memories of watching Conan and Andy Richter banter back and forth on Late Night when I was in high school in the late 90s. However, unlike seemingly everyone else, I'm finding it hard to get too incredibly outraged over Conan losing his show, primarily because I haven't watched his show since at least 2003.

I don't think I'm alone in this either. The infrequently-updated Stuff White People Like blog put out an entry last week on Conan that characterized the issue thusly:

"Now, the biggest and most important thing to remember is to never, under any circumstances bring up a Conan O’Brien sketch or joke that has taken place in the last three years. You will be met with only blank stares. For you see, while white people will fiercely support Conan O’Brien in any public forum, they always fail to support him in the only way that actually helps – by watching his show."

That pretty well sums it up. I know that the consensus view is that NBC didn't give Conan enough support in developing his version of The Tonight Show, that Jay Leno stabbed Conan in the back by not retiring according to plan, and that American audiences are insufficiently appreciative of Conan's brand of bent humor. And all these things are probably true to some extent, but they give short shrift to the fact that Conan has a natural constituency: 20 and 30-something fans of The Simpsons and The Late Show, my demographic, and we didn't tune in enough to make the show successful. Why not?

I can't speak for everyone, but here's why I didn't watch. First off, I don't feel that the form and function of the late-night talk show (a monologue, a skit, some celebrity interviews) has the appeal that it did for past generations. As beloved as late-night shows and their various hosts have become over the past half-century, I think they essentially built their massive audiences because of wide appeal and a lack of other options. Watching Jack Paar and Johnny Carson was a communal experience. The viewer knew that millions of other Americans were unwinding in the same way before going to sleep and that there would be some joke or interview to talk about at work the morning after. I imagine that's a pretty powerful motivator to watch, even if you weren't an ardent fan of the host or the guests. Besides, what the hell else where you going to watch? There were only like three channels. And once you start watching a show every night of the week, it pretty quickly becomes a habit.

Now these days, how many people under the age of 50 can even be bothered to watch a show at the time it actually airs? Between DVR and Hulu, it's increasingly uncommon. The late-show format thrives on a sort of relaxed, clubby atmosphere that's perfect for winding down the end of the day; it's the entertainment equivalent of a casual evening conversation over drinks. It doesn't really translate well to regular on-demand watching a day or more after the fact. I don't pay for cable or get decent antenna reception, so all of my television viewing (which basically amounts to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the latter of which probably siphoned off a not-insubstantial portion of Conan's potential Tonight Show audience) is done on Hulu. Basically, I really like being able to control what I watch and when I watch it, and a standard format late-night talk show, even one with a host I like as much as I like Conan, just isn't something that's going to make it to the top of the queue for my entertainment choices.

I think that generational fickleness is the key to understanding why Conan struggled. Contrast my viewing habits with those of my parents, who tuned into Leno religiously. People give Leno a hard time for being soft and unfunny, which is a hard accusation to dispute in any serious way, but I think that overlooks Leno's real appeal as The Tonight Show host, which is that he works tenaciously hard to put on a show as broadly entertaining as possible. Leno's monologues, which are two or three times as long as those of other hosts, are his bread and butter; my parents would usually watch Leno's monologue and skit and then turn off the show before the interviews. My thought process while watching a Jay Leno monologue is something like "this isn't very funny and I'd rather be doing something else," which probably tracks pretty closely with the majority of Leno detractors. I imagine my parent's though process while watching the same monologue is "he worked hard and told a lot of jokes, and I laughed once or twice, which is enough entertainment before bedtime." Two years ago, during the writer's strike, Sam Anderson essentially made this exact argument in New York Magazine, in the best and most incisive account of Leno's appeal I've ever read.

Now Conan's ratio of hits vs. misses is far higher than Leno's, but as long as we're being honest, I don't really feel like I missed out on a whole lot by not watching his show all these years. I've never found myself in the middle of a conversation as the odd person out as everyone else trades punchlines and favorite moments, as I would have if I didn't watch South Park, and until this meltdown over the past three weeks, I've never logged onto Facebook to a see chorus of status updates trumpeting the must-see moment from last night's Conan, as I so frequently do (and contribute to) with Stewart and Colbert. I like and respect Conan a great deal, but he's not a terribly relevant presence in my daily existence, and I honestly don't know what he or I could have done differently that would have changed that.

At the end of this mess, I wish Conan hadn't gotten fucked over in the way he did, and I hope he goes on to have a lot of success at Fox or wherever else he winds up. However, much as I might like to, I'm not going to pretend that this whole affair has affected me in some significant way, or even that it represents some sort of resounding cosmic injustice. Rather, I feel like it's an unfortunate thing that I didn't really pay much attention to when it might have mattered and that I probably won't think about much after it ends. Sorry, Conan.