At some point in 2003 or 2004 I was watching Conan with some friends after a night out. While discussing how much we enjoyed Conan compared to Leno or Letterman I boldly made the prediction that Conan would host The Tonight Show in the next 5-6 years.
My friends were baffled seeing that Leno and Letterman were pretty much icons and stapled to their networks. It wasn’t that I really was an expert and had any insider info, but I explained that our generation (Gen Y) has an affinity with Conan and his style of humor opposed to what I perceive as vanilla mainstream showmanship of Leno and Letterman. They were still skeptical but bought in as I explained that our generation from a pure numbers standpoint is bigger than any other, would be coming to power as consumers in the near future, and would be the target demographic for most mainstream advertisers.
Sometime before I graduated college, my prediction came true as a transition plan was made for Conan to take over. Unfortunately though it was short lived as the older folks didn’t tune in to Leno at an earlier time slot and younger folks didn’t watch Conan like many anticipated. See hilarious video below for details.
You know what happened and its a shame because Conan was funny and someone that was legitimately entertaining. Letterman isn’t bad at all, but I am baffled at who finds Leno funny.
Most of the anger was pointed at NBC and if you know anything about them you could peg this to Jeff Zucker, President of NBC, as the main culprit.
What I found out today, is that the Conan and Zucker go way way back. In fact there tension can be traced back to their day in college.
Today while reading on Wikepedia, I came across this interesting blurb.
“Zucker went on to Harvard University, serving as President of the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, during his senior year. As President of the Crimson, Zucker encouraged the decades-old rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, headed by future NBC colleague Conan O’Brien.[3]“
Seriously?
So long story short The Harvard Crimnson is a storied college daily publication. You can check out their Wikipedia page, but they quite the pedigree including former staff workers like JFK, FDR, Steve Balmer, Michael Chrichton and obviously Zucker.
On the other side of the fence you have the Harvard Lampoon which is satirical magazine that comes out 5x a year but also boasts some big names in addition to Conan like William Randolph Hearst, George Plimpton, and Ryan from the Office. The Harvard Lampoon beget National Lampoon which beget a lot of good movies.
Its your cliche rivalry of snotty overachivers versus the goofballs and in the 80’s Zucker and Conan clashed when Conan led a group of Lampoon writers to steal all the copies of the Crimnson one day. Zucker called the cops and from there the rivalry was born.
“In 2001, Conan told The New Yorker this about the incident: “College pranks are supposed to be clever, but our rivalry with the Crimson had degenerated into us stealing something, Jeff calling the police, and the police making us haul it back,” said O’Brien. (Other Lampoon pranks on Zucker included “a fake phone-sex ad with Zucker’s dorm-room phone number. Zucker did not find any of this particularly hilarious.”) So what’s to glean from this Harvard history lesson? Yes, Jeff Zucker was a thin-skinned prick who didn’t understand comedy or know how to handle creatives even back then.”
I definitely found this fascinating. I doubt it had any role in how things played out, but its certainly noteworthy and almost cliche. College rivals go at it with the more down to earth and fun loving individual getting under the skin of the more ambitious and uptight rival.
Years go by with success for both until both climb to the top of their professions. Conan takes over the holy grail of television only to be knocked off his perch by his former college rival. In a movie, Conan would have a last laugh but as it stands now, America is being subjected to Jay Leno. I won’t rehash any more of this but will rather tip my hat to Conan for a very classy goodbye message with a poignant message to young people that I’ll remember for years to come.
