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Note the use of the Beatles lyrics: “Get back to where you once belonged…” The spot might have been more effective had Jeff Zucker done a mea culpa since he’s the one who fucked it all up in the first place.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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I’d be fine with just ignoring Leno altogether. What’ya think?
Ouch. I’d feel a lot worse if Conan hadn’t accepted lots of money to walk away though.
What I’m wondering about is just how tight the screening process is going to be for potential Tonight Show guests. The network doesn’t want anyone that might call Jay out, the way Jimmy Kimmel did, and Jay definitely doesn’t want anyone that might potentially replace him.
Anyway, the brand is now officially tainted, by all these screw-ups and back-stabbings.
For Jeff
He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all
Hey, NBC, is it really necessary to have a commercial before a promo spot?
LOL! My thoughts exactly.
Couldn’t agree more! Plus… the commercial was longer than the promo!
There are two ways to take those lyrics, and the funny thing is that neither of them are flattering.
Translation #1: You belong here. F**k Conan.
Translation #2: You *once* belonged here. Meaning you don’t anymore.
The “fuck up” was giving O’Brien the show in the first place. Leno had great ratings and they made the moronic decision to give the show to O’Brien to prevent him from going elsewhere. O’Brien is not going to beat Leno or Letterman no matter where he goes.
True, Walter – but they gotta let it go – to be as snitty as Conan will backfire. It looks childish.
I remember when Conan went on Oprah and revealed that he was hurt most of all by this and the show has always belonged to him. Oh wait that was the snitty Jay Leno.
But when Leno and Letterman retire, he’ll be in a really nice position. That was supposed to be the point – it was supposed to be a long term play.
Walter, you’re showing your age
Douche fail.
What’s insulting is NBC making you watch a 30 second commercial on their video player in order to see their 17 second commercial. Doh! Def. tasteless lyrics though.
what a bunch of assholes.
Very well done spot, viewers memories are short, especially the 18-34 group, they’re off doing something else already, they never watched Jay Leno in the first place. I still would have liked the “dream sequence” spot better.
In 3 or 4 months this will all be a distant memory.
You may want to check your facts, bud. Leno did pretty well with the 18-34. Of course most were just tuning in waiting for Conan. They’re all gone now. Along with most college grads, intelligent working people and those who earn over 50k per year.
Leno’s audience: the working poor, some of the elderly, immigrants who cant understand what he’s saying, trailer park dwellers, GED certificate holders (some) and, the infirm.
When even his own band leader and sidekick basically says, You’re scum, I want off, I have to protect MY image, you know the show is in trouble.
2nd that.
Internet videos. I find it obnoxious that I must watch a 30 second commercial before watching a 17 second commercial about Tonight Show premiering on March 1 yet ends with “The Jay Leno Show, Wednesdays, 10/9c on NBC.”
If there’s a God, he will fail and NBC will be left with no late night franchise at all.
With respect to the comment by CoCo 743, “If there’s a God, [Leno] will fail and NBC will be left with no late night franchise at all.” Coco, there is a God and His son teaches us to forgive one another. That means even Leno’s transgressions against Conan which I agree are cutthroat immoral. God Bless, Coco 743.
“Stay” classy? I must have missed it. I know Leno is not classy. His whole schtick is make fun of others…real classy. My friend put it aptly about a year ago (before the NBC meltdown) on why she didn’t like Leno( vs. Conan). “Leno makes fun of others -Conan makes fun of himself.” Question: Who would you rather go out to dinner with? Someone who makes fun of you or someone who makes fun with you?
NBC and Leno deserve each other…one mistake after another. Didn’t Oprah even rip Leno? (I’m not sure I could only stand watching two minutes.)
Get back to where you once belong?
NBC is so fake I can guarantee that if Leno died tomorrow from a heart attack Conan would be running on stage six months from now and they’d be playing the same song!…….sellouts.
Even NBC’s 10 day report card:
Showing death on TV of luge Olympian then defending it-(that broadcast offended some broadcasters/ viewers to their very core)
Big mouth sportcasters embarrassing Canada by doing play by play of mechanical error in Opening games(they should have just SHUT UP!)
Saying sorry about S. White’s coach and blaming him for emotions running high..
Embarrassing Conan with this song…and so on and so on and so on….
These guys(NBC) are an open, festering wound. They have complete “not my fault, reactive style of leadership” and take no real blame for their errors.
They need an extreme “staffing” makeover.
If you know anything about the peacock bird you would realize there’s a tremendous irony here:
Strutting around, showing off your colors thinking you’re hot stuff when others are clearly not impressed!
Bye, NBC.
EVERY comic makes fun of other people.
Look, I LOVE Conan, but he made fun of other people (for example: Kirstie Alley) just as much as the next late night talk show host.
The Beatles? That group that my parents think were the “bee’s knees” as they put it.
Imagine if Leno launched the Tonight Show back in the 90s with music that was big in the 50s? At what point do the boomers realize that they are old and need to make way for younger talent? Maybe Leno will offer the band leader gig to Guy Lombardo.
This post is funnier than anything on the Leno primetime show. If Leno’s writers were half as clever as you, I’d watch his return. Alas, they are not.
It wasn’t that funny. And the Beatles still kick a**, btw.
Yeah, old people suck!
Especially with their crappy old music like the Beatles and Chuck Berry and Frank Sinatra. No one wants to hear that crap anymore! They need to make room for Ke$ha and Gaga and all the other relevant, contemporary stars who somehow manage to sell records with hardly ANY exposure in the mainstream media! When will THEIR voices finally be heard?!
Thank god post-boomer filmmakers like Quentin Tarrantino and Wes Anderson have avoided this trend and NEVER use oldies in their popular films. Imagine if Pulp Fiction had used thirty-year old pop songs for its soundtrack instead of… oh, wait.
Nevermind.
Have you listened to the garbage they put on the radio these days?
The Beatles are still a big deal, even among the 18-34 group.
I think the point was the relation of the lyrics to the song to Leno’s return. Sort of like JibJab using This Land is My Land. Get it? They weren’t promoting Woody Guthrie. They were making a point about “this land,” the U.S.
Saw the Leno promo on air within the last 24 hours, and it was so insensitive and tone-deaf I thought at first I was watching a parody on Comedy Central. NBC isn’t doing a hell of a lot to woo Conan’s old audience, eh? They’re practically peeing on the Coco fan base.
I’m one of those who think this will NOT be over in three or four months, but that Leno’s brand, like Valujet after the Everglades crash, is scarred for the long term.
It doesn’t help that Jay is a cold, distant TV persona whose go-to pitch is simply pointing out how stupid people are. The faux game shows, Jaywalking, Headlines, etc. all invite you to mock others. It’s hard to muster much love for a chilly, marble-eyed, malfunctioning android.
You are correct sir!
And you get the prize for best ValuJet reference.
Sleazy as hell.
I wish people would get their facts correct before making idiotic comments about Conan’s low ratings, etc., etc. Conan’s ratings were just peachy during his “Late Night” years (all accept for in the beginning, that is).
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying until someone like Nikki makes this abundantly clear… Conan refused to move “The Tonight Show” a half-hour ahead, so not to damage the shows legacy. But when Zucker made his initial offer to Leno to begin with, Jay seemed fine with moving “The Tonight Show” had Conan accepted this move. Isn’t it obvious that Leno doesn’t care about the legacy of this franchise; otherwise he would have told Zucker right from the get-go that moving it would have been a bad idea.
And all this talk about Conan’s settlement; how he got what he wanted. I highly doubt that Conan’s first interest was the financial retributions of this fiasco. He wanted “The Tonight Show.” His payout is, and will forever be, I will repeat this, not so much as a settlement, but a PENALTY to NBC. Repeat; PENALTY. This is what happens to large corporations who don’t abide by their contracts. Why shouldn’t NBC pay? Besides, it was cheaper to pay Conan to go away, where I’ve read reports of Leno’s payout could have been anywhere between $80 and $150 million. Letterman was right, it’s all about money.
Ratings don’t mean shit these days, especially when a company like Neilson is running the show, and their core demographic is conservative middle-American baby boomers. Of course they’re not going to watch Conan. The affiliates… another complete joke. KCRW’s The Business recently had L.A. Times John Horn tell host Kim Masters that he spoke with a high-up muckity-muck at a major network who let it slip to him that affiliates really don’t mean a thing in the end.
So anyone who feels they wish to continue their argument that Conan’s ratings were low and deserved to be fired, needs to step back and take into consideration that when Leno was starting out, it took 18 months, Hugh Grant and a hooker named Divine Brown to get his “Tonight Show” up and running. And this is based on an incident, not Leno’s comic value. Conan had to use his own charming self to get his ratings up when he was doing “Late Night,” and it worked. So don’t bother debating the merits of entertainment value either.
Now rumor is that Murdoch isn’t convinced of doing a late night talk show, and FOX is out. Unless a cable network like HBO or Showtime is willing to step-up to the plate, Conan’s career as a late night talk show host is more than likely over. Financially set because of his settlement or not, I’m almost positive that O’Brien would rather be working.
Ed? Who’s Ed? Come on Gavin. Fess up, this be you writin’ and tryin’ to create integrity around the money you pulled from NBC for Conan’s failure. But to be using this site to work FOX too, well that’s why you are truly the Scott Boras of Managers.
The Affliates, a joke, don’t matter. And we wonder why broadcast television is having problems.
As you have said, it is all about money. The afflicates could be ignored as long as they were good little soldiers taking the hit for NBC’s stupid decision to put Leno on at ten. The minute it became obvious that full revolt was going to happen, they weren’t so ignorable. Why? Because as bad as Leno’s ratings were, affliates shifting him out of prime time to save their own business would have meant even more embarassment and a huge financial loss to NBC – much greater then they already had. That decision by the affliates forced a situation that probably wouldn’t have been solved this season any other way.
You see it is easy for those at the top to ignore or belittle the affliates until it becomes clear that individually they may not mean much, but as a group they can screw up your bottom line. And they will if you make them chose between their bottom line and yours.
Get back to where you ONCE belonged? But no longer do? Could these NBC assholes be any stupider?
The above poster who claims everyone will forget this mess in 3 or 4 months is probably the same guy who 3 weeks ago predicted we’d forget this mess in three weeks. Guess what – we haven’t and we won’t. Leno is forever tainted.
Kevin Eubanks flying the coop is the nail in the coffin. God, everything that happens – this promo, Oprah interview, Eubanks bailing – it just gets worse for ‘em.
The people that haven’t forgot this are the Hollywood types, WGA members, and the posters on this site, oh and Niki, the rest of the US has moved on to Tiger Woods. Conan is history, ABC doesn’t want him, Fox can’t make money off of him so they don’t want him, where else can he go? It’s the baby boomers that watch late night not 18-34 group they’re off doing other things, they didn’t watch Conan when he was on, except for the first few weeks and the last few weeks.
March 1st is just 10 days away.
CLASSLESS. Utterly classless.
Thank god that hack Conan is gone. He not only managed to get the old Tonight Show viewers to stop watching, he also got his viewers from 12:30 to stop watching him. I can’t wait to see him flop on Fox and join the likes of Joan Rivers and Chevy Chase.
You understand what the term “hack” means, right? Leno is the Shaun White of hack. He’s a good old company boy who’s never tried to innovate ANYTHING on The Tonight Show. Straight up. Straight down the middle. Cash the pay check. Thank you very much. You don’t have to like Conan but calling him a hack is the thirteenth dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. (And you know I’m telling the truth because I’m being so gosh-darn precise.) Also – you realize that Conan’s been on television for over 15 years, right? And this NBC fiasco has pretty much made him a cult hero among the 18-50 year old demographic? So suddenly he’s Chevy Chase? Brilliant analysis of the situation. Now go get Jeff Zucker a juice box.
Get over it, people. You too, Nikki
Nothing unclassy here. You’ve all ground that ax enough.
Moving on.
tentoes,
I have no ax to grind with anyone, but as a distant observer of everything that NBC’s management did, promised, failed to do, and failed to own up to, I have to say that GE stock stays out of my portfolio for a long while.
And I agree with everyone who posted how insulting it is to sit through a commercial in order to watch a commercial – that is like pay-toilet douchy.
i think the selection of the song was a slap at conan because conan purposefully used ‘lovely rita meter maid’ to bring out tom hanks on his last broadcast. as nikki pointed out, that music clip cost nbc something like half a million dollars. i think this was just a juvenile retort — but what the hell else do you expect from jeff zucker? what a tool.
The use of that song did not cost NBC much at all as they just played a snippet. Sorry to tell you. They play intro music for guests all the time. And yes, it was done for Hanks as his lovely wife is named Rita.
Using a Beatles song in the promo works because people love the Beatles and its about getting back to where you once belonged (duh.) It’s not unclassy. It’s just a cute NBC promo. It’s not groundbreaking nor that interesting either but again, it’s an NBC promo.
Let it be.
Do you know anything about music licensing at all? “A snippet” – the amount of the song used -is irrelevant in this case. Seven seconds of The Who (or whoever) is the same price as thirty when it comes to advertising. Of course, these are negotiated on a case by case basis, but Sony (it was a cover) made “a lot” of money on this. My guess is $250,000. Also, comparing a promo (advertising) to a guest intro is apples to oranges.
That “ONCE belonged” lyric jumped right out at me, too. Nice job, NBC! How much did you pay for the rights? (Knowing the promo business, when Zucker hears the ridicule heads will roll.)
I was just surprised(or maybe I wasn’t) how bad the promo looked – incredibly cheap stickers on a pricey vintage roadster? Really?
This is what separates normal people from marketing people; where a normal person would say “Let’s not make a big deal about this horrible, horrible clusterfuck we created at The Tonight Show with our incredible idiocy,” a marketing person immediately cranks out an ad like this one to highlight the mess and remind everyone of how ugly it was.
It almost makes me wish I was part of the Nielsens, just so I could make a point of not watching Leno’s “triumphant” return.