Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien may be blaming NBC for their woes, but NBC Sports Executive Dick Ebersol is pointing the finger right back at Conan, calling his stewardship of “The Tonight Show” an “astounding failure”.
The increasingly nasty and public fall-out between the talk show hosts and the NBC network continued with Ebersol apparently telling The New York Times that it’s all Conan O’Brien’s fault. “What this is really all about is as astounding failure by Conan,” Ebersol declared (conveniently failing to mention the spectacular home goal of “The Jay Leno Show” prime time “experiment” failure). “We bet on the wrong guy,” he insists, saying Conan was unwilling “to broaden the appeal of his show” and saying that the argument that seven months wasn’t long enough for Conan to settle in as “Tonight Show” host was “specious”.
Ebersol also took exception to O’Brien and rival CBS late night talk show host David Letterman taking pot shots at Jay Leno in their comedic monologues, blasting them as being “chicken hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings… They’re just striking out at Jay. It seems like professional jealousy.” Once again, Ebersol continually fails to mention “The Jay Leno Show”, which beat precisely nobody in the ratings. The very public double failure of the prime time chat show and falling ratings for the O’Brien hosted “Tonight Show” have been a major embarrassment for the network, and the stars themselves are not helping, with O’Brien declaring them to be “morons” on Monday night’s show.
