and now, heeeeerreeee’s … Joey Bishop!
I have said as much, with the caveat that that is not the interesting story here. (The interesting story is that the whole thing adds up to a a crack in television business model, and the current model will not hold.)  Frankly, though, I am a little annoyed by the ideological / partisan working that comes with these things. We need to shoehorn this all into the red/blue divide, and so:
In the end, Conan O’Brien’s partisans don’t seem to care much about any of that. They’re more concerned about making sure the world knows how sophisticated they are and that NBC went the Middle America route. Yet if everyone who claimed to adore Conan O’Brien during the last few weeks had actually watched his program, he’d still be hosting the Tonight Show.
Sophisticated? Sophisticated? Like, Masturbating Bear Sophisticated?
Meanwhile, I also see from Conan’s detractors / the big hulp of masses backing Leno in the comments section around these parts for instance — the adjective — sophomoric.
Or have we entered this period of so-called sophisticates reveling in the sophomoric? (I guess by definition, the quotation-mark “Sophistication” goes with the definition of sophomoric– or juvenile with a pretense of grander things.)
But your basic problem with Conan is that — if you want to rate his professional work, it’d probably go something like:
#1: The Monorail Episode of the Simpsons
#2: The final 2 weeks of The Tonight Show
#3: Late Night
#4: The rest of the Tonight Show
#5: SNL. He wrote the “Pump You Up” bit, right?Â
“The Chin”‘s appearance on Oprah served as the “Jump the Shark” moment for the “Late Night Wars”. It all leaves me yearning for the days where you could stray from Carson to watch Joey Bishop.
… Which is today, actually. And with NBC scrubbing out Conan, we may just end up with more Joey Bishop than Conan O’brien available at our disposal.