Jay Leno: January 18 (Video, Transcript)

For the first time since the NBC late night mess erupted, Jay Leno addressed the matter on his show -- head-on, seriously, and at length.

Here's the transcript of his remarks as provided by NBC, from the Los Angeles Times:

JAY LENO: I thought maybe I should address this. At least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let’s start in 2004. 2004 I’m sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, listen, Conan O’Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don’t want him to go, so we’re going to give him ‘The Tonight Show.’ I said, ‘well, I’ve been number one for 12 years.’ They said, ‘we know that, but we don’t think you can sustain that.’ I said, ‘okay. How about until I fall to number two, then you fire me?’ ‘No, we made this decision.’ I said, ‘that’s fine.’ Don’t blame Conan O’Brien. Nice guy, good family guy, great guy. He and I have talked and not a problem since then. That’s what managers and people do, they try to get something for their clients. I said, ‘I’ll retire just to avoid what happened the last time.’ Okay.

So time goes by and we stay number one up until the day we leave. We hand - (applause)-No, no. Okay, but I’m leaving before my contract is out. About six to eight months early. So before I could go anywhere else, I would be at least a year or 18 months before I could go and do a show somewhere else. I said to NBC, ‘would you release me from my contract.’ They said, ‘we want to keep you here.’ Okay. What are your ideas? They said, ‘how about primetime?’ I said, ‘that will never work.’ No, no, we want to put you on at 10:00. We have done focus groups. People will love you at 10:00. Look at these studies showing Jay’s chin at 10:00. People will go crazy. Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. I said, ‘alright, can I keep my staff?’ There are 175 people that work here. I said, ‘can I keep my staff?’ Yes, you can. Let’s try it. We guarantee you two years on the air, guaranteed. Now for the first four or five months against original shows like “CSI” you’ll get killed, but in the spring and summer when the reruns come, that’s when you’ll pick up. Okay, great. I agree to that.

Four months go by, we don’t make it. Meanwhile, Conan’s show during the summer, we’re not on, was not doing well. The great hope was that we would help him. Well, we didn’t help him any, okay. They come and go, ‘this show isn’t working. We want to let you go.’ Can you let me out of my contract? No, you’re still a valuable asset to this company. How valuable can I be? You fired me twice. How valuable can I be? Okay. So then, the affiliates are not happy. The affiliates are the ones that own the TV stations. They’re the ones that sort of makes the decisions, they’re not happy with your performance and Conan is not doing well at 11:30. I said, ‘what’s your idea?’ They said, ‘well, look, how about you do a half hour show at 11:30?’ Now, where I come from, when your boss gives you a job and you don’t do it well, I think we did a good job here, but we didn’t’ get the ratings, so you get humbled. I said, ‘okay, I’m not crazy about doing a half hour, but okay. What do you want to do with Conan?’ We’ll put him on at midnight, or 12:05, keeps “The Tonight Show” does all that, he gets the whole hour. I said, okay. You think Conan will go for that? Yes, yes. (laughter) Almost guarantee you. I said okay. Shake hands, that’s it. I don’t have a manager, I don’t have an agent, that’s my handshake deal.

Next thing I see Conan has a story in the paper saying he doesn’t want to do that. They come back to me and they say if he decides to walk and doesn’t want to do it, do you want the show back? I go, ‘yeah, I’ll take the show back. If that’s what he wants to do. This way, we keep our people working, fine.’ So that’s pretty much where we are. It looks like we might be back at 11:30, I’m not sure. I don’t know. (applause) I don’t know. But through all of this - through all of this, Conan O’Brien has been a gentleman. He’s a good guy. I have no animosity towards him. This is all business. If you don’t get the ratings, they take you off the air. I think you know this town, you can do almost anything. You get ratings they keep you. I don’t get ratings, he wants. That was NBC’s solution. It didn’t work so we might have an answer for you tomorrow. So, we’ll see. That’s basically where it is.

I'm not cheerleading for Leno, but I do think he's being unfairly bashed.

When he had The Tonight Show and Conan O'Brien followed him with Late Night, I was a regular viewer of both shows. I was happy with the lineup. I liked Leno's monologue and the Jaywalking bits, but I thought O'Brien's show was funnier and just more inovative.

I can understand why O'Brien is angry about the shake-up, but he could have accepted being pushed back just half an hour. A full hour would have been ridiculous, but not 30 minutes. It was his decision to refuse NBC's offer. It's not as if NBC flat-out told him to hit the road.

What was unfair to O'Brien was that he really wasn't given a chance to build an audience.

As sick as it is, I suppose Letterman benefited from his controversial comments about Sarah Palin and her daughters as well as his "sex with staffers and interns" scandal when it comes to the ratings race.

The bottom line is ratings. It always is. NBC has to keep the affiliates happy and they weren't. They were pressuring the network.

Therefore, I do think some of the anger being directed at Leno is misplaced.

He was pulling in great ratings for the network for years, yet he was told he had to leave.

Did O'Brien apologize for doing that to Leno? No. I don't think he should have. It is business. If Leno was angry about being pushed out, he had NBC to blame.

Similarly, I think O'Brien should blame NBC for the current shake-up.

I don't think playing the victim card is very becoming. It's especially unbecoming to be demonizing Leno.

The bitter David Letterman is the worst offender in that regard. Such sleazy behavior is completely in character for the sleazy Letterman. It's such a shame he turned so angry and creepy and weird. There was a time when Letterman was funny. He was the best.

Those were the days, long gone.

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Here are jokes and references to NBC in Leno's January 18 monologue:

JAY LENO: Big storm hit California today. What a rainstorm! For the first time ever, there were more cancellations at LAX than there were at NBC. That's how bad, bad!

And authorities have issued a mudslide alert, except for at NBC where they're issuing a mud-slinging alert.

...

And some good news for NBC -- Conan O'Brien and I won a Golden Globe for best late night drama. Very excited about that. Thank you very much.

In fact, CBS now developing a sitcom about the troubles here at NBC. It's called Two Men and a Half-assed Network.

The one good thing to come out of all this infighting, Conan's ratings have surged. His ratings are way up since this whole thing started. But unfortunately, that kind of thing is frowned upon here at NBC. Remember, I got fired for it, Kev. Remember we were number one? Out the door.

Remember the more innocent days of late night TV, when the only people cared about was which intern the host was nailing? What happened to that? What happened to those days? That was a more innocent time.

Leno then showed a taped announcement from NBC regarding late night.

ANNOUNCER: In light of the controversy regarding Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, NBC would like to officially announce that they are replacing both hosts with this guy:

LENO: Hey, Kev, do you know the difference between me and Tony Romo? I've only been sacked twice.

One more joke--

Here was the introduction to Monday night's regular comedy bit, "Headlines":



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