For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple weeks, NBC found itself in a media storm which finally faded out last Friday with one casualty – “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien.”

It began in 2004 when Jay Leno announced that he would leave “The Tonight Show” in 2009 to retire. His reasoning was simple; he would be 60 by that time and NBC was worried that Conan O’Brien would move to another station, perhaps ABC or Fox.

When 2009 finally did come, NBC made what would arguably be their biggest mistake.   “The Tonight Show” was handed to Conan and “Late Night” (Conan’s former gig) was given to newbie host, Jimmy Fallon. At the 10 o’clock spot, instead of creating a drama to compete with the other networks, NBC decided to bring back Leno, but in a show that no one really cared for or wanted.

As months went by, President and CEO Jeff Zucker became increasingly nervous as ratings for his late-night talk show programming fell. As his competitors gained steam, he did what any executive would do – he panicked. He decided to bring Leno back to 11pm and move everyone else forward by an hour. Conan understandably wasn’t thrilled by this arrangement, seeing as how his new time slot would muddle the flow of programming, pushing “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” to a closing time possibly later than 2am. It seemed like the only resolution would be for Conan to step down and leave NBC. Read the rest of this entry »