Thursday, January 21, 2010

Nobody Asked Me, But...


I have a two-state solution for NBC. I don't watch "The Tonight Show"-I work evenings-but I grew up watching Carson, back then when we only had a few viewing choices.
NBC had an opportunity to get this right, and they blew it.
Here's my solution:
Conan has earned the Tonight Show. He keeps it, and is happy. Call it...Tonight Show Alpha. It stays where it has been since Steve Allen waved at the first audience.
Leno gets Tonight Show Beta, "broadcast" on satellite/cable MSNBC, CNBC, and whatever other channels NBC owns.
He would have a smaller audience, but his show would be different than the MSNBC political talk shows, hammered in the ratings, year after year, by their Fox News adversaries.
Put both Tonight Shows on at the same beloved, coveted timeslot-they won't be fighting each other for ratings-two separate markets. And NBC could profit from having two Tonight Shows on which to sell advertising. Cable is no longer the red headed stepchild of the Networks-it is the future, and Leno could help NBC get there.
Bye the bye, I worked a long, hard ten minutes on that photo of the Gordian Knotheads.
I'm too impatient to do things well; good enough is good enough. A man riding by on horseback of a cloudy midnight wouldn't even notice the sloppy work.

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