BY ALEX ISRAEL

In print | Published January 28, 2010

Dear Mr. Zucker,

I suppose that, when one writes a letter to a powerful figure such as yourself, it usually begins with some sort of pandering formality that thanks you profusely for your time and attention and suggests that, while you are an extremely busy man, if you could just take a few minutes out of your day to read this letter the author would be so grateful, blah blah blah.

However, I don’t really feel like taking this route. While I do realize that you have your hands full desperately trying to breathe life into the once-great network that you’ve managed to destroy, I think you can take some time out from crushing people’s hopes and dreams and answer one simple question: what were you thinking?

Actually, I know what you were thinking, at least up to a point. You thought that moving Jay Leno from 11:35 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. would not only save you a bundle on developing those pesky scripted shows (some of which don’t even manage to succeed!), but would also allow you to keep in your employ a talentless hack whose show is the comedic equivalent of a hot dog from 7/11: it will suffice if you have nothing else to eat, but you certainly won’t like it, and it will probably give you indigestion. All this because, five years earlier, you had made a promise to a lanky redhead (whose show, by the way, is the equivalent of a well-made mole sauce: creative, unexpected, and awesome) that he would, one day, realize his dream of hosting The Tonight Show.

And realize that dream he did. Well, sort of. Instead of giving Conan time to fine-tune his show (which, by the way, was still great and definitely hit heights comparable to the zany brilliance of the Masturbating Bear and the Walker Texas Ranger Lever, including the Spanish mock-telenovela “Noches de Pasion con Senor O’Brien and the Velcro Christmas Tree,” you unceremoniously announced that after a mere seven months (!?), you were going to move Leno back to 11:35 p.m. and push The Tonight Show, which had been on in the same time slot for almost sixty years, back to 12:05 p.m. This move could only hurt The Tonight Show, which was already suffering from its weak lead-in and which would likely lose even more viewers if it were on later.

Unfortunately for you, however, Conan wasn’t going to go along with it. He released a statement in which he said, “I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is [the] destruction [of The Tonight Show].” It was a ballsy move, and one that left you in the unfortunate (albeit well-deserved) position of having to fire either Conan or Jay. You chose to fire Conan. In other words, you stayed perfectly consistent with your established pattern of championing profits over creativity.
Public opinion, however, is turning against you. The other late-night hosts are all championing Conan: Jimmy Kimmel spent an entire episode of his show dressed as Leno in order to take pot-shots at him; David Letterman hit new heights of relevance by continually and hilariously deconstructing the situation; on Conan’s last night on the air, Jimmy Fallon and the Roots snuck into Conan’s old New York studio to sing Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” and Craig Ferguson sarcastically noted that NBC is the only place on television, other than Mythbusters, where the prevailing philosophy seems to be “This is working, so blow it up!”

The anti-Zucker (not to mention anti-Leno) backlash is also palpable among the general public. There are over 50 Facebook groups named “I’m with Coco,” the largest of which has almost 750,000 members. Conan himself has thanked all his fans, who “made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.” Ironically enough, all those fans earned Conan’s last episode of The Tonight Show a truly impressive 7.0 rating. Maybe, Mr. Zucker, you were a little too hasty in canning Coco.

Anyway, it’s about time for me to wrap this letter up; I have to finish my seminar reading, and I assume that you have mergers to make, situations to spin and puppies to bludgeon to death. However, I’ll leave you with one last thought. Conan doesn’t need The Tonight Show. He’s smart and talented, and he’ll find his way back into the spotlight. But there were a group of people who did need the show: Conan’s staff and crew. Around 150 people uprooted their lives and moved from New York to L.A. in order to keep working with the host and are now jobless because of your blundering. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

Sincerely,
Alex Israel

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