An alternate-universe question

[Brad Beam]

After 12 years at the helm, Conan O’Brien will be stepping down from “The Tonight Show” in June. So who’s the next host? (Make any assumptions necessary.)

 

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[Kevin M.]

I’d like to believe that after Conan, they’d retire the concept of late night TV as some sort of separate genre. We’ve all seen the ratings. There’s nothing keeping The Tonight Show on the air except network execs feeling beholden to Lorne Michaels. Put it out if NBC’s (and our) misery. 

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[David Bruggeman]

That said, I'd expect NBC to be both traditional and lazy.  Whomever would be holding the Late Night spot when Conan retired from Tonight would probably get the gig.  Maybe they'd make noises about poaching Trevor Noah or Samantha Bee or John Oliver, but I'd expect it to end up being somebody Lorne likes and/or thinks he could or did groom for the gig.  So we might still be cursing Jimmy East Coast or wondering how Seth Meyers might handle things at 11:35.

David

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[Tom Wolper]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 9:45 PM 'David Bruggeman' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

That said, I'd expect NBC to be both traditional and lazy.  Whomever would be holding the Late Night spot when Conan retired from Tonight would probably get the gig.  Maybe they'd make noises about poaching Trevor Noah or Samantha Bee or John Oliver, but I'd expect it to end up being somebody Lorne likes and/or thinks he could or did groom for the gig.  So we might still be cursing Jimmy East Coast or wondering how Seth Meyers might handle things at 11:35.

I agree with David that the first in line for the job is the host of Late Night. In this world Lorne doesn't yet run the Tonight Show so there could be some resistance to giving the slot to him. If there were any competition or the network announced they were looking outside for a new host it wouldn't make for the kind of stories that came out during Letterman/Leno or even O'Brien/Leno. And choosing a middle aged white man to host won't help things.

The late night shows aren't the revenue generators they once were and they certainly have lost a lot of influence. I don't see the late night shows coming to an end as Kevin would like . I can see the budgets get slashed and the shows becoming low rent plugfests.

[Dave Sikula]

As tempting as it would be to think Lorne would just plug Fallon in, I have to think they'd want to think out of the box and give it to someone like the vile Lily Singh or even Leslie Jones. She's old enough that she wouldn't stay more than a few years, and even though I wouldn't watch the show on a bet, it'd certainly be both a shakeup and huge on social media.

--Dave Sikula

[paul7e]

Some of the best alternate histories take place in dystopian hellscapes:

<music:> vaguely latin/funk version of Conan's tonight show theme>

<vo:> From Studio 6B at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City, it's the Tonight Show!

Tonight's guests...

Dwayne the Rock Johnsonnnnnnnn

from the Voice, Kelly Clarksonnnnnn

music superstars B... T... S...

featuring Bruno Mars and his Tonight Show Combo

I'm your announcer, Pete Davidson, and now the stars of our show:

Scarlett aaaaannnnd Colinnnnnnnn!

[M-D November]

Can this alternate universe also be one where Craig Ferguson takes over for Dave upon his retirement? 

Assuming late night looks like this:

11:35

• CBS - The Late Show with Craig Ferguson
• NBC - The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
• ABC - Jimmy Kimmel Live

12:35

• CBS - The Late Late Show with James Corden*
• NBC - Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

* Assuming CBS keeps the program alive once CraigyFerg transitions to 11:35, the question of who fills this slot has a lot to do with who ends up owning the show.  If CBS takes over the timeslot, as they did in our reality, then presumably Corden is still tapped to take the spot.  If Ferguson reaches the same sort of deal with CBS that Dave had, and he owns the timeslot, I'd assume he'd go for a more out-there standup, probably a woman, probably a POC.

Let's also assume that Jon Stewart leaves TDS when he did IRL, but the Colbert Report continues in some form beyond the IRL end date, since there's no longer a hard start date for him at CBS.  Given that, I'd say Colbert's name is in the mix to take over for Conan, as well as some former SNLers (Kenan, maybe?) and possibly Leslie Jones or someone like Yvette Nicole Brown (not a standup necessarily, but a recognizable name, a known quantity in comedy and one of those 'can do it all' types).

On Monday, February 15, 2021 at 4:36:27 AM UTC-5 Dave Sikula wrote:

[PGage]

As others have said, almost certainly they give it to either a POC or a woman (assuming social developments in the Beta Universe are similar to here), but I doubt that in any universe NBC would be willing to do both. They would have to consider Noah, but I don’t see him as having been successful enough where he is to have a strong case. I think they go with a white woman who has been successful on network TV, probably Tina Fey, maybe Amy Poehler. And both of them have the Lorne connections, if those are still helpful.

Contra Kevin, I suspect late night tv us still profitable, just not what it used to be. Their budgets are pretty low, they are used to hype the networks own stuff. I could not find any estimates of the profitability of the Tonight Show, but it looks like it generates enough profit just from YouTube revenues to defray mist of Fallon’s salary.

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[Brad Beam]

From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kevin M.

>I’d like to believe that after Conan, they’d retire the concept of late night TV as some sort of separate genre. We’ve all seen the ratings. There’s nothing keeping The Tonight Show on the air except network execs feeling beholden to Lorne Michaels. Put it out of NBC’s (and our) misery. 

 

What would the networks then show after the late news? With DVRs, there’s no need to rerun the primetime schedule.

 

It could be syndicated filler at the local level. Or maybe CBS could air imports from co-owned Channels 5 (UK) and Ten (Aus). ABC could simulcast “Good Morning Britain,” leading into the locals’ early-early news.

[Jim Ellwanger]

I feel like there's no way the networks would give the late-night time slots back to their affiliates without some sort of major compensation, along the lines of "we'll give you back everything after 11:00 P.M., but we're taking the 7:00-8:00 slot Monday-Saturday." (The Prime Time Access Rule was repealed back in 1996, but the networks haven't really done anything about it.) I realize that specific example may not be plausible due to syndication contracts that require the shows to air in the 7:00 hour.

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[Mark Jeffries]

Channel 5's late-night is Brit-centric reality shows.  I don't see them being imported.  The Brit chat shows (Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross, whoever else) are all once-a-week.

Network Ten's late-night is Colbert and a repeat of "The Project," their 6:30 p.m. panel current affairs show.  The "tonight" shows (as they're called over there) that were the linchpins of the schedule have been gone ever since Rove McManus ended his show.  But perhaps CBS could air "The Project" and force the hosts to offer explanations of Aussie-centric issues for the American viewers.  (For the record, Australian TV's biggest ratings are now in the dinner hour, where the commercial nets basically offer their flagship newscasts and game shows "The Chase" and "Millionaire Hot Seat", with Seven running the long-running soap "Home and Away" in that block, Nine running the original tabloid mag "A Current Affair" and Ten "The Project.")

Mark Jeffries

spotl...@gmail.com

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[Adam Bowie]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 4:11 PM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Channel 5's late-night is Brit-centric reality shows.  I don't see them being imported.  The Brit chat shows (Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross, whoever else) are all once-a-week.

I can't think of a single thing on Channel 5 that would work on a US network. They did recently do the remake of All Creatures Great and Small which is PBS Masterpiece I believe, but their output is squarely UK-focused these days. They've just started doing a handful of original dramas, but that's about it.

And would you really want to have Piers Morgan airing again in the small hours with Good Morning Britain? 

The big shows in the UK air 9.00-10.00pm - usually dramas. But they've nearly all already got US homes in PBS/Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/FX/HBO/Acorn/BritBox. And gameshows/unscripted tend to way better being reformatted rather than re-broadcast.

[Brad Beam]

From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Adam Bowie

>And would you really want to have Piers Morgan airing again in the small hours with Good Morning Britain? 

 

Wiki says he only works three days a week. Nice work if you can get it.

[Adam Bowie]

If I had a revolver with five cylinders, of which three were loaded, you probably wouldn’t play Russian Roulette with me...