Why Conan O'Brien has to GO and NOT.

Recently NBC announced that the Tonight Show will be returned to Jay Leno at an unspecified date. This has led to backlash by many loyal Conan O'Brien viewers. The I'm with CoCo campaign began through the popular social networking site Facebook. But not to be outdone Jay Leno supporters have begun their own campaign. However the Leno followers are far outnumbered by the CoCo followers. The reason for Conan's departure is due to ratings failure at the 11:35 time slot. Originally during the Leno reign, Leno averaged 5.0 million viewers a week. Currently O'Brien gets 2.5 million average per week. Also, Jay Leno has been able to keep the same number of viewers for his current 10pm show. Obrien has increased his average viewership from his late night gig of 1.9 million to 2.5 million. Conan started his reign at the tonight show very well. His first show averaged 7 million but quickly dropped to 6 million then 4 million then 2 million. Then he began losing to Letterman. Conan would have survived if younger viewers had only watched the program. Young viewers from 18-34 are the most desirable viewers for advertisers. If only they had watched O'Brien consistently, maybe today it would be Leno who would have been shown the door. But it never happened. When Leno was the host, he constantly beat Letterman in young viewers and total viewers. Now Conan, SOMETIMES beat Letterman in young viewers but only by 0.1 and has lost to Letterman in total views a majority of the time he was the Tonight Show host. Also, NBC local affiliates were losing viewers, one station lost 30% of its viewers since the Conan reign. That means a loss in revenue and angry station managers. So the decision to put Leno back at 11:35 makes a lot of sense.

Pros VS. Cons

>>>>>Conan O'Brien

PRO: he can attract more young viewers then letterman. He is young and has time to improve
CON: Youth viewers vary and don't usually watch Conan on TV, but through other means like HULU which does not get ratings

>>>>> Jay Leno
PRO: more happier affiliates. The Tonight Show can be #1 again (maybe)
CON: His image as a nice guy has suffered and his creditability damaged.

NOW who is likely to be happy?

NBC will be extremely happy and will make money
Jimmy Fallon will be happy because when Leno was his lead in Fallon averaged 2.25 million viewers a week. BUT with Conan as his lead in, Fallon has only been able to average 1.3 million viewers.

NOW who is to be blamed?

Jeff Zucker, the man who underestimated the situation
Conan O'Brien viewers because they did not tune in to his show consistently. If Conan had only won the 18-34 demo by a LARGER margin he would still be on the air today. Right now that is happening. Since the debacle began O'Brien has been getting a 1.9 in the demo vs the 1.0 he originally gets. If only o'brien gotten a 1.9 a MAJORITY of his tenure as the Tonight Show host he would still be the host. But it's too late! Right now Leno gets between a 1.3-2.2 in the same demo depending on the night.

But fear not COCO fans, O'brien will be fine with the suitcases of money he will take from NBC

POSSIBLE PLACES for CONAN:
Fox
FX
Comedy Central
HBO
Showtime
the internet.

LATE NIGHT LAUGHS - ratings

In the past few months Late Night has seen a big change with the change of hosts on NBC's "Late Night" and change is show format with NBC's "Last Call with Carson Daly. However all that matters are the ratings that follow. NBC has been the ratings king being led by "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. When Conan O'Brien held the reign of Late Night succeeding David Letterman (after CBS promised him an earlier time slot back in the early 90's) has been in a ratings fight with CBS's the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. However recently Jimmy Fallon came in to take over "Late Night" as Conan prepares to host the "Tonight Show" as Jay prepares to how the "Jay Leno Show" in the fall on NBC at 10pm. WOW LOTS OF CHANGES. BUT THATS NOT IT. Carson Daly has decided to take his show on the road, thus changing the format of his show. There has been a lot of positive reaction to the change in format. Now back to Jimmy Fallon and his ratings. In the first couple of week Fallon topped Ferguson with over two million viewers versus Ferguson's 1.9 million. Also Fallon has been able to retain at least 50% of Leno's audience. However in May Fallon's numbers cooled as his ratings began to decline. During the week of May 8th Ferguson beat Fallon in total viewers and virtually tied Fallon in the key demographics. WTF happened?! Well IDK, if the episodes that appeared during the week of May 8th were repeat episodes than ok! New numbers are out and heres the break down:

11:35pm
NBC's Tonight Show 5.0 million viewers
ABC's Nightline 3.8 million Viewers
CBS's Late Show 3.7 million viewers

*Notice Night Line a news division of ABC news is beating David Letterman's show. CBS's competition at that time is mostly with ABC. However when Conan takes over in June will there be a ratings change? Will the Tonight Show lose viewers? I think the first night there will be interest to see what Conan does. If he hits it out of the park then the Tonight Show will continue to beat ABC and CBS. However if he dosen't Letterman could see a possible chance at stealing away O'Brien's audience.*

12:35am
NBC's Late Night 2.1 million viewers
CBS's Late Late Show 1.9 million viewers
ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live 1.7 million viewers
*note Kimmel's show begins at midnight exactly*

1:35am
NBC's Last Call 1.1 million viewers

CABLE RATINGS

The Daily Show 1.5 million viewers
The Colbert Report 1.1 million viewers

Imagine if Stewart and Colbert where on basic TV, their ratings would be huge!

NBC's Saturday Night Live also had a huge ratings gain! it had 7.3 million viewers
*note Fox's Mad tv has been canceled....

NBC's TODAY is high ratings day

The Today show continues to dominate its competition. Today led with 5.7 million followed by ABC's Good Morning America 4.3 million and CBS's the early show had 2.9 million viewers. Now what about Cable news. Well no mater how you look at it, Cable news combined would still be behind NBC's Today Show. Fox news "Fox and Friends 1 million viewers. CNN's American Morning had 393,000 viewers. MSNBC's "Morning Joe had 360,000 viewers. Headline News' Morning Express with Robin Meade had 247,000 viewers. CNBC's Squawk Box had 162,000 viewers. Fox Business Channel's Money for breakfast had no numbers but my guess is that is had less than 15,000 viewers because its widely unavailable and the recent numbers came out long ago. FBN has a long way to go if it wants to catch CNBC.

MEET THE PRESS, meet huge ratings

MEET THE PRESS continues its domination of the sunday morning public affairs forum. MEET THE PRESS had 3.2 million viewers tune in. I like those numbers because David Gregory is doing a great job. He has had tough shoes to fill that of Tim Russert and interm host Tom Brokaw. Gregory continues to use his tough questioning approach which makes it more fasinating to watch each week. Gregory's first show on MSNBC "Race for the White House" greatly improved the 6pm timeslot of the former MSNBC host/contributor Tucker Carlson's "Tucker, Live". On MSNBC he followed the dame ratings trend of increasing each week. His first show averaged over 500,000 viewers. As the elections approached the ratings went higher however the network at 6pm still remained in 3rd place behind CNN's the situation room and way behind Fox news' special report. Despite the moderate ratings gain I believe Gregory's debut as a host really prepared him for the full time job of MEET THE PRESS. I will continue to watch the show because Gregory always has interesting guest and a variety of people to fill in his roundtable. I don't quiet like ABC's "This Week" because the roundtable portion of the show features the same people with the same point of view. CBS' "Face the Nation" is ABC's competition because on occasion Face the nation sometimes beats This Week. As for Fox's "Fox News Sunday", WTF happened to that show?! The ratings are horrible, it used to beat ABC before now its the least watched sunday morning public affairs forum. Perhaps people find a distained distrust among the Fox news family. Besides only conservatives watch Fox, liberals watch ABC and moderates like me watch MEET THE PRESS. AGAIN thats my opinion. Heres the full ratings break down from last week:

show audience size
NBC's MEET THE PRESS 3.3 million
ABC's THIS WEEK 2.8 million
CBS's FACE THE NATION 2.1 million
Fox's Fox News Sunday 1.3 million

NBC "Community"

Awesome new Comedy from NBC, coming soon! HAHA! so College