In late 2009, NBC had a problem: its funnel was broken. Conan O’Brien had recently taken over the Tonight Show, but his ratings weren’t at the heights many insiders had hoped. This performance, which some blamed on his niche comedy style, was at least partially due to the fact that Jay Leno’s new 10 pm show was floundering. A bad 10 pm show gave a bad lead-in to the 11 pm local news, which in turn filtered into a bad lead-in to Conan at 11:35. The local affiliates were up in arms; they ...
