Yesterday, I charted out my view of the current late night TV battles.

It was something some of you apparently didn’t understand.

Here’s the thing… in text this time… If you read newspapers, magazines, media outlets online, comments online and so forth, one would think that David Letterman and Conan O’Brien are comedic geniuses that everyone is watching.

This is not a recent development by any stretch. Long before Conan had The Tonight Show, there was plenty of talk about how Letterman was oh-so-brilliant and funny and the next best thing to seeing your best friend hit by a cream pie.

The ratings said otherwise. Plenty more people watched Jay Leno.

The thing is that what people say and what people do are often entirely different things. On top of that, not everyone who does things also write about them. For example, there are over 300 million people in the United States. According to eMarketer.com, there were 28 million bloggers in 2009. That’s projected to increase to over 30 million this year.

That means that only around 10% of people across the country blog.

You might think that that is a good representative sample, but it’s not. According to Technorati, almost 70% are male and 60% are between the ages of 18-44. While, among the population as a whole, about 50% are male and about 37% of the population is between the ages of 18-44.

So, the blogosphere is certainly not necessarily reflective of what we might call the “real world.”

The bottom line here is that you cannot go by what people say online.

Even though people are labeling “The Jay Leno Show” as a failure, it’s important to note that it did achieve the ratings that NBC projected. NBC needed at least a 1.5 rating to earn a profit and “The Jay Leno Show” was getting 1.6. Plus, at about 5 million viewers a night, that’s a rather large audience.

I think it’s probably also a safe bet that a lot of people that say Conan is funnier are not actually watching his show. They may say they watch, but they’re probably watching clips online, not on TV.

Remember, O’Brien’s audience skews younger. And that younger crowd tends to be online more than they watch TV.

And, perhaps the numbers bare that out. The audience for The Tonight Show has declined 55% since Conan took over. And, for those whining that he hasn’t had enough time to build his audience in seven months, keep in mind that these are the same people whining that “The Jay Leno Show” is a failure, even though Jay hasn’t even had four months to build his audience. (Tomorrow will be the show’s four month anniversary.)

Then, there are those that blame Jay Leno’s low ratings for Conan’s low ratings. I don’t think the “funnel” theory is necessarily applicable. You know how easy it is to change a channel? You press a freakin’ button. Are the mass of Americans too lazy to push a button? I don’t think we’ve quite sunk to those levels yet. Believe me, I’ve seen even older people flip the channel as if their very life depended upon it if some program came on that they didn’t like.

So, to blame Jay for people not watching Conan? I don’t buy it. When Jay was getting 4.75 million viewers as host of The Tonight Show, Conan was getting 1 million. Evidently, 3.75 million people didn’t have much of a problem changing the channel to not watch Conan, so why would it be so hard to believe that people couldn’t change the channel to watch Conan?

With Conan’s audience skewing younger, it may just be that his viewers aren’t watching him on TV. And, to that extent, it doesn’t matter what time he comes on.

At any rate, TV viewership in general is declining. And younger viewers are more apt to get their entertainment elsewhere, such as online. No doubt, if something’s funny, it’ll be blogged about or tweeted, and then they can watch the clip and not have to sit through an entire show to enjoy the few gems. People have short attention spans these days.

So, while some think that giving Conan more time may allow him to build his audience, there’s a good chance that he’s already maxed out his audience. He may never have the following that Leno has, who never had the following that Carson had.

It’s the nature of the way things have changed. For a time, there were essentially only three main channels. Then, cable expanded the options where people had more choices. The growth of the Internet further changed the landscape.

As such, TV viewership has been in decline. Every so often, there may be a burp, where something grabs people’s attention and they tune in, but the overall trend is decline.

On the one hand, networks need to begin to better embrace the change. For the short-term, Leno is probably a safer bet. For the long-term, it’s anyone’s guess. Is it Conan? Or, will someone else come along? Bear in mind that the short-term could be 5-10 years. Leno’s 59 now. He could stick around until he’s 64 or 69, depending on his health and ratings. Larry King is 76 and still going, so 69 is certainly not a stretch.

And, in 5-10 years, Conan will be 5-10 years older, and so will his audience. So, in that 5-10 years, might someone else be a better fit for a younger audience? Jimmy Fallon is 11 years younger than Conan, so will he be ready in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be someone else.

At any rate, from this perspective, it makes sense why NBC would want to move Leno back to late night and either push Conan back or kick him aside. It’s also interesting to note that Jimmy Fallon is doing better in Conan’s old time slot than Conan did.

But, if you look online, people try to frame this as a Leno vs. Conan battle. But, it’s not either of their faults. Naturally, both would like to host The Tonight Show and/or have the coveted 11:35 time slot. But, the whole problem is NBC. As I mentioned the other day, the whole problem is NBC’s lack of leadership.

Humor is subjective, and a lot of the online support centers around who thinks who is funny. But, it doesn’t matter who thinks what. Subjective feelings don’t pay the bills. Advertisers don’t place their ads based on who they think is funnier. What matters is the ratings. And, from that perspective, Leno is the safe bet.

And, in 5-10 years, who knows if late night TV will even matter anymore. With more and more on-demand programming, with more and more use of DVRs, and with more and more video content available online, in a few years, your TV could be nothing more than a glorified web browser. You watch what you want, when you want.

And, then there won’t be issues of who is on when.

Because it won’t matter.

And, today, for a lot of younger people, it already doesn’t matter. 11:35? 12:05? It doesn’t matter if the bulk of your audience is just going to be watching clips later on Hulu or YouTube.

But, today, for the older people and even for a good number of younger people, it does still matter. And those are the people that tuned in to see Leno at 11:35.

There’s no way of knowing what the TV landscape will look like in 5-10 years. In the broadcast world, there’s only now. And, now they have the choice between a safe bet and what could be viewed as an unknown commodity.

If you were a floundering company failing because of bad decisions and having gambled on big risks, which choice would you make?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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