NBC’s late night lineup is a year away from getting worse.
The peacock network recently announced that it will fill the slot vacated by Conan O’Brien’s relocation to 11:30 with SNL alum Jimmy Fallon in 2009.
Fallon’s is a name that’s long been associated with the impending vacancy, but one that hardly could have ever been taken seriously. After all, with so many worthy candidates floating around, why would NBC choose to hand off such a valuable timeslot to a guy best known for laughing at himself during bad sketches on Saturday Night Live?
Well, whatever the reason, the hammer has dropped, the die is cast, and the world of late night just got a whole lot worse.
Many people think that NBC couldn’t go much lower than the vapid absent personality of Carson Daly’s nightcap, but thanks to their new hire people most likely won’t even be awake to see his half-hour trainwreck. No, Fallon will have viewers either firmly unconscious or on a different channel long before Daly’s program starts up. Seems like a drastic strategy simply to hide one bad program.
Of course, given the horrible programming decisions that have dominated NBC for the last few years, it is entirely possible they actually think they’ve made the correct decision in hiring Fallon.
Perhaps executives were enamored by Fallon’s extremely unprofessional technique of breaking character in front of a live audience. It could be that they fell in love with his torpid performance hosting the 2002 Video Music Awards. There’s also the chance that they saw his unfunny SNL sketch where he pretended to host a webcast and saw the makings of a talk show superstar.
Whatever the case, there is simply no way that Fallon will thrive in this new role. He’s never been one for keeping his cool which will certainly result in a bout of questions during interviews that make, “Why are you so great?” look insightful by comparison, and a monologue that will see him laughing more often than the audience.
There must be some demographic that finds Fallon appealing, but it’s extremely doubtful that will keep him afloat in the highly competitive late night arena. Combine that with Conan’s newfound inability to outdraw Craig Ferguson and the likelihood that he will be competing with both David Letterman and Jay Leno and NBC will probably find itself going from worst to first in late night in the span of less than a year.
And people wonder why NBC has been mired in fourth place since “Seinfeld” went off the air.
What do you think about Fallon taking over?
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2 responses so far ↓
1 m // Apr 28, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Fallon sucks! Joel McHale would be the perfect Conan substitute!
2 Matt // Apr 28, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I couldn’t agree more. My brain is still trying to compound this ridiculous decision.
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