And I've Come to a Conclusion...

...that I'm just going to do what Conan's fans didn't - watch Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and support him that way. I like Jay, and I'll follow him wherever he goes. I watched the interview with Oprah yesterday and I watched the little after-show on her website. There are a few important facts many journalists are not including:

1) Craig Ferguson had nearly equal ratings to Conan O'Brien at the end of 2008. Which means that most likely Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been #2 had he still been there through 2009. There are other things of interest in the link, including how much Jay Leno was beating his competition while still host of the Tonight Show. Aaron Barnhart, the author of the blog in the link, is usually more coherent than he is in a few lines, so cut him some slack. He's been a reporter about television of for a long time and is respected by many.

One thing I find hilarious in the link, and it might not be there when (if) you click on it, is the little tweet at the side that mentions the integrity of TMZ being tarnished. Um...TMZ is really just the Enquirer of the internet. It has never been a reputable source. It is a sensational gossip magazine.

2) CONAN O'BRIEN WAS LOSING TO DAVID LETTERMAN BEFORE THE JAY LENO SHOW CAME ON. Yep, I'm shouting it, because in every freaking news article the Jay Leno Show gets blamed for being a poor lead-in, which would be fine if Conan had been winning and then after September was losing. But you know what? That is false.

3) Leno's sample audience for 2008 = between 3.9 (this statistic is in a link below) to 5.1 million viewers (you have to understand ratings and kind of poke around the link to find this).

Letterman's sample audience for 2009 when he was against Conan for seven months = 3.27 million viewers. And that - THAT - is in second place behind Nightline for that week at 3.36 million and Conan at around three million. These are statistics for one particular week, but the truth is they do represent an average.

4) Leno's finale rating for the Tonight Show = 8.8. Conan's? 7.0.

1 rating point = 1,128,000 viewers approximately. Therefore, Conan's 7 = 7,896,000. I'm not sure then where they are getting the 10.3 million from. Jay's 8.8 = 9,926,400.

Anyway, the point is that Conan's fans couldn't even be bothered to tune in to show NBC why they were making a mistake - they couldn't even give him a bigger sendoff than Jay Leno's fans gave him. Why would NBC be rethinking anything? Conan fans: you couldn't even be loyal for one night! You couldn't even be bothered to help him out in his one hour of need. You know what? That was the point where I began shouting "Shut up, Team CoCo!"