Jay or Conan or Dave or Jimmy?

[mayflowers]

Who do you think is winning the Tonight Show talk host fight?  

[margypops]

I know this is an old thread now but did anyone se Jay Leno last night he is great I like him so much better than Letterman , he had Sarah Palin on , she has a great sense of humor considering the attacks on her character,and on her children, ..She is certainly a force to be reckoned with .It was a great show I am glad Jay is back...

[mayflowers]

My thoughts exactly.....

[sstitanic2]

It seems to me that in a situation like this, the only winners here is the network. Conan got a lot of money. Jay got the show. The rest got material to use in their own shows. The network gets a lot of press coverage and there for high ratings which means money. People love this drama.

[penswriter]

i LOVED conan. i won't watch the show anymore...so sad that they gave him the boot.

[mayflowers]

Conan gets millions to NOT work, Jay still has to GO to work, Dave gets some NEW material for jokes.  

So far it looks like Conan is winning, Jay is coming in 2nd and Dave is 3rd.

mmmmmm.....I'm getting to sleep earlier.....priceless......

[teko]

millions for a few hurt feelings. Definately Obrien.

[mayflowers]

I don't think that networks really give new shows enough time anymore.  If the ratings are low, they just take off the show.  Conan was a good talk show host, but not great.  Some of his skits are pretty lame, but then so are the rest of the talk show hosts.

It takes time to build up an audience.  

[RadioAstronomyObserver]

At $45M for leaving the show I think O'Brian won the argument!  Now Jay is coming back but I haven't heard if he got anything for that deal or not.  CBS has to pay O'Brian and maybe Leno so obviously CBS is the looser.  They didn't even gain more viewership so in essence they lost twice :-)  of course $45M is less than pocket change for CBS, but....