Team: I don't give a rat's ass!

Right now it seems that the whole country is up in arms about the whole Conan/Leno thing. It’s all bullshit. Sorry but it’s better you hear it now than continue diluting yourselves into this false pretense that somehow the host of the tonight show and which time slot they get makes a bit of difference. To put it into perspective, Wall Street is reporting record high profits and bonuses for their employees with none of that money going back to the millions of taxpayers that had that money taken from them, Haiti has been hit by an earthquake, Harry Reid is back in the limelight after making the word Negro no longer a pejorative, Palin has joined the ranks of Fox & Friends, Obama’s administration is being accused of having too many vacancies, the Facebook Bra color thing has made the news but also come under fire, and in the midst of it all the biggest story is who the hell is going to get the 11PM spot at NBC.


My gripe is that this isn’t news. Everyone has their own camp of thought as to who is funnier. Some people say Jay is unfunny and most of his rumor is derived from chiding, deriding, impugning or insulting people in an effort to make himself look smart, while others claim that Conan is unfunny and actively pushes to appear funny on the pretense that his humor isn’t guffaws but rather deeply intellectual. Either way, it’s two guys bickering over nothing. Time slots, show names, corporate decisions, what the hell does any of this have to do with the world at large. Like suddenly there’s going to be another terrorist attack because Conan isn’t on the Tonight Show anymore?

To be completely clear here, I don’t watch NBC, never have. I watch 2 hours of television a week, House and Lie to Me, and that’s it. Fox has a bad history of letting good shows go to hell, Firefly was huge, it failed, Brimstone had potential, cancelled, Family Guy, Futurama, need I go on? Fox doesn’t fare much better with their primary news outlet either. I hate the Fox News network, I think Bill O’Reilly is a pompous ass that clings to his rhetoric and limited understanding of things with blind tenacity, and overall I have to say I’m not a fan of their political viewpoint.

The bias aside, I really don’t think it’s going to be any big deal over who gets the 11PM time slot. People will either watch or they won’t. In the six years since House premiered the show has been moved around more times than I can count. Hell American Idol has been bounced around so much that at times it takes up entire weeks, but the show still gets viewers. If Jay is hosting the Tonight Show, he’ll get viewers, same thing with Conan, so it really doesn’t matter because the network still gets the viewers from whichever camp they “buyoff”. It’s great that people think their voices are heard and what they want will ultimately come into play when making up schedules and programming, but it doesn’t. I loved the George Carlin show back in the early 90’s but I’m wagering most of you have never heard of it. The needs of the many do occasionally cast sway and influence, but this isn’t an issue like gay marriage where there’s a clear shot sighted majority that will lend itself as the loudest voice in the land. Both camps are equally matched.

Most television I don’t watch because I find it insipid in many ways. Lost needed a score card to keep up, House has been derided as formulaic by many people who actually admit to being fans, American Idol operates on the idea that we can be told who our heroes are, I mean I could go on and on over this, citing one example after the next about how little television programming really has an impact or influence on the course of history. I sincerely doubt that whether Jay or Conan’s camp gets to have their way, either decision will better the works for world peace or solve world hunger or even help the economy and produce jobs. It’s all superficial, it doesn’t really matter, and the more that people fight over who the show belongs to, the more it shows just how indoctrinated we are as a society, where we pay more attention to the television than to the people that take our money.