Conan O’Brien vs. Jay Leno: Who deserves the Tonight Show?

Who should win the war for the Tonight Show?

Maybe it’s because I’m a twenty-something guy that grew up watching shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live back when it was good, but I find myself so deeply entrenched in the “Coco Camp”. So much so that I have a hard time trying to even defend the position of Jay Leno. I can’t really even be civil about it, but I’m a professional. So I’m going to try.

Jay Leno

Leaning Leno

Leno is a comedian first and foremost. Through the years while he was on the Tonight Show, he constantly was on the road doing stand up routines. There’s no question that he’s funny, but he wears on me. He has had the same comedic approach to his show since it started in ’92. Nothing against Jay, but I prefer Conan’s show.

Leno was picked by NBC to replace Johnny Carson, although Carson’s choice for taking over the Tonight Show was Letterman. Even though Jay wasn’t aware, he ruffled a lot of feathers when he was picked over David Letterman. Two decades later he had another chance to ruffle feathers when his contract originally expired in 2004, he got an extension until 2009 when NBC executives said that Conan would take the Tonight Show over.

Leno decided that he wasn’t done being on TV in 2009, which led to the creation of the Jay Leno Show at 10pm, and leading into Conan. O’Brien and his audience (including me) felt cheated by the prospect.

Conan O’Brien

The Case For Coco

Let’s just talk about Conan’s resume:

• High School Valedictorian
• Editor of the Harvard Lampoon
• Harvard Graduate
• Writer for SNL and the Simpsons
• Hosted Late Night despite having little to no on camera experience before that.
• Killed at Late Night.
• Won 2 Emmys and 7 WGA Writing Awards on Late Night
• Killed at the Tonight Show

The worst part is that Conan gets the short end of the stick. Yeah he gets to walk away with something like $40 million, but still, he has the Tonight Show contract. He was contractually guaranteed the show, and Leno gets to march in and take it back with “clean” hands. NBC is to blame, but so is Leno for his refusal to retire. Sure, if I was at the top of my game, I wouldn’t want to retire either, but he could make just as much doing stand-up and cameos.

It’s unfortunate for a man as smart and talented as Conan to have to constantly be thrown around like a raggedy andy doll. I am biased, I’ll own up to that. But still, he’s made Late Night relevant to people like me that otherwise would rather be watching SportsCenter or playing video games.

Time to Vote

We know how I feel, but what do you think? We at College Life want to get a finger on the pulse of the public, and even when Conan does his last show on Friday, we want to know who’s with Coco and who’s with the Chin. May the best host win.

[starratingmulti id=11]