Where Conan and Leno stand on the UT campus

Rivalries are what add more edge to even the most historic competitions. An infamous competition that has been recognized through out American popular culture is the opposition between the many late night talk show hosts. With big names like Leno, Letterman, and many others, it’s hard not to catch a glimpse of these late night comic hosts if you are sitting in front a television after about eleven P.M. 

            This past week, a new rift was created between Jay Leno, a long time host and replacement of Johnny Carson, and Conan O’Brien who has proved his worth in the late night television community. O’Brien was moved into Leno’s late-night-time slot starting this past summer and Leno moved to his new time of ten P.M. Leno’s new show started suffering poor ratings right away, in fact the show has been bombing in the ratings category so much that it will be canceled as of Feb. 12^th.  NBC now has plans to move Leno back into his late-night time that was given to O’Brien back in June. O’Brien has been expressing his frustrations with NBC ever since the issue surfaced. He has even been poking fun at the network in his opening monologues on his show. “When I was a little boy, I remember watching ‘The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson’ and thinking, ‘Someday, I’m going to host that show for seven months,” said O’Brien to his audience sarcastically. O’Brien feels that NBC didn’t give him enough time to establish himself as host within his time slot.  Now that NBC has derailed his efforts to stay The “Tonight Show” host, O’Brien is in line to make 30 million this year from the network.

            University of Tampa students like Derek Sell and John Robbins have there own opinions about network and host battle. “I personally have never enjoyed Jay Leno’s show so its hard for me to agree with Conan’s chance of being successful get taken away,” said Sell a junior art student at Tampa. Many of the students feel that O’Brien was given the raw end of the deal. “I really don’t watch late night T.V. but I know the issue and I think that it’s good that Conan is being compensated, but NBC seems to be looking over the principle of the matter,” explained Robbins a senior criminal justice major at UT.  The college crowd at UT seems to have sympathized with O’Brien more so than having support for long time icon Jay Leno.

Associated Press

MSNBC.COM