Thanks for bringing this up. I've had a rant cooking all week.
I just want to make sure I've got my facts straight: NBC, in order to keep him from leaving the network for another, gave Conan The Tonight Show. But they wouldn't fire Jay, and wouldn't buy out his contract, so they gave him a risky, experimental concept of a latenight talk show in primetime. It fails. Conan's ratings, while not great, were way better than the televised train wreck that was The Chevy Chase Show. Based on these facts, the logical move should have been to buy out Jay. So what do these programming geniuses do?
Fire Conan, thereby causing their own prophesy to come to pass. They spent $100M to be right back where they started!!! And somehow these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers get to keep their jobs. Meanwhile the guy they made a good-faith deal with, the guy who packed up his wife and kids and moved 3000 miles–as did his staff!–gets bounced to the curb like an old Christmas tree.
I hope Conan gets a new show the nanosecond his do-not-compete clause ends. And may he stomp the living monkey crap out of chin-boy. Speaking of Jay, he should have done the honorable thing and stepped up by stepping aside. Instead, he allowed his successor to get crucified for sins committed by the guys with the nails.
Ed Wood movies make more sense than this horse$#!+.