The ratings are in for The Tonight Show now that Jay Leno is back in control and … you guessed it … the show has tanked and is ranking the lowest it has since 1992. The ratings are higher than low point of Conan O’Brien’s show due to the large number of older viewers with the biggest drop for the new Leno incarnation coming from the (you guessed it again), 35 and under crowd.
Why? For the same reason that I, Aaron, my grandmother, and a lot of other people we know refuse to watch Leno now … even though it wasn’t his fault for being asked to step down at the height of his popularity – it was his fault for agreeing to do so and then going back on his word after Conan stuck around for five years to get the job. Furthermore, when you consider that Leno’s own ratings were as bad as Conan’s when he first took over for Carson, it becomes absurd to consider that anything else would have happened. The Tonight Show was supposed to be building an audience for the next generation, with whom Conan is overwhelmingly more popular. Now the franchise has been damaged.
Now that the younger folks are alienated, it will be somewhat enjoyable to watch the show falter. And I say that with great hesitation because I respected and admired Leno’s business acumen tremendously before he showed himself to lack any sort of personal integrity when it came to honoring his word, especially given the substantial investment in General Electric my family and our companies have.
The real issue here for the television networks is the notion that someone is going to tune in at a certain time to watch a show unless they are older. I don’t watch shows on television anymore. Instead, I buy entire seasons on iTunes, stream them on Netflix, or record them for later. The cable networks are going to be in trouble in the long-run because it will be possible for someone to create a late night show from their bedroom and, if they are funny enough, generate millions of viewers who can subscribe through their iPhones, iPads or computers.
People like Jeff Zucker are dinosaurs in a modern world. It’s time they go by the wayside.
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I'm a private investor who loves architecture, furniture, clothes, history, philosophy, books, cooking, and music as much as I do finance. 
