The Political Fiend

With writers strike continuing with no visible end in sight, Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno have been using opposing techniques, with varying levels of success, at keeping their shows aflot.Leno’s Tonight show has been operating on a business as usual approach, where Leno essentially writes his own monologue, which is structured almost exactly like his pre-strike format, including his ‘Headlines’ and ‘Jaywalking’ bits. Leno came under fire recently for writing his own material, as it violated the strike’s guidelines. He now makes it a point to state that his monologue is memorized and not written down; he does this just about every night. For someone who claims to support the writer’s strike, Leno’s act of pointing out his compliance with the Writers Guild’s requests seems to fly in the face of deference to the strike, it’s as though Leno is complying with the strike, but only begrudgingly so.

Conan O’Brien has been taking a different approach. For one, he’s got a strike beard growing. Every night he’s been devoting the opening of his monologue to expressing his support for the writers and their cause. More importantly however, it seems as though Conan hasn’t been writing a monologue. With all due respect to the writers, this might be the best stuff Conan’s done in a long, long time. In the absence of the writing staff, he’s run completely wild. He now features segments where he spins his wedding ring on his desk, just to see how long he can keep it spinning. On his second night back on the air, he climbed into the rafters above his studio, for no other reason than because he could, and because it was funny. He’s taken up singing with his band, and dancing on his desk in order to keep his audience entertained.

It’s not all fun and games for O’Brien though; it’s possible that Conan’s bizarre way of running his show may be a tiny attempt at forcing NBC to the bargaining table. In the absence of the writers, Leno has managed to retain his format. O’Brien has completely thrown it out the window, in favor of a show which, while funny now, would never pass for late night entertainment in the long run. If the ratings start to slip on Conan’s show, it could spell trouble for the future of NBC late night, as O’Brien is slated to take over Leno’s Tonight Show at the end of his run. Let’s hope Conan stirs up enough trouble to get this boulder rolling.