Word: jayed
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...like a good post-boomer, Conan got promoted only to discover that his baby-boomer predecessor is not so keen on retiring after all. Come Sept. 14, Jay, 59, starts his own talk show on NBC at 10 p.m. E.T., where it will compete for guest bookings and suck up media attention...
This made Jay's final Tonight an odd experience: a classy, warm goodbye, coupled with reminders that he wasn't going anywhere. Like his generational peer - and best source of material - Bill Clinton, Jay believes in staying active. Hey, you're only as old as you feel, baby...
...course, like Clinton, Jay - who got his 10 p.m. show for fear he would jump to ABC - has a wee bit more clout than the average elder boomer pushed out for a younger employee. Conan - simply by having wanted forever to host The Tonight Show - is something of a throwback. The very idea of caring about big-network late shows is retro, now that Comedy Central has so much buzz. Conan's comic style also owes heavily to his elder, and now competitor, the 62-year-old Letterman...
Nonetheless, the handoff between Jay and Conan, like a presidential transition, marks a change in style and in the office itself. On the simplest level, the two have different ideas of what's funny. Jay is a master of the topical joke who worked tirelessly on lengthy pulled-from-the-headlines monologues. On his final show, he thanked "all the people who made it possible: Michael Jackson, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton." (See the top 10 Jay Leno moments...
Conan, in other words, revels in being the outsider, the underdog, the geek. (Jay's signature bit, on the other hand, was "Jaywalking," where he went on the street to ask people news and history questions and made them look ridiculous.) This is both a defining Gen X trait - think Judd Apatow's movies and Beck's "Loser" - and a sensibility suited to the 12:30 p.m. Late Night, the slacker sibling to The Tonight Show. Some doubters wonder if that can translate to a broader 11:30 audience. By promoting Conan and moving Jay, NBC is betting that this...