Do Not Feel Sorry For Conan O’Brien

Conan O’Brien signs off The Tonight Show forever tonight, and judging from last night’s show, the tone has gotten more sentimental.

Conan’s show has been at the top of its game recently, and it’s true he really got screwed by NBC. But don’t feel sorry for Conan O’Brien.

He’s a brilliant comedian, whose Tonight Show was consistently haunted by the Jaywalking ghost of Jay Leno. It was never really a fair shot – with Leno at 10pmET, it dragged down the ratings of all NBC stations and provided a handicapped lead-in for Conan. His numbers weren’t bad – they were lower in total viewers but beating CBS’ Late Show in the key demos – but seven months was not nearly enough time to accurately judge his hosting abilities. It was a different story with Leno. His awful numbers highlighted a mistake by NBC executives to test a new programming strategy, a lack of patience by money-shedding affiliates and mainly a failure by Leno to distinguish his show as anything but his Tonight Show an hour-and-a-half earlier.

But there’s a difference between acknowledging all this, or even being fully “Team Conan,” and feeling sorry or feeling bad for Conan. This is a man who will walk away with more than 30 million dollars to not work – and likely not work for less than a year. Then he’ll be back making more money, at FOX or Comedy Central or somewhere. Feeling sad still?

Another point for those who feel bad for Conan is that hosting the Tonight Show was a ‘dream’ of his since he was a boy, something he alluded to in his statement that got the ball rolling for his exit. How many times does someone losing his or her dream job make us feel sad? Obviously, it’s a different situation – he’s a celebrity, people feel like they know him after welcoming him into their homes for 17 years. If you got a chance to spend seven months doing your absolute dream job, only to lose it (albeit unfairly), maybe you’d be a little pissed off. But what if they paid you three years severance, and nine months or so later you got a chance to do a job that is actually very similar to your dream job, and have the opportunity to make even more money? Sounds like a good deal.

>>> NEXT PAGE: What does the country, and world, think of the ‘wasting NBC’s money’ sketch?

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.