For a couple weeks, you may have noticed, nothing was happening on this Web site. There were no new blogs, no new TV columns, no signs of life.
That was due to a quirky hotel system, which may or may not have been biased against the island of Tuvelo. Now, however, things are back to normal. I've updated the TV columns through tonight and will soon add more, through the weekend.
Also, I have a lot to blog about. First, I should explain:
From Jan. 8-18, I was nestled into a Pasadena hotel, for the semi-annual Television Critics Association sessions. The sessions went well -- lots of set visits, lots of breaking news -- but there was one quirk: The hotel's Web server would not access Web sites that ended with .tv.
That's a perfectly honorable domain. It actually belongs to the people of Tuvelo, who seem commendable. They have some concerns, especially about global warming and rising ocean levels; if a flood comes, they must scramble to the highest point on the island, which is 15 feet above sea level. They also have a logical suffix for a TV blog. Then the hotel simply never let me connect to it.
That's too bad, because I had a lot to say. Here's the first thing: I'm in the deep minority, but I think Conan O'Brien is wrong.
He was given some prime real estate -- the "Tonight" show at 11:35 p.m. weeknights. Then the ratings there fell in half, with no sign of an upswing. NBC's solution would have saved him: Jay Leno does a lively, monolog-dominated half-hour, with Conan following at 12:05 a.m., keeping the "Tonight" tag.
It was a good plan, which he rejected. Instead, we'll probably see him next season at 11 p.m. on Fox.
There are some benefits to that -- an earlier start, scooping other monologs ... a hipper network to be promoted on ... easy access to the sort of people (from "American Idol," "House," "24," etc.) that a hip network has.
Still, Conan will have to do it all on his own. Nestled behind a half-hour of Leno, he would have been in better shape.
There was plenty of "wrong" to go around, and a forensics class (one that cared about TV schedules) could have had a field day debating sides. It's fun and easy to side with Conan and make fun of Jay. Letterman's making a cottage industry out of it. But yeah, I'm wondering why NBC didn't play a little bit more hardball. According to reports, the offer of The Tonight Show at 12:05 didn't violate any agreement NBC had with Conan. At the very least, it was questionable, and I bet NBC has more lawyers than CoCo does. So if Conan doesn't want to do his show anymore, why should that be NBC's $40 million problem? Wouldn't any of us like to be able to quit our jobs, mock our employer, and have that very same employer hand us millions on the way out the door?