Dick Ebersol laughed when he spied an issue of The Hollywood Reporter from 2011. The magazine took issue with his critique of late-night host Conan O’Brien as an “astounding failure.” The magazine said Ebersol was “too harsh” and described the moment as one of his career “flops.”
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Ebersol stands by his critique of Conan O'Brien.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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“I still believe he was an astounding failure,” Ebersol said. “I thought both he and David [Letterman] were guys who couldn’t beat Jay [Leno] in a fair fight, a ratings fight, and who used that period of time to paint him with a brush that was not at all accurate and incredibly wrong. He’s a generous, decent, decent guy, and Dave couldn’t beat him head-to-head for years and years and years and years — 20 years. Conan was given ‘The Tonight Show,’ and within four months, it had blown the enormous ratings advantage that NBC had for years.
“When NBC offered [Conan] a very great solution, which was since Jay’s [new] show did not work in prime time — which had been NBC’s idea, not Jay’s — NBC said, ‘Let Jay have the first half-hour, from 11:30 to 12, and ‘The Tonight Show’ would be on from 12-1. Conan turned it down, which obviously was a big mistake. He’s still on TBS years later with an audience that you need a magnifying glass to see.”
So what does Ebersol think of other late-night hosts?
“Jimmy [Fallon]’s fantastic. I think [Stephen] Colbert will be great. I think the idea of losing [Jon] Stewart as a nightly host is almost too much to bear. It’s such brilliant, brilliant comedy night after night after night. I think he’d be better running our government than the government he has so much fun making fun of every night. I’m wildly impressed by him.”
