Are The New York Mets In Charge Of NBC?

NBC's Jeff Zucker. Perhaps not the man calling the shots here.

This Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien thing has become quite the fiasco. But it’s not Jeff Zucker’s fault. It’s obvious he’s not in charge of this. No, there’s only one group that could have orchestrated this mess. The New York Mets. They’re undoubtedly behind this thing. Let’s look at the evidence:

1. This Leno-Conan thing has become protracted and messy. Nobody knows what’s going on. This is textbook bad crisis management. Who wrote that textbook? The Mets. Let’s remember: in 2008 they fired manager Willie Randolph only after letting speculation about his job fester for weeks. And then when they did fire him, which in and of itself would have been ok, they managed to screw it up by firing him at 3 A.M. New York time. (Granted, the team was in Los Angeles at the time, where it was most definitely not 3 A.M., but let’s ignore that little nuance shall we?)

2. You might say that NBC has a problem with their ratings, but they’ve come up with the wrong diagnosis for the problem. It’s not Conan’s fault; he’s much better than Leno. But people want to watch real shows at 10 pm, not another talk show. Surely they were advised by a group terrible at diagnosing things. Like an organization that let a guy with a concussion fly all over the country. Like an organization that claimed their star shortstop had a day to day injury in May and never had him return to action all season. Like an organization that, attempting to remodel its bullpen, traded for a star reliever with an elbow injury. Like the New York Mets.

3. This move pulls the rug out from under Conan before he had a shot to establish himself as the new face of NBC late night. The minute Leno was given the 10 pm show, and much more now that he may be on at 11:30, Conan was undermined. And who can claim to be better at allowing their staff to be undermined than the Mets? This is an organization that managed to trade away a top prospect for a piece of garbage at the urging of the pitching coach and a scout nobody heard of. They basically let the players fire Art Howe in 2004 and let a psychotic assistant general manager get Willie Randolph fired in 2008. That same psychotic assistant was given free reign to challenge minor leaguers to fights and nearly cost the GM his job in the process.

Dave Howard and Jeff Wilpon, quite possibly in the middle of botching something horribly.

4. It took a lot of nerve for NBC to say they wanted Conan to host The Tonight Show at 12:05; that was a ballsy attempt at semantic maneuvering. Nevermind that there would be a talk show airing at 11:35, hosted by the man who preceded O’Brien as host of The Tonight Show for 17 years. Nevermind that what NBC said would be Conan’s “Tonight” show would actually be the first show of “tomorrow” in the Eastern and Pacific time zones. Conan still would have The Tonight Show, business as usual. Yeah, ok. This has Mets VP Dave Howard’s fingerprints all over it. Mets fans know about spin like this. There are 20,000 obstructed view seats in the park? “Well, we define obstructed as a column within 3 inches of your face, or a family of elephants in the row in front of you.” The team claims they’ll cut ticket prices by at least 10% and most are only cut 4%? “We said an AVERAGE of 10% – we cut the wildly expensive tickets you’ll never buy by more than 10%” It looks like Mr. Howard has brought his act to 30 Rock.

5. Through this whole process NBC has shown a lack of respect for and pride in their late night brand. The Tonight Show is revered, and NBC is doing the long-term legacy of the show no favors with all this. Once again, I’m left to wonder if the Mets are behind this. Nobody’s better at shitting on their own brand identity. Our colors are blue and orange? Let’s wear black 50 times a year. We’re building a new stadium? Let’s dedicate the entrance to a guy who never played for us. Should we retire more numbers to take pride in our franchise? No need, we’ve already retired the number of a manager who presided over the worst seasons in our team’s history and was senile while doing it.

6. Putting Leno on at 10 in the first place was a cost-saving move so NBC wouldn’t have to come up with expensive scripted shows in that time slot. That makes me wonder just how long the Mets have been involved with this NBC late night thing. The Mets do spend on free agents but also know a few things about cost cutting, never paying over slot for draft picks and putting black fences in Citi Field because blue would need a paint job sooner. Also, they may have lost hundreds of millions to Bernie Madoff (or possibly made $4 billion; the reports conflict).

Now, there is reason to believe the Mets are not actually behind this thing. The decision was supposedly motivated by ratings, which could be considered statistical analysis. In Flushing, of course, statistics are just paperwork and false hustle.  Also, it seems likely that if Omar Minaya had a say the 11:30 spot would have gone to George Lopez. So how involved are the Mets? We can’t be sure. But if somebody at NBC reads this article and accuses me of lobbying to be the host of The Tonight Show, we’ll have our answer.