How do critics stay employed? Next to Weathermen and Wall Street Analysts, only critics are more incompetent forecasters. In fact, it would seem that critics are so bad at analysis, that if the critics loathe a movie, play, or television show, there is a fairly good chance it will be a blockbuster.
I often wonder how these people keep their jobs. Perhaps the editors share their disdain, and they like to keep them around so the rest of the staff will know which productions to avoid. Because it seems that most newspaper writers are left-wing drones who hate anything that might be entertaining, even in the slightest way. In certain circles, what you like to watch is less important than what you don’t watch. The most popular stance you can take with these elites is to claim that you NEVER watch television and rely on NPR for all your news.
A recent example of this was seen with the debut of Jay Leno back into the Tonight Show desk. Critics panned his opening monologue. But his ratings were huge. And the audience came back the next night, fueled in part by his selection of Sarah Palin as a guest. Now after two weeks, it seems that Jay is back to the number one slot that David Letterman held during the reign of Conan.
Jay did this in spite of critics’ doubts. The Atlantic Wire actually noted that there is a huge disparity between the critics and the general public. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Critics are by their nature cynical people, and there is no question that the sneering antics of Conan would appeal to them more than the warm friendliness that exudes from Jay.
I’m sure this is a shock to everyone involved, since Conan fans seemed a lot better at making noise than the Leno fans. The kicked, they screamed, they posted his image on their Facebook profile. For all the outrage from the Conan firing, you would have thought that he had a massive popular wave behind him, and that Leno would further the decline in ratings. But two weeks after the Tonight Show went back into the hands of the owner for the past 17 years (minus eight months), the ratings beg to differ.
It’s the same illusion that Leftists have been cultivating for the past fifty years, that the loudest opinion must be the most popular. But the majority of America is quiet. They have jobs and kids to get to school and soccer practice, and don’t have time to put on silly orange wigs and march outside NBC offices, Not until the anonymous opinions of millions of Americans were weighed, did the truth come out: America prefers Jay Leno.
I’ll grant you, they didn’t at 10pm. The Tonight Show is something you like to doze off with. It is backwards television. While most shows on TV tease you into staying tuned for the entire hour, Late Night Shows are front-loaded. They start out with all the stuff you want, and slowly drift off. That way, you don’t mind leaving them on as you fall asleep. You’re not going to miss finding out which white Republican Christian CEO was responsible for murdering the whistle-blower, like you will watching Law and Order. Which was probably the problem with Jay Leno at ten. It felt like you were going to bed too early, like you do right after the Daylight Savings Time switch.
I think Conan’s popularity was wildly exaggerated. The most talked about programs aren’t always the ones people like to watch, For instance, as Nielsen Ratings became more accurate, something interesting was discovered: people lie.
Nielsen families always knew they were in control of programming, so they cheated the system, by making it appear as if they were watching shows they didn’t care for. So when they went out for the evening, they would leave the television on certain stations, knowing that they were spiking the ratings.
New People Meter technology calculates ratings based on how many people are actually in front of the TV set. So now we know what they are watching, not what shows they think should stay on the air. When the technology was introduced, there was such a sharp shift in ratings and both Fox News and BET joined a lawsuit to ban the meters. Turns out that people liked the idea of Fox News and BET more that the actual programming.
I think the same phenomenon was behind the Conan backlash. Because despite all the fanfare about Conan being disgraced when he was asked to move back his time slot a half hour, it seems that very few people were enjoying the show. When Leno returned, his fans were more than happy to switch away from Letterman’s tedious program as soon as Conan left the building. Jay Leno is back on top and it’s almost as if he was never gone.
None of this can bode well for Conan. It seems his loyal fan base has virtually vanished into the ether.
Perhaps they’re all listening to NPR
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