thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

I don't know where former Weekend editor Karen Pierce is these days, but I wonder if I could convince her -- privately, of course -- to come back to The Daily Times and take over the entertainment duties.

Publicly, I'd protest, of course. I'd balk at my removal, write columns poking fun at her and at my bosses here at the paper ... and then I'd sit back and count my piles of cash they'd offer up to buy me out of my contract, hand out severance pay to my underlings and promptly find work at another paper, writing circles around her and making the Times look like buffoons.

That's how it works, right? I mean, NBC and its Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien debacle taught us that this week! After seven months hosting "The Tonight Show," O'Brien is walking away with a $45 million severance package. Leno, whose 10 p.m. experiment crashed and burned like a flock of geese through a spewing cloud of napalm, is going back to the 11:35 p.m. slot. And everybody seems happy.

Obviously, Hollywood plays by its own laws of economics and entertainment physics than those of us in the real world, and such a scenario wouldn't play out well for most of us. Me personally -- well, there wouldn't be any piles of cash, and any insubordination in the pages of this section would be tempered by a hearty "Hey, Wildsmith! You're fired!" Plus, I have no underlings to which I can distribute severance of any sort. But you get the idea.

It's amazing, really, the seemingly endless well of dollar bills that apparently bubble forth across studio lots across Tinseltown. I can't begin to fathom being handed a check for $45 million (of which O'Brien will keep $33 million, according to reports) just to stop telling jokes and get out from in front of the camera. Of course, there are all sorts of issues at play -- the pride of both men, the integrity of NBC, the demands of advertisers and local affiliates and so on and so forth.

No doubt, O'Brien feels a little betrayed, and I can't say I blame him. For years, he talked about ascending to the "Tonight Show" throne, and it was announced back in 2005 that he'd be Leno's successor -- a move on NBC's part to keep him under contract. So he gets his wish -- for seven months,and then the rug is jerked out from under him. From my perspective, it doesn't seem fair, and the groundswell of support for him to stay as "Tonight Show" host seems perfectly justified.

After all, Leno apparently wasn't too keen on the 2005 deal. He liked the 11:35 p.m. time slot, but in the interest of change, he supposedly got on board. Besides, I'm sure NBC sold him on the idea of a primetime variety show with all sorts of sweet nothings and tempting perks.

The problem is that it sucked.

Granted, I never watched more than a few episodes, but it seemed to lack the verve and bite of Leno's acerbic wit. It was like watching a once-proud cat that's been neutered, stumbling around unsure of himself. There were occasional funny bits, but by and large it was like watching the amateur comic at open-mic night who's trying too hard to get a few laughs.

O'Brien, on the other hand, seemed to be in his element. Sure, the ratings were down over Leno's during the same time period, and Letterman emerged as the reigning late-night champ. But give the guy a break -- for one thing, his humor is a little off-kilter, and that quirkiness doesn't always translate so well for mainstream Americans who tune in to smile for a few minutes before turning off the bedside lamp. But he seemed more polished, more at ease, more sure of himself and the direction in which he was taking the show than Leno did at 10 p.m.

Bottom line, for this viewer at least, is this -- Leno tanked because the show was a stinker. NBC tried to downplay it, trumpeting the fact that it was so cheap to make that it was earning money despite low ratings, but the bottom line is they bet on a champion thoroughbred to win their ratings race and wound up with a worn-out nag that has two hooves in the dog-food grinder.

It smacked of laziness on the network's part -- like NBC executives were sitting around a few years ago, nervously eyeballing their slide to third and fourth place in the ratings war, and got too panicked to take a chance on scripted shows that might or might not pay off. Instead, they went with the cheapest possible option, once that saved them millions on production costs and writer fees and star salaries.

Well, they got what they paid for -- and it appears like they'll keep paying. I have no doubt that, come September, O'Brien will be on another network opposite his old NBC mentor, and you can bet that whichever network it is will court O'Brien's loyal fans as well as regular folks like myself who feel like he got screwed.

Meanwhile, NBC is left trying to fill five hours of programming once the Olympics come to an end, and given the botched and rushed mess this whole Leno/Conan thing has become, I imagine that the quality control standards over such programming will be a little lax. I'd hate to be in the upper echelons of the NBC decision-making process these days, because I would imagine they're handing out Diovan like M&Ms on Halloween.

Of course, now that I think about it, they probably think those of us in the viewing public are a bunch of easily manipulated suckers. Think about it -- everybody's talking about this mess, everyone's writing about it and giving their own opinions and wondering what will happen next. And everyone is stopping by one of the two shows to see what the comics will say about one another, the network and the situation.

Which translates to ratings -- something NBC suits are so desperate for they'll probably put their own mothers on a new 10 p.m. reality dating show. The more the whole affair is aired in public, the more interested people become in how it'll play out, and the more they'll tune in to see what happens next. It all comes down to ratings, those mystical numbers they can show off to advertisers in hopes of getting more money. So really, it all comes down to dollar bills, yo.

Conan has them. Leno has them. NBC apparently has them in spades, ready to hand out by the plane-load full as long as problems go away and ratings go up.

And we wonder why we can't get a handful of change to Haitian earthquake victims or a handle on the sprawling mess that is the U.S. economy.

Only in America, baby. Long live the land of the free.

Steve Wildsmith is the Weekend editor for The Daily Times. Contact him at steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com or at 981-1144.