{"id":1348,"date":"2010-01-12T20:54:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T00:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2010-01-19T03:18:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T07:18:28","slug":"conan-obrien-class-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/2010\/01\/12\/conan-obrien-class-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Go, Conan!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A limerick in honor of Conan O’Brien’s Solomon-like decision about the Tonight Show<\/a> — not to “seriously damage what [he considers] to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting,” (I wrote it both as a fan and as a recovering lawyer.)<\/p>\n

Go, Conan!
\nBy Madeleine Begun Kane<\/p>\n

Dear Conan, I’m glad you refused.
\nBy your Network, you’ve sure been abused.
\nYou’re right to be teed.
\nYou’re a class act, indeed.
\nNBC’s breach can not<\/strong> be excused.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> I haven’t seen Conan’s contract. But here’s NBC’s argument, as I understand it: NBC can legally air The Tonight Show with Conan at 12:05 a.m. after a new half-hour Leno show, because O’Brien’s contract doesn’t specify a time. I don’t buy it. <\/p>\n

Following NBC’s argument to its logical conclusion, NBC could air The Tonight Show at 4:00 a.m., or even at noon. In fact, by NBC’s reasoning, Conan could have stayed at his old 12:35 a.m. slot and Jay could have kept his original 11:35 p.m. Tonight Show slot. All NBC would have had to do would be to change the names of the shows: Conan’s to the Tonight Show, and Jay’s to the Jay Leno Show. Sorry, NBC, this doesn’t pass the straight-faced test.<\/p>\n

One more point: Rumor has it that Jay’s contract specifies a 10 p.m. time, and that (the argument goes) this weakens Conan’s position. I disagree. Conan O’Brien was being promoted to a show that already existed in a specific time slot, whereas Jay’s show was being created from scratch. So they are not analogous situations.<\/p>\n

Update 2: <\/strong> Is this a slam dunk for Conan? No. But as a “recovering lawyer” who litigated my share of contract disputes, I’d rather take Conan’s case to a jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A limerick in honor of Conan O’Brien’s Solomon-like decision about the Tonight Show — not to “seriously damage what [he considers] to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting,” (I wrote it both as a fan and as a recovering lawyer.) Go, Conan! By Madeleine Begun Kane Dear Conan, I’m glad you refused. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,56,966,50,980,10,42,43,71],"tags":[962,964,967,146,275,963,979,978,304,965],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-humor","category-celebrity-humor","category-conan-obrien-verse","category-entertainment-humor","category-jay-leno-humor","category-legal-humor","category-limericks","category-media-humor","category-television-tv-humor","tag-conan-obrien","tag-jay-leno","tag-late-night-tv","tag-law-humor","tag-media","tag-nbc","tag-team-coco","tag-team-conan","tag-television-humor","tag-tonight-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1383,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}