Where have we seen this before?

Normally I’m not one to comment on matters of pop culture, mostly because the behind the scenes drama doesn’t interest me. However, while watching an abysmal weekend of playoff football, a take on the whole Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno late night feud popped into my head.

I’m not an avid watcher of late night television, at least not anymore. Back in the days when I would willingly stay up that late I used to watch Letterman and would then switch over to watch Conan. Now, thanks to the likes of my DVR and Hulu, I get to check in on Conan the next morning.

For whatever reason Leno’s shtick just never resonated with me, his comedy seemed to be too safe and somewhat predictable. At times Conan has been a bit out there for me, but I always thought he was funny.

Over the past week or so the suits at NBC realized they made a huge mistake by forgoing all scripted dramas for The Jay Leno show and tried to atone for it by shuffling their late night roster. Even someone who generally isn’t on top of things like me knows how this is all playing out right now in the media and in the highly entertaining, yet snippy, monologues.

Still, something about this situation seemed so terribly familiar to me, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it until I was watching the NFC divisional round playoff game on Sunday when it hit me:

Jay Leno is the Brett Favre of late night television!

Sure there aren’t perfect parallels, but hear me out. Way back in 2004 Leno agreed to step aside from The Tonight Show to make way for Conan, whom the powers that be feared losing to another network.

Considering he would have been hosting the late night franchise for 17 years when he retired, Leno at the time felt it would be good to ensure that there was a proper transition for the sake of the show. Allegedly, he wanted to avoid any problems like when he took over for Carson and NBC shafted Letterman in the process.

However, as early as 2007, as some reports have discussed, Leno began to second guess the idea of retirement. And, as recently as the start of his new prime time talk show, Leno became even more passive aggressive about the idea of returning to the late night scene (you know if that’s what “they” want to do and all).

You have to admit, it sounds a lot like the strung out “will he, or won’t he” nonsense that Favre put us all through the past few years starting with his first “official” retirement. A few months after losing the NFC Championship game Favre holds a tearful press conference and packs it in (pun intended).

A few months later, probably once he became bored with being like Forrest Gump on his tractor, he starts tossing the rock to some high school wideouts and decides that maybe he isn’t done. (It’s either that or Deanna Favre is the real life version of Cindy Rooney, which you have to admit would be kind of funny.) Finally you had the trade heard round the world because the Packers had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the little diva.

Now this is obviously where the story begins to deviate. Leno has allegedly signed a new contract with NBC returning him to The Tonight Show and Conan is negotiating his exit from the network. If this story had perfect correlation, NBC would have traded Leno to the CW for the rights to some poorly written teen angst drama.

Instead, NBC doesn’t have the stones to move on from their 90′s glory days. They are discarding a younger, talented on air personality they should be building their future programming around and working to improve their numbers.

As for me, once this all goes down I won’t be watching anything on NBC anymore. I checked my DVR and I don’t tape any NBC shows. I’ve never gotten into 30 Rock or The Office, so I guess that means NBC can suck it!

In any event NBC, have fun losing $200 million on the Olympics. I’d love to hear Ebersol’s explanation how THAT is not a complete failure.