Conan

During this whole situation people have placed blame on everyone under the sun about why things happened the way they did. Was it Conan? Was it Leno? Was it NBC as a whole? It all really boils down to one person though; the man in charge. Jeff Zucker was the president of NBC and he was the one who ultimately caused this fiasco. He may have had people advising him or telling him things, but he was the one with the final say and that in itself was the main problem.

When Zucker was put in charge at NBC the only thing they were leading in ratings was the Late Night Talk show race. So what did he do? He took aim, fired, and now they are consistently trailing in the ratings, something that hadn’t happened in years. In fact, Leno’s ratings are the same as Conan’s were when he took over the Tonight Show before they axed him for low ratings. Zucker’s decisions have not only affected people’s views on himself and NBC, but they have also hurt the public’s views on Leno as well. So now it’s impossible to just move on and pretend nothing happened like he wants to do.

While on “Charlie Rose” when asked why he made the decisions he did regarding Jay Leno and Conan Obrien, Zucker said, “Leadership is about taking chances and taking risks and also leadership is about acknowledging when they don’t work.” That may be true, but a study done by Manuel Mendoca found that people value ethical decisions over anything else. If the risks and chances you are taking are unethical, people won’t buy into them. If Zucker would have been ethical and stayed true to what NBC, Conan, and Leno decided 5 years prior none of this would have happened.