The last word on the late night dustup seems to have been ably provided by the Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert:

the late-night war of 2010 is about some of the more dated, lax, and artificial material that makes its way onto the small screen
[…]
This [creative] inertia is part of the reason the “Leno Experiment’’ failed so miserably. What we saw when Jay Leno essentially relocated his 11:35 p.m. “Tonight Show’’ to 10 p.m. was the ugly truth about late night. In the brighter light of prime time, we could see how weak and unimaginative so much of the networks’ post-news TV – and so much of Leno’s work in particular – has become. Leno’s big change for “The Jay Leno Show’’ at 10 was to get rid of his desk, that old icon of late-night TV.

Exactly. NBC craves a non-80 year old demographic for the 11:30 slot. Leno, though beating Letterman, was doing so with older people; even NBC can see where that’s headed. Conan was convinced to leave much of his originality at the altar of “moving to 11:30,” and though he reportedly refused further dumbing-down notes, he likewise failed to attract a new audience to what was largely the same exact tired old shit with a slightly (read: very slightly) edgier feel. All this move managed to do then was to alienate some of the old folks that used to bother to watch Leno. The desired demographic was off watching a stream of the Daily Show or something else entirely. For them, the Tonight Show would have to radically change to become anything approaching the appointment TV it was in the Johnny era. And, let’s be honest, even in the late Johnny era, the Tonight Show was no longer appointment TV. It was where Jimmy Stewart recited his poetry to the same, largely ancient-skewing demographic. There were simply fewer choices back then, so some younger folks ended up there by default and then got into the habit themselves.

Anyone and everyone tuning in for Leno at 10, though, likewise saw that this was just really piss-poor comfort food. As Gilbert notes, this is glaringly not worth watching in an environment with 300 other choices. And then you paint your entire week with that, and wonder after its failure, and blame (of all people) Conan.

Who is at fault, then? All of them. Conan needed to have a lot more of the spirit of his “old” show there to build a new audience for Tonight (7 months aint enough, but at least go down in a blaze of glory). Jay needed to, you know, come up with something. NBC needed to realize the old business model of safe, unobtrusive television doesn’t work in 2010, not even at 11:30. The fact that this is a network still worried about lead-ins tells you all you need to know. They seem to think people watch TV in a linear fashion and will continue to do so forever. Good luck with that.

Note to NBC: tear down anything resembling a schedule grid there at headquarters. You are a content company. Make the best content that you can. Get it to users in the most convenient way possible. Preferably by offering several ways to access it. Content, content, content. Everything else will take care of itself. Is this simple concept really so hard to understand?

And now, a very special episode of “Ow! My Balls!” ONLY on NBC.