Conan's Enemy Isn't the 11:35 Slot, It's Any Time Slot

Of all the choice lines in Conan O'Brien's statement about the late-night mess at NBC─and there are plenty, from "terrible difficulties in prime-time" to "what I honestly believe is its destruction"─one of the most interesting concerns technology. "Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter," Conan wrote. "But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more."

Conan's right, and he's wrong. Yes, a time slot does matter for a specific program─millions of Americans still tune in to the various late shows live every night, and with a franchise as storied as the Tonight Show, there is a symbolic and even psychic difference to airing at 12:05 a.m. instead of 11:35 p.m. But if Conan himself is interested in doing truly original comedy, he'll embrace this chance to leave the strictures of late-night broadcast television.

Conan has always appeared to be more interested than his late-night peers in pushing the comedic envelope. David Letterman may break the fourth wall and make characters out of his crew, and Jimmy Fallon may have experimented with webisodes before his program launched. But only Conan will improvise a joke about a nonexistent Web site, www.hornymanatee.com─and then actually purchase the domain and fill it with content. Of all people, then, the floppy-haired goofball should realize that watching a show at its original time is obsolete. Watching Saturday Night Live live on Saturday night is the TV equivalent of churning butter. Tools have been invented to save you the labor! If one of the sketches is funny and worth your time, you will hear about it on Twitter or Facebook or even just e-mail. Trust your social network. The same is true of the late-night talk shows. It hasn't really been necessary to watch Conan or Letterman live for years. (It has never been necessary to watch Jay Leno, live or otherwise.) If a bit is great, or horribly great, it bubbles up.

No one outside NBC fully understands Conan's complicated contract with the network, but it appears that one possible outcome is that the ginger host walks away from this farce with up to $80 million. If Conan really wants to leave his mark on entertainment, and do right by his writing staff and other talent, he'll take that money, or an equivalent contract from another network, and create a show that is his own, in a new kind of format. As New York magazine's Adam Sternbergh writes, "Hallowed gigs are made, not inherited." The new comedy prestige─to be the material that dominates Twitter's trending topics list, to create the clips embedded on a million blogs─has nothing to do with airing on a certain network at a certain time. Yes, Conan, "some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter." Be one of them!