Would You Pay $1 Million for Conan O'Brien's Suitcase?

The suitcase that outgoing Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien has put up for sale on eBay is currently (as of 5:55 pm Pacific Time, Saturday, January 16, 2010) at the bid price of $999,999.00.

Really.

There's still time to bid.

After all, that's still $29 million less than NBC is reportedly paying Conan to get rid of their late night baggage.

NBC Tries to Fix a Self-Made Mess with Jay Leno/Conan Change #jayleno

Frankly, I never understood why NBC thought it needed to usher Jay Leno off The Tonight Show in the first place when they should have been locking him in for the next 10 years. No, I don't watch late night TV; but millions of people do, and they clearly watched Leno in droves.

But NBC wanted to replace him, for whatever brilliant network programmer reason, so they gave Conan O'Brien the Tonight Show slot (and Conan might be a wonderful person who nurses hurt kittens back to health and makes people laugh, but he's not Tonight Show material -- nor would David Letterman have been, had his early wishes been granted). And Leno got a new five-days-a-week 10:00 pm program.

Which tanked.

I'll admit that I thought Leno would have done better at that hour than he did, but the fact is that he didn't do well at all, despite NBC's claim that he is performing exactly where they thought he would and where they promised advertisers he would. The affiliates, however, were getting hammered because Leno was delivering terrible lead-ins to their 11:00 pm news; and no one was tuning into the end of their news to watch Conan.

So today it looks like Leno will get a 30-minute program at 11:35, and Conan will follow with a full hour. Oh, and NBC suddenly has to come up with five hours of quality 10 programming on short notice (so you know the quality will be great!).

They made the mess, they can clean it up.

UPDATE: Read reactions from Aaron Barnhart -- the original Late Night TV guru.

Sci Fi Channel Doesn't Like "Sci Fi"

NBC Universal's popular (and growing) Sci Fi Channel has decided it's embarrassed by its name, and by its audience. Deciding that "sci fi" gives people images of "geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements" (in the words of one consultant) the cable channel is changing its name to Syfy, according to TV Week.

Their reasoning that "sci fi" turned off people who might otherwise like the content is ridiculous, considering the continued major gains in audiences and in critical accolades (just witness much of the critical laurels being thrown out for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica).

An interesting sidenote: There already was a syfyportal.com, but that's changed its name to the difficult to market airlockalpha.com.

All of this brings to mind a column I wrote for Internet World in 2000. In it, I mused about (and mocked, deservedly) the companies that changed their names from perfectly good ones to stupid ones. And the silliness continues. TV Week cites Sci Fi Channel President Dave Howe:

Mr. Howe said Sci Fi looks at its branding every couple of years. He added that when new executives join the network, they usually ask if it has ever thought about changing the name.

Seriously? What kind of person goes to apply for a job at Bank One, and then suggests that they change their name to something a little less "banky"? Does Sports Illustrated hire many editors who are embarrassed about the bad image of sports fans and suggest they change the name to Sprites Illuminated?

Just where do you hire these people?