Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
As the NBC Late Night battle goes on I wanted to show my support for Conan O’Brien who told NBC that he would not host “The Tonight Show” if it was moved to “tomorrow”. Good on him.
used with permission of http://www.sirmikeofmitchell.com/imwithcoco/
I decided to take the plunge and experiment with a podcast. From time to time I plan on uploading an audio podcast that would be a compliment to my blog.
The second episode was posted today and if you are interested please give it a listen by following the link below. It is about 26 minutes in length.
Here is the blurb:
Talking about the dust up over remarks by Senator Harry Reid quoted in the book “Game Change” by Time magazine reporter Mark Halperin and New York magazine writer John Heileman. Also talking about Doug’s love of old TV show themes and YouTube to find them.
Doug’s Views Podcast Episode 2
Please feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the podcast page.
The news broke on Thursday that the NBC network planned to end the failed experiment of having Jay Leno doing a show at 10 PM weeknights. According to the ratings and the local network affiliates, Leno’s show is failing and hurting the local stations’ late news. Normally what happens is when a TV show is failing the show can get canceled but in this case, NBC may do something that screws their Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien – again.
Let me go back to the beginning.
Four or five years ago Jay Leno indicated he didn’t plan to be the host of the Tonight Show for 30 years like Johnny Carson did. The guy never spent his money from hosting the show, hardly took any time off, and continued to do his stand up act on the weekends and make other appearances. It was claimed at the time that Jay wanted to move on at some point and do other things.
NBC then decided to go ahead and name a new host so as to avoid the awful events of 1992 when Johnny Carson retired from the show and Jay and David Letterman, Johnny’s pick to host, battled for the spot. NBC picked Jay and Letterman bolted to CBS.
The network wanted Conan O’Brien, the host the Late Night show following Jay. It seemed in order to do that NBC had to pick a firm date for the transition to retain O’Brien. It picked 2009.
All was right in the world again.
Then Jay Leno changed his mind.
Within months after the deal was announced, he started to complain that he didn’t want to leave as host of the Tonight Show. The ratings were decent and he enjoyed doing the show.
NBC was shocked. It now had to do something to keep Jay from going to another network and competing against O’Brien at the 11:35 PM hour. So it hit on the bright idea to give Jay the 10 PM slot weeknights. It would make him happy, the network could save some money by not having to fill the time with expensive programing, and Conan remained host of the Tonight Show. Jay accepted and all was right in the world.
Then the TV viewers spoke.
After the hosting switch and in September when Jay’s new show started ratings went downhill. The affiliates got mad because those poor ratings hurt their local news and Conan’s ratings then got hurt too.
NBC is planning to do something as it spent time on Thursday in meetings with the hosts and staff of both shows. The speculation is that Jay will go back to 11:35 PM for 30 minutes and then the Tonight Show will move to 12:05.
And all is right with the world again…. uh wrong.
Leno’s show sucked. He was off the air for 3 or 4 months – AND had 5 years of planning – to start the new show and all he ended up doing was rearrange the set and put on a new coat of paint. The Jay Leno Show was just the Tonight Show without the name. He added a couple of segments like video of guests driving cars around a track but 90% of his show is all the old stuff he did on the Tonight Show. It looks like he thought the reason the Tonight Show had good ratings was because of him alone. Wrong.
The reason the Tonight Show got good ratings was because it is THE Tonight Show and because Hugh Grant got caught with a hooker. Jay had nothing to do with it. At first Jay had also started a booking war and other behind the scenes problems that led to removing his long time manager as producer. His Tonight Show had been number one in the ratings for that time slot even as it lost viewers as NBC programing in general lost viewers putting the net in 4th place. Had it not been for Hugh Grant and his hooker, Jay might have been replaced as host a long time ago.
So NBC is going to reward Jay for changing his mind and tanking the 10 PM time slot rather than cutting him loose like they should have done when the transition took place last year.
Conan O’Brien, who is the future for their late night show, got the shaft when Jay changed his mind and got the 10 PM slot and now they seem ready to shaft him again by letting Jay come back at 11:35.
The Huffington Post is publishing articles asking people to move their money from the big banks that are too big to fail to smaller community based banks and credit unions. In my experience it is a good idea and I have few personal stories about it.
My College Loan Story
When I was getting ready to attend college, I needed to get a loan to pay for it. My local bank at the time was a branch of a larger bank. So I go to my branch and talked to one of the reps about college loan options.
I had been a member of the bank for many years. In fact it was my first bank. My mom had setup a kiddie savings account for me when I was like 10 years old and I had always used it for cashing pay checks and other checks.
The bank representative was nice and suggested a Guaranteed Student Loan. It was a product where the bank loaned me the money, the government paid the interest until I graduated, and if I defaulted the government would repay the bank and put me on the hook with them.
I applied and a few weeks later got a letter turning me down. I went back the branch and talked to the same woman. She said because my credit was bad I would need to have the amount of the loan IN my account before they would approve it.
Imagine that. In order to get a $2,500 loan for college I had to have $2,500 in the bank. Wow!
I ended up finding a bank in a nearby town that lent me the money and I closed my account with my bank soon after.
Check cashing problems
In college had two incidents cashing checks from other people. I had an account with another large bank since they had the bank concession at my college. One day I get a check from my Mom for spending money. I go to the branch and see a teller. She tells me if I cash it I had to deposit the full the amount and it wouldn’t be available until the check cleared since I didn’t have enough money in my account to cover the check.
“But the check is from my Mom, see the same last name…” I said.
I ended up getting $10 cash and having to wait for the rest.
A similar tune happened when my roommate wanted me to cash an American Express money order for him since he didn’t have an account. Same thing. No deal because I didn’t have the amount in my account.
“But it is an American Express money order…” It wasn’t like it was Fred’s Money Order or something dodgy like that.
Check card problem
I was at a different bank and out of school and check cards started to come on big. I had been at the bank for 6 years with checking and a savings account and hardly any issues except for an occasional bounced check but at the time I had been bounce free for about two years. I applied for a check card and a week or so later got a letter back turning me down.
I went to the branch to find out why and was told that on some occasions the card system might be down and they would honor transactions as a form of credit. Since my credit score was bad they turned me down. Six years as a customer with a decent record meant nothing for a card that was tied directly to a checking account. In fact any funny business with the card would have more legal problems since check fraud is worse than problems with credit cards not to mention the bounce fees they could make.
I even went to the manager and he put in a special request and I was still turned down. I left that bank after that for a credit union.
Bounce fee pile on
It was at the credit union that I had a bad experience after bouncing an electronic transaction.
I misfigured my account balance and missed it by $1. I then had seven consecutive transactions hit and bounce before they closed my account. I owed over $200 in fees and I was so mad they let six bounces go through I refused to pay the fees. They put me on the naughty list and I was not able to open another bank account – not even a savings account – anywhere.
After some study I would have to wait 5 years for me to drop off and then I might be able to at least open a savings account. So for 4 and 1/2 years I used check cashing places for pay checks and asked other people to give me cash or money orders rather than personal checks if they gave me money.
About six months before I would drop off the naughty list the credit union renewed my ding which started the clock all over again. UGH!
I gave up and decided to pay the fees and be done with it.
The ironic thing was when I went to pay it they had no current record of it since it had been so long. They had to add my account back into the system with the negative balance deposit the fees then close it again. Luckily they didn’t charge me a bounce fee for that.
Today
I am at another credit union now and love it. They don’t give me any flack if an occasional overdraft happens. They ding me the fee but cover the check – had it happen only twice so far. They don’t keep trying to pay it so I get multiple dings.
I once had an unauthorized withdraw. Called them. They sent me a form by fax, I signed it and faxed it back and the withdraw was put back.
I had a large check to deposit and even though it was more than my account balance they let me have $100 cash immediately.
So I agree with the Huffington Post. If you can move your money to a community based bank or credit union.
Welcome 2010. Hope this year is better than the last. For nice first of the new year post here is video of the Findlay High School Band marching in the Orlando Citrus Parade earlier today.