NBC's Leno-Conan conundrum

So NBC is planning to take Leno off of 10 p.m. and move him to 11:35 p.m. for a half hour and then start Conan at 12:05 a.m. and Jimmy Fallon at 1:05 a.m.

Wow, there are so many things wrong with that plan I almost don't know where to begin.

How about we start with the fact that Leno isn't funny. That's right I said it, he's not funny. Everyone seems to be looking for reasons why the show failed. Well let me tell you, it's because it's a bad show.

The jokes aren't funny, the sketches are lame and Leno is a terrible interviewer. The only reason his ratings were strong in the past is because NBC had a better primetime lineup and he always booked big name guests.

Now that the shine has come off of NBC it has exposed Leno's show for the subpar program it has always been.

Once you take Leno out of the equation you need to address the Conan side of this. If I were Conan I would already have FOX or ABC or even HBO on the phone. NBC has treated him terribly during this entire situation starting with the fact that they never really seemed to want to give him "The Tonight Show" to begin with. Maybe they should have just paid him off back then and left their late-night lineup alone.

However, they give him "The Tonight Show," he packs up his family and moves them to California only to have NBC say "oh by the way we're giving Jay a nightly show at 10 and you're still not No. 1."

That's ridiculous.

And now they're still coddling Jay at Conan's expense by shuffling the decks yet again. It's like NBC has a checklist of ways to mess up this situation and they're checking them off one at a time.

Make bad scheduling decisions, check. Treat talent terribly, check. Do everything publicly in an awkward manner, check.

The other casualty of this ridiculousness is Jimmy Fallon, whose show is starting to find its rhythm and has gotten consistently better since its premiere. How will his ratings hold against the increasingly popular Craig Ferguson and established Jimmy Kimmel.

At this point NBC should let Leno go off and enjoy retirement and try to salvage their relationship with Conan because he is the future of their late-night brand, and it's time they started acting like it.