Jay Leno on Oprah: Some interesting damage control

Every goodwill press tour has its designated stops. Want to own up do behaving badly in your marriage or corporate malfeasance? That’s a “60 Minutes” moment. Jon Stewart has become the venue for politicians to announce their candidacy for president (yeah, thanks for that whole John Edwards thing, Stewart). And if you want to “set the record straight” and “tell your side of the story,” sit down with Oprah.

Which is what Jay Leno did today. Except that after watching it I can’t quite put my finger on what I learned that I didn’t know before.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch, Maureen Ryan, a.k.a. The Watcher at the Chicago Tribune has the definitive account of the interview.

It couldn’t have been an easy one to sit for, and although Oprah was a pretty sympathetic interrogator, she sure didn’t shy away from asking some uncomfortable questions. And to Leno’s credit, he didn’t flinch from being asked.

And I guess that’s part of what didn’t ring true. While he’s made a point of saying that he doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, Leno’s calmness struck me as odd. There was an utter lack of emotional register as he told Oprah he didn’t even consider that he was, in her words, “taking away Conan’s dream” by accepting NBC’s plan to return him to helming “The Tonight Show.”

Now, everyone involved is a grown-up, and Leno is unquestionably right that it all came down to numbers. Ratings were off, plain and simple. But while he admitted that his show failed and noted that Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” had fallen off markedly in the ratings, he utterly failed to make the connection between the two. The affiliates kicked up a lot of dust about money lost, but their problem was with the fact that Leno as a lead-in to their 11 p.m. newscasts just didn’t work. His 10 p.m. show was killing their ratings, which in turn hurt the lead-in for CoCo’s late-night program.

It’s not the only reason. Conan’s ratings were off from the time he went on the air as host of the “Tonight Show,” even before Leno’s prime-time show premiered. But in my mind, *not* making the connection between rough ratings at 10 p.m. and the fall-off at 11:35 is just as erroneous as connecting not getting flowers on Secretaries’ Day to a vengeful motive and sexual harrassment.

Leno’s generally a likable enough guy who’s gotten a lot of bad press over the past few weeks, and he’s clearly not the bad guy in this scenario. That title falls to some ham-handed decision-making motivated by panic, and an even dicier approach to the public fallout. But saying that walking away after you were heartbroken over being fired twice would be the selfish move just doesn’t make any sense. As Oprah pointed out, more than once, he could’ve negotiated a package for the 170 people who work for him and walked away. Whether or not it’s actually how he feels, the way it came off was: (1) NBC made a decision to replace Leno, which rightfully bewildered him and made him sad; (2) he tried to be gracious about it, down to the “white lie” about retiring (don’t even get me started on how it would have been “a lot of work” to move to another network — boo hoo); (3) when it came time to go, he was tops in the ratings, and having to leave pissed him off. So of course he jumped at the chance to take the gig back when it was offered — after Conan vetoed the 12:05 idea.

Some clips:

This whole business started because the network wanted to keep both Leno and Conan. But they way it handled things ultimately hurt everyone involved — nobody and nothing came away unscathed. And now Leno returns as damaged goods to his damaged dream job. My True/Slant colleague Christopher Roy Correa thinks Leno hurt himself today. I don’t think it was a disaster. I’m not sure he did himself any favors, but compared to the network brass, he came out smelling like a rose.