Step right up... and Pound-A-Peacock

PASADENA -- Move over, Whack-A-Mole.

The world's most popular beating-the-stuffing-out-of-a-make-believe-animal pastime has been replaced by a newer, hipper, decidedly bloodier game.

It's called Pound-A-Peacock.

The merciless verbal thrashing of NBC by TV personalities directly and indirectly affected by the Peacock Network's fast-unraveling late-night programming problem continues, with current (but not for long) Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien and former (and perhaps soon-to-be-reinstalled) Tonight Show host Jay Leno both using their show-opening monologues to take wide-open shots at the company that employs them.

Competitors David Letterman (who believes he was the rightful but wronged heir to Johnny Carson's Tonight Show spot), Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel have also heaped delightful scorn on the NBC situation.

In his Wednesday monologue, O'Brien employed a double-barreled approach, taking aim at both NBC and Leno.

"I'm trying very hard to stay positive here," he joked. "Hosting The Tonight Show has been the fulfilment of a lifelong dream for me. And I just want to say to the kids out there watching, you can do anything you want in life -- unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too."

He then cited a TV Guide poll that suggests 83 per cent of viewers want him to stay in the 10:35 p.m. timeslot, from which NBC wants to remove him in favour of a shortened version of the massive prime-time failure The Jay Leno Show.

"And here's the interesting part -- when he heard this poll number, President Obama said, 'How can I get NBC to screw me over?"

O'Brien's Wednesday show also featured a bit in which 30 Rock's fictional NBC page, Kenneth, led a tour group out onto the stage, describing the studio as "the former home of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien." And later, guest Ricky Gervais asked O'Brien if the segment they were taping was even going to make it onto the air, suggesting NBC was "probably doing reruns of Leno or something."

Leno, for his part, waded a bit deeper into the fray on Wednesday, citing O'Brien's widely reported statement in which he complained that he was only given seven months to make an impression as his show's new host.

"Seven months?" Leno quipped. "How did he get that deal? We only got four."

Leno called NBC "America's most dysfunctional TV family" (a reference to TLC's now-torn-asunder Jon and Kate), and also shot a brief rebuttal back at ABC late-night guy Jimmy Kimmel, who did his whole Tuesday show in a wig and prosthetic chin that made him look like Leno.

"I was going to come out dressed as Jimmy Kimmel... but I realized I don't have enough black shoe polish here at NBC to get my hair that dark."

Over on CBS, Letterman continued to make hay with his former network's travails, poking fun for several minutes but also making the rather pointed Leno-lambasting remark that "When Johnny Carson quit, he quit."

Letterman's nightly Top 10 List was "Top 10 messages on (top NBC-Universal boss) Jeff Zucker's voicemail"; in his introduction to the bit (No. 1 was "What the Zuck?"), Letterman recalled the long-ago story of Leno eavesdropping from a closet while top NBC executives discussed whether The Tonight Show was going to be given to Jay or Dave.

In his post-Letterman monologue, Ferguson continued to show more irritation than amusement with the whole sad affair, comparing his gut reaction to the controversy to the intestinal distress he experiences when he eats onions.

It might be the case, as NBC officials ponder how much longer they want to endure this pounding, and how many late-night hosts they'll actually have left when they're done, that in carnival trailers and amusement-park midways all over North America, the world's most well-whacked make-believe moles are feeling an at-least-temporary sense of relief.

Stay tuned.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 15, 2010 D2