Last night, I made sure to watch both Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien as they returned to their shows without writers. As it turns out, sheer curiosity is quite the ratings booster. Even though Letterman and counterpart Craig Ferguson were armed with writers last night, NBC’s shows still topped them.
Leno still had a monologue – he wrote his own jokes (which is against the rules, isn’t it?) and you didn’t notice a dropoff at all. Ouch to the writers. Conan O’Brien was way more free-form, first …