While we wait semi-patiently for Bill Carter to pen his Late Shift sequel (what’s taking him so damn long, anyway? Conan’s been off the air for nearly four whole days now!), intrepid reporters everywhere continue to dig to discover the motivations behind what will likely go down in the books as one of the biggest meltdowns in the history of the medium. Just today, while speaking at a television-syndication conference in Las Vegas, NBC’s boring Ben Silverman replacement, Jeff Gaspin, spoke publicly about the whole mess:
I probably, you know, I probably underestimated the emotion of everything that went on. I went to Conan, to Jay, to Jimmy with a very logical, rational plan. I explained it to the press. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And I think the [sic] underestimated the emotional impact it had on Conan, in particular.
We long ago assumed that Gaspin was boring, but we had no idea that he was so devoid of empathy, too! We know that NBC didn’t choose to promote Gaspin to be their entertainment chairman simply because he was a nice guy, but we also never figured that he would be so clueless when it came to the business of managing egos (which, in his business, is equally as important as managing the bottom line). Yet another great hire for Jeff Zucker!
NBC’s Gaspin Talks About Emotion of Late-Night Changes [Media Decoder/NYT]