Don’t believe these new stories about Jay Leno v. NBC being about criticism of his network jokes. Last night Leno called NBC executives “Snakes” in his monologue (see video). And it wasn’t because NBC chief Robert Greenblatt recently emailed Leno about jokes criticizing the network’s lousy ratings. This is ALL about NBC putting out the word recently that it wants to retire Leno at the end of the 2014 season and replace him with the younger Jimmy Fallon. Leno is an ace game player and knows exactly what he’s doing. When the Fallon story became absolutely HUGE ten days ago, he did not respond right away on his show.
Instead, he started taking pot shots at the network. The New York Times reported that Greenblatt sent Leno an email asking him to knock it off. Of course, that story was leaked.
And now this: “You know the legend of St. Patrick, right? St Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Then they came into the United States and became NBC executives.” Leno vs. NBC is going to go one for a year and change now. Get ready.