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Okay, let's get started.
Hey, it's our Thursday episode.
Normally we talk to fans in this spot, but today we're going to try...
Something a little different.
I'm going to talk to someone who I've known for 32 years and he's definitely not a fan.
I'm talking about Jeff Ross, executive producer extraordinaire.
He and I started out together on the old late night show back in the day.
And Jeff, you're the guy that understands the business.
Of Hollywood.
I don't.
I'm kind of an outsider, an artist because of a Michelangelo roaming the streets.
Painting is great.
Masterpieces head in the clouds.
But you you get the business.
What's going on in Hollywood these days?
I just want to know.
Jeff Ross, what's going on in Hollywood?
How's the business?
Am I being sandbagged?
No, no, this is not a sandbag.
This is me questioning you.
What's going on in the business?
The business, Jeff.
I hear that studios are.
It's tough out there.
It's tough out there.
What's going on?
I don't know what's happening.
Well, I only hear what's happening because our world is pretty good.
Our world is good.
Our world is good.
Are we thriving in the business?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
I have no idea.
Yes.
I have no idea what we're doing.
Thriving.
But but what a strange world when we started out together back in 1993, we met in April of 1993.
I was 29 when I met you.
Now I'm older than that.
And not me.
You've you've somehow got 70 years older and I have gotten even younger.
But.
But now, you know, we've got this podcast empire and I'm having a lot of fun.
It's all great.
Yeah.
But if I had told you 32 years ago, we're not going to be working in television anymore.
We're going to be basically doing a radio show that goes over the computer.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
So that's your analysis.
It's crazy.
Well, it is crazy.
I mean, we are HBO show.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I didn't mean to discount HBO.
HBO.
And we have a lot of fun with that.
Yes.
A good time.
But again, it's a very different show.
I'm going to say this.
I don't think anyone's ever said this before.
It's a very different landscape now.
It is.
Oh, that's a good word.
Yeah.
Are you talking about specifically late night or talk shows?
Late night.
You know, I think everyone's talking about late night.
Byron Allen's taking over.
Byron Allen is taking over for Colbert's show.
Is that right?
Well, yeah, it's interesting.
He bought the time.
Wait, what's that?
What are you talking about?
In other words, he went to CBS.
Byron Allen went to?
He went to CBS.
He's buying the time, the time period.
Okay.
And he's producing his own show and selling the ads himself.
I believe that's how it's working.
I didn't know that.
That's fascinating.
We could do that.
We could just buy time on TV.
Wait a minute.
Can I do it?
Essentially, CBS is like in profit because they just sold the time to him.
Wait a minute.
So you're saying I could go back on NBC.
They'd probably let me go on at like three in the morning if I bought the time that.
What's that?
If that.
Yeah.
OK.
Four in the morning.
All right.
Maybe I could give the farm report.
There's nobody there left.
So you could wind up back on NBC.
If you know, listen, this is where you come in because you understand the business.
You understand what kind of money our business has.
Can my production company, can we buy the four o'clock time slot on NBC 4 am and create our own show and sell all that sweet advertising money that'd be coming in at 4 am?
Yeah.
Is that a good business model?
Do you want me to get in the weeds on this?
Yes.
Okay.
I don't think NBC controls 4 a.m.
Perfect.
Then we can just squat there.
We can be like yeah, people that just you know an old hobo shows up in an apartment and just says I'm here now and they can't get him out.
Why don't I squat?
We did do that.
Why don't I squat at four?
We did do that.
We did do that.
We kind of did do that for like 10 years at NBC.
All right.
Listen, that's terrible.
We did fine for them.
I'm just fascinated by this new world.
I don't understand it, but now you can buy a time slot.
Yeah, you did.
It's like syndication.
It's essential syndication.
I should go into syndication.
It's essentially, it's just basically what he did.
Okay.
What about this?
And I'm just spitballing ideas here, but this is a chance for people out there to hear our process.
I think I'd be great in daytime.
I think housewives would love me.
I think I could buy a daytime slot.
We could have a syndicated show called, and guess what?
It's called Donen!
And it's got an exclamation point and like a happy face.
You don't remember.
You don't remember that before we went to TBS we took a meeting with these guys, a company that's called Debmar Mercury.
And they wanted to do a daytime show.
Oh, remember, this is all a blur to me because it was like the middle of a car accident.
It was in Rick Rosen's office and we did take that meeting.
We took a meeting and they pitched me as a daytime host.
Oh, that'd be awful.
I'd be so lovable and fun.
Oh, you said lovable and fun.
I said it would be awful.
Why would it be awful?
Maybe not then.
Because your humor is for the wee hours of the night.
I don't know what time people are listening to this podcast.
This podcast does very well.
Your sense of humor is kind of silly and edgy and goofy.
I think Adam could look right now and see when most people listen to this podcast.
A lot of...
Adam, why don't you jump in on this?
Because you also have a good business perspective and you are, you know, the podcast whisperer.
Does what I do translate to daytime?
Should I have a daytime show?
I don't love it.
No.
Why don't you love it?
For the reasons that Sona said, I think like I just can't imagine that.
That demographic sitting around on their, you know, watching in their kitchen.
Okay.
What is it?
Explain that demographic, Adam.
Say it.
Say it.
What's that demographic?
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Here's what I will say.
Oh, here we go.
As you've aged, your audience has stayed very young.
You have a very young, mobile, digital-first audience.
I think that the podcast it makes a ton of sense that you're a successful podcaster, that you have a big YouTube channel.
Can I say this?
I say this to Adam.
I say this to Adam with all respect.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
You know what I just learned?
I'm on a roll here.
Fuck you.
You how dare you tell me I've aged, first of all, haven't aged at all.
Second of all, my this makes me want to shut down the podcast immediately and the HBO travel show immediately.
And because I'm I am very reactive, I'm launching a daytime talk show.
It's called Conan.
And it's two A's.
C-O-N-A-A-N exclamation point.
Well, that saves it.
It's mostly just to spite me.
Yes.
Most of what I do is to spite someone around me.
I've done so much to spite Jeff.
I've done so much to spite Sona.
And so much of my career now is about spiting you.
But we own it.
It's syndicated.
And yes, it will do terribly, but we get to own how terribly it does.
What do you think?
I actually like the idea.
It's interesting that, no, not the idea of you in daytime.
I still don't like that idea.
I like this Byron Allen idea, though, that linear is now just kind of like up for sale.
Like it's real estate.
You can just go and buy real estate on linear television.
What do you think?
I think that's interesting.
There might be opportunities there.
Ellen when her daytime show did something very popular, which is she would come out and she would dance.
People know that I'm very physical and stuff like that.
Here's my thing.
I come out and dance and I don't stop.
I dance for the entire hour.
I dance the entire hour and people come out and pitch their projects in the background and you barely hear them.
And I'm rocking out the whole time.
And I could get into the kind of shape where I do that for a whole hour of just dance.
And tell me housewives don't want to see that.
Is that a derogatory term?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
I don't want to use a derogatory term.
Is that offensive to the real housewives of Salt Lake City?
I don't know.
Okay.
I don't know.
It's just I'm spitballing here.
Make it good.
I was just saying MTV's The Grind was very popular.
You could bring back MTV's The Grind.
Oh, MTV is so gone, though, isn't it?
What is MTV now?
I think MTV is going to... I don't know.
The Paramount thing.
We'll see what happens.
What will those VJs do?
They're...
They're not around anymore.
Don't tell me Kurt Loder isn't still on TV talking.
I mean, come on.
You can't fool me.
What am I?
Rip Van Winkle?
I fell asleep for 30 years.
I need to know what's going on in business.
What do you counsel me to do?
You're my consigliere.
You're my Tom Hagen.
Well, I think you should keep doing what you're doing because it's going really well.
Okay.
So keep going with the podcast.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
And...
And daytime show, should we let that go?
It's Conan with two A's, and I'll go up to three A's.
Here's what I'm going to say.
Do you really want to do a daily show again?
Never.
Okay, then forget it.
Okay.
Wait, but what if he said he did?
What are you going to say?
Were you going to say something if he wanted to do a daily show?
You know what I learned being here just in the last 10 minutes?
Huh.
This is like the suck-up room.
This is what goes on in here.
Everybody sucks up to Conan.
Not Eduardo.
We do not suck up to him.
Suck up.
Not Eduardo.
Oh, you'd be great at it.
You'd be great at it.
No, you'd be great at it.
I told him not to do it.
Well, you told him not to do it, but you said he'd be great at it.
No.
No, no.
I don't... Did she?
I...
I'd say one thing.
You got to give Eduardo his props.
Eduardo despises me.
That's right.
And has made it very clear from day one.
Just because occasionally I spill water into the electrical outlets.
You called me the sonic Stalin.
Yeah.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah.
You rule with an iron fist.
You've killed so many of your own people.
Um, I'm just saying that he doesn't know.
I get a lot of pushback in this room, but, uh, I, I don't know what the next move is.
We've got, well, there is, well, you don't need an X move.
First of all, you can do whatever you want.
And I think that's frightening.
And I think that we've talked about various things and things you might want to be interested in doing, which are possible and you can do.
You know what?
No one's ever approached me about a clothing line, which I find.
Oh, no, that's not true.
Gavin.
No, Gavin Pallone, Gavin Pallone, Gavin Pallone is my manager.
If we don't even know what Gavin's story is, we never have.
He told me he was a manager years ago and I've known him longer than I've known you.
I've known Gavin forever.
Um and uh, he'll come up with these ideas, but they're not grounded in anything.
He didn't come to me with a proposal.
He just said you gotta sell clothes and um, i think for a while.
Oh, his one good idea hair gel no, hair pomade, a pomade right right, and i think what you shaking your head?
No, i think it's a great idea.
I just don't know that it was his idea.
Oh, Whose idea do you think it was?
You can say.
I think Liza and I both came up with it on the same day.
Okay.
Well, first of all.
But I don't want to.
But then Gavin wouldn't let it go.
That might be true.
Okay.
Gavin was pushing coffee.
He was put a coffee brand and you know what his push for coffee brand was people think you're so hopped up on coffee.
It was that they would buy the kind of coffee you're on.
That was his pitch.
Like you should sell riddlin pills because people think You're an out of control child.
There was also a tequila, but some kind of he wanted to.
I thought it was a whiskey.
A whiskey.
Right.
Yeah.
Irish whiskey.
He wanted it.
And no self-respecting Irishman will drink what I'm drinking.
No clothing company has come to me.
No, not a clothing company.
Okay.
Well, don't say everything.
Well, it's been pitched to you.
No, but I think people probably look at the way I dress and think, I want to look like him.
He's like Don Draper on Mad Men.
No question.
Okay.
How you doing there?
I think that if someone has really long legs, they'll be like, what jeans does Conan wear?
Yeah.
Just for the sizing?
Just for the sizing, for your proportions.
Okay, what about that?
My proportions are extremely long legs.
Yeah.
Clothing that's tailored for the man who's had some sort of genetic malfunction and has really long legs.
Like big and tall, but just tall.
Yeah, just tall in the leg.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Conan O'Brien's tall in the leg stores.
Okay.
And it's just for people who are really long in the leg.
Yeah.
This room's getting really quiet.
Speaking of your legs in the early days of the internet and of YouTube.
For a long time and somebody could probably look it up the biggest clip on YouTube was you and Spanx.
Oh, jeggings.
I wish I had Spanx.
No, it was jeggings.
I wore jeggings, and that was a huge clip.
It was like a five-second clip, and it was humongous.
Maybe you should do something that is way outside of what you would normally do.
Like something charitable and kind.
No, I'm saying like a makeup line.
You know how like Rihanna came up with a makeup line.
Those things are huge.
Different complexions like you.
If you did, if you went up against Rihanna, you know what?
Rihanna would shit her pants if she knew I was coming after her.
If Rihanna knew that Conor O'Brien was coming out. for the pale man in your life, you know?
And it's like, it covers up an eye vein and all the stuff that I'm pitching is like, Look, we all have a prominent eye vein that shows up on camera when we're doing a podcast.
It's also a really specific problem.
Well, this, apply this and it softens it.
And your freckles, if you have like a lot of freckles.
If you have super thin lips and beady, creepy eyes.
Jeff, I think we found it.
Yeah, I think so.
I think your pitch is perfect.
It's pitch perfect.
Let's be serious.
Back to serious for a second.
We don't know.
I have a question for you that you can answer.
All I know is that so many people I know aren't working.
So many of the writers we know, it's very hard to get work now.
Yet I go home and all I see are thousands of new streaming shows.
There's never been more product available to people.
But my sense is that a lot of people aren't working.
What's happening?
I think a lot of them are made overseas.
A lot of them.
And I'm not saying it's the entire issue, but I think a lot of them are made over.
But what about.
So that means that writers don't write them.
U.S. writers don't write.
Of course, writers write them.
But U.S. writers don't write them.
Wow.
American.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's.
It's crazy because that is the puzzling part is I go home and Liza and I are just flipping through.
I mean every time you turn on one of these streamers they've got.
Seven more shows.
Yeah, you need subtitles, but there's so much product.
And and then you wonder, well, gee, that's good.
I don't think I don't think it's the whole problem.
I think things got really expensive and out of control.
And in this country, in this town of all places, we had a moment on the Oscars that was really said a lot to me, which is we had an idea for the Oscars where I'm backstage and I just had this image flash.
So sometimes things just come to me as an image.
And one image was when I'm coming back, when they're bumping in from commercial to come back to me, I'll be backstage and it'll be uh um, I'm rolling on the floor with golden retrievers.
I'm rolling on the floor with nine golden retrievers and the band's playing, and then you hear, ladies and gentlemen, once again your host, Conan O'Brien, and I leap up and a team of a whole bunch of people with giant you know.
Uh, Lynn brushes roll me really quickly.
And I step out on stage and go, hi everybody, you know, cinematography.
And, um, it was just this quick, silly visual that I loved.
And it's really interesting.
Um, one of the producers said, okay, This is going to be incredibly expensive.
And I said, really?
Just getting a couple of golden retrievers?
And she said, well, the rule is each dog... has to be acclimated with the other dog.
So they all have to live together for like two weeks before they can come on, before they can be on camera together.
And if they're living together, all their people, their handlers have to live with them too.
And she was going through all the things and how the cost got up to.
I think it was going to cost as much as like uh, baseline sticker price for, like a Porsche.
It was like $30,000.
I think it was more than that.
Maybe.
I think it was more than $30,000.
So not a Porsche, but a really good high-end Nissan Leaf.
And then I think somebody said, what about puppies?
And they went, more expensive.
Yeah, puppies are more expensive.
And basically...
It's all this stuff that gets built in over time, these different rules.
And I realized in that moment, you know, we used to do things in the 90s.
We used to get away with murder because we would think of an idea at 430, a really weird idea, and we would throw it out on the air.
And then.
A lot of time goes by and I think rules change and things.
I also think in the Oscars, especially when people hear Oscars, the price goes up.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think you're right.
Yeah.
And but I was in that moment with the Golden Retrievers.
I thought, oh, this is a concrete example of something that's happening.
It's making me think, I see why people go to Budapest to shoot something.
Because and I see why, because and I've heard that a lot of I mean we used for years, for over a decade, for 11 years we were on Warner Brothers
And it was you know humming, that things are quieter in some of these lots than they used to be.
They were building new stages, I believe.
Yeah.
And everything was packed.
And I hear now that's like half empty.
I don't, I don't know that.
Can I say one thing?
I don't know that it's true.
I will say that happens whenever Conan O'Brien leaves the place.
Makes sense.
NBC pretty much collapsed after I left.
Um, You know, but that's called the effect.
When I leave a party in a way, good luck to that party.
But yeah, it's fascinating to me.
The I mean, we're joking around.
But then at the same time I do accidentally have real questions, which is I.
I, you know we've now been.
I got started in nineteen, eighty five.
That's ancient history now.
Very different.
And you know what's funny?
I was surfing the internet the other day and something came up.
I don't know if it was on Instagram.
Maybe it was Instagram, where they know kind of what you're interested in, and they showed me footage of a um video store um, like a blockbuster yeah, and it was from 1986 or something when i was first out here with greg daniels And someone had taken a video with like a video camera of all the displays.
And now it looks like the footage I used to look at when I was a kid from the 1920s.
Oh, and I realized, you know what I mean?
Where people are riding around with wearing straw hats in funny clothes.
I remember looking at a blockbuster now looks like oh, that's a speakeasy.
During 40 years, 40 years ago.
And I know that young people now see that footage and think everyone looks crazy.
We all look like we're in a flock of seagulls with padded shoulders and we're going.
Oh, it's my.
I have to rent a video so I can watch Back to the Future again.
You know I'm going to go home and put this into a giant 600 pound machine and watch Back to the Future.
Yeah.
And then rewind it.
Yeah.
And then rewind.
Yeah.
Remember, we were in Finland and somebody came up to us.
We were at a party and somebody came up to the phone and said, hey, look, your show's on.
Oh, someone showed us our show on a phone.
This was like how many years ago?
Oh, I mean, this would be 25 years ago or something.
20 years ago.
And they went, I'm looking at it and we're like, what?
Oh, I felt bad because I said witch.
Oh, no.
And I threw hot oil on them.
And then she was a witch.
But it had nothing to do with her having the phone.
That was completely beside.
But that's good.
No, I remember we were at some event for NBC and they said we were in Washington, D.C.
And it was some event broadcasting event.
And this is in the 90s.
And they said, we're going to show you something called HDTV, high definition TV.
And they had it on a flat screen TV.
And we walked up to it and it was a football game.
And I was watching it and it was the I mean I don't think HDTV was commercially available at the time.
They were just showing us a sample of this thing that was gonna be coming very soon.
I remember being able to see the divots in the ground and it blew me away.
And now you watch TV, TVs that are probably a hundred times more precise than that one.
And we're just like, duh, whatevs.
We get so inured to this technology.
No matter how expensive they were when they came out and now they're like, it's like a commodity.
Oh, well, you used to get a flat screen TV and people were like, oh, you're getting a flat screen.
Yeah, I went to the bank and I got a cosigner.
And I talked to my accountant.
It's being installed tomorrow by a team of scientists.
I mean, Adam's can speak to it.
Well, this criminal over here can speak to it, too.
You know, when the games are on, you just have your phone and just watching games live.
You know, that's you, Jeff.
I mean, I've seen you many times sitting alone at a restaurant.
Oh, these guys, too.
This guy does it while he's engineering this show.
Yeah.
Yeah, remember?
Oh, that's right.
Eduardo, you like to watch your... Well, you call it football.
I call it soccer.
Yeah.
But it's... I'm watching one right now.
No, I'm just kidding.
That would have been cool.
No, it's a whole... It's all... Listen.
I was just having lunch with somebody just now.
Oh, wow.
You really cracked it.
There's no job.
Things have changed.
Yeah, but it's just stunning.
You can't ever fire us.
What time we have you have you have to work for until you're like 90, because otherwise we're all fucked.
So you should get a job that's just ridiculous anywhere else.
What are you talking?
No conan, you really have to work till you're 90, thank you.
We'll put it in writing.
Um, just until you're 90, thank you.
Then i'll be 96.
Do you think Jeff, that you have adapted to the new ways?
I don't know.
In what sense do you mean?
Do you know how to work your phone?
Do you know how to?
Is that the? baseline standard?
Do you know how to work your phone?
I'm saying because David knows full well that I don't know these things.
Jeff has never had to call me to help him log into a streaming service like you do.
Well, I have had to call you for a few things.
Every now and then.
But not a lot.
Yeah.
Dig a hole, by the way, very different.
You better put my house on the market.
What started yelling?
I had to do something, oh god oh, come on, it gets so dark so fast.
I bring you in here and then i expose you as a highway killer.
Yeah well, you know.
Um, He's called the highway mumbler.
People are disappearing on the 405 freeway and all they find is a shoe and they hear some mumbling.
Guilty as charged.
Listen, so you say the state of the podcast is good.
We should keep going.
HBO, it's all good.
I shouldn't panic.
All right, well, listen.
HBO loves you.
They want more of whatever you want to give them.
Oh, hey.
Well, I'm going to give them a daytime show.
Going in!
Watch Conan dance for an hour as guests far behind him yell to try to be heard.
Can you imagine just me in the foreground dancing, and they're in the background going.
The book's called A Time for Summer.
They get frustrated and walk away.
That'd be great.
We're on for three whole days.
Yeah.
All right, Jeff, thanks for coming in.
I think you brought sanity to a very damaged ecosystem.
And just for the record, Eduardo despises me.
I hate you.
And I get a lot of hate from this room.
So I think it's very good.
Yeah.
I mean, that's our job.
That's what we do.
Yeah.
Happy to join in.
Very happy.
Conan O'Brien needs a fan.
With Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley.
Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao.
Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.
Take it away, Jimmy.
Supervising Producer, Aaron Blair.
Associate Talent Producer, Jennifer Samples.
Associate Producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Byrne.
Engineering by Eduardo Perez.
Get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com slash Conan.
Please rate, review and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan wherever fine podcasts are done.
