Conan and The Office: "Disasters" that made it
The
scamps over at The Onion's A.V. Club have come up with an
interesting list of eight projects that were destined to be disasters but ended up being successes. Most of the
list consists of movies like Titanic, Apocalypse Now, and even the Steve Martin version of The Pink
Panther. But they also include two TV projects in the mix: the American version of The Office and...
Late Night with Conan O'Brien.Now, the low expectations for the US Office were well documented. But all you young'uns out there might not remember the "Who the hell is Conan?" stories that were all over the news when O'Brien took the Late Night job in 1993. Also, the first few months of the show were... uh... let's just say they were less than stellar.
I just remember the show was painfully bad when it started, and I was especially cringing at the unfunniness of Conan's sidekick, another relative unknown named Andy Richter. I hated the show so much that I stopped watching. Little did I know that, three or four years later, it would develop into the comedic force it is now. I guess NBC had nowhere else to turn, so they let the show develop. Yet another lesson in patience that current network execs are not willing to learn these days.

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