Conan O'Brien is a better bet than Jay Leno.

But I am interested in the war between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno/NBC. Because objectively speaking it represents the failure and desperation that has haunted the broadcast networks for several years. Here you have Conan O’Brien, beloved by a cult of hardcore fans with low ratings in the 11:35 pm timeslot against Jay Leno, loved by — well no one — and floundering in the ratings in his 10 pm show that almost everyone universally despises. NBC gets the bright idea that Leno’s not the problem, just the timeslot, and decides to give the Tonight slot back to Leno, outraging O’Brien and his small, but dedicated fanbase.

If this isn’t representative of what’s troubling the broadcast networks, I don’t know what is.

There was a time — not so distant, since it encompassed a big chunk of my own youth — when there were just three broadcast networks (plus PBS) serving the entire nation. That’s three and one quarter channels! And until fairly recently, those networks shut down at midnight.

NBC, CBS and ABC — and to some degree Fox — are still chasing the big ratings of yesteryear, when the audience had nothing better to watch. They haven’t woken to the new reality where no single program can draw in a majority of the American public — where the audience has splintered into dedicated niches that love their shows intensely, but aren’t that “big” in terms of the old numbers.

A lot of people love Lost. It’s not as many people as watched The Waltons by a longshot, but they really love those characters. Who in America can rightly say that they loved John Boy and his family? I mean, really loved them.

The fact is, Conan has a lot of fans — and they exist in a key audience demographic. He may not appeal to the masses, but what the networks don’t understand is that except for sports and American Idol, there’s very little cultural glue that holds the television audience together. Science fiction fans are not going to tune into Law and Order just because it’s on — nor will CSI fans necessarily watch Heroes simply because they clicked passed it. They’re more likely to stop at Diners, Drive-in’s and Dives on the Food network, or Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman on the Travel Channel than they are to watch a network hour-long, or a comedy talk show in an aging format.

Television changed the moment cable television became a widespread phenomenon, graduating from the only way rural American communities could get broadcast television to a delivery system for exclusive content you couldn’t see over the air.

The cable networks get it — FX understands that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia won’t pull in most of the country or even a sliver, but its dedicated fans will watch, and those fans will pay attention to the advertisements keyed towards their demo. The same goes for other shows, such as Warehouse 13 on SyFy, Sons of Anarchy on FX, or the Venture Bros. on Adult Swim. The audiences for those shows will watch the ads for say video games and buy those games. And they’ll collect previous seasons of those shows on DVD and Blu-Ray to watch over and over again.

And then you have HBO and Showtime who don’t use an advertising revenue. In many ways, they’re like the BBC with its television tax — people pay to watch them. So in order to increase subscriptions, they have to put on risky, adventurous material you won’t see anywhere else such as The Sopranos, True Blood, Dexter and Weeds. A buzz grows around those shows, and then people sign up for subscriptions so they can see them. HBO doesn’t expect the numbers that Cagney and Lacey used to give CBS, they just expect to see their subscription numbers rise. Not to mention, wanting to make a killing on DVD and Blu-Ray sales.

Which brings me back to NBC. If they were smart, they would understand that Conan O’Brien’s devoted fan base is worth more than Jay Leno’s alleged mass appeal. They would look at Leno’s numbers and realize that his failure at 10pm didn’t have anything to do with timeslot, but everything to do with the fact that lowest common denominator he was shooting for just doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone has there own niche and can find exactly what they want in the expanded universe of television and the Internet. I’d take Conan’s guaranteed audience over Leno’s imaginary one any day.

(Cross-posted at TelevisionZombies.com)