I had the urge to watch Will Ferrell on the last Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. The schtick of him dressed as Ronnie Van Zant plus that damn cow-bell doing “Free Bird” was just really memorable – not to mention Ben Harper and Beck jammed on it, too.
I decided to pop over to trusty Hulu to watch and it never occurred to me that NBC could be so vindictive as to remove all the episodes of the Tonight Show.
Hulu Devoid of All Tonight Show Episodes
My bewilderment over their actions on Hulu was short lived as NBC has apparently taken steps to erase completely all records that Conan ever existed. From Wikipedia:
Archives removal by NBC
Roughly two weeks after O’Brien’s final episode, NBC began removing all videos of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien from its website, as well as from the streaming video site Hulu.[80] Gather.com has reported that NBC intends to scrub all O’Brien-related Tonight Show and Late Night clips from YouTube in the near future.[81] Time magazine criticized the network for pulling the videos, noting that Hulu currently streams many less popular NBC series, such as Knight Rider, Kings, Crusoe, and Surface.[82]
In February 2010, NBC took O’Brien’s official website offline, and removed all mentions of the former host from NBC.com.[81] Around the same time, HornyManatee.com, a URL launched by O’Brien’s Late Night show as part of a sketch, began redirecting to NBC.com.[83] In early February 2010, O’Brien’s face in the 30 Rockefeller Plaza mural was replaced by Jay Leno’s likeness.[84]
This is not unlike Rome’s complete and utter destruction of Carthage after the Third Punic War. All they forgot to do was salt the earth. Take heed, NBC. We all know what happened to Rome. And have you guys even bothered watching Heroes lately? (This analysis doesn’t even cover the terrible recently-concluded season 4.) The writing is definitely on the wall – or in the gutter, so to speak.
What Me Hearties R Sayin’